The roads of India keep telling you stories. Stories that are tall. Not tall stories. Small items, objects and articles, that would not merit a cursory second glance from an average citizen anywhere else in the world, are put to such use, that arching eyebrows of designers and makers of such stuff can stay permanently bent with that arch!
To many regular readers this would fall a familiar repetitive rapture of this blog. But hey, what the heck. What is to be celebrated, must be. Wouldn’t you agree ? There is a world out there that is examining the omissions and commissions of everybody else. The government. The President. The peons. The cricketer. The blogger. The neighbour. The antics of the ant getting another loud rant is commonplace.
Every one of them has been examined. Some with magnifying glasses, others with telescopes and all with all with a ubiquitous megaphone! Lets halt right there.
And lets talk of the moped !
In an earlier generation, if you had the good fortune of riding one, let alone owning one, you would go after Wikipedia with a toilet broom for such a derogatory description.
The moped to boys in school, back then, was freedom personified. You didn’t require a driving license. Your school was still not sure if they wanted to call it a bicycle or a motorbike. And you had power between your adolescent legs. I mean..you know what I mean. So what, if it was only 50 horse power?
Ofcourse, we will not venture into describing some eager beavers sticking ‘BMW’ stickers and logos on to such agile spacecrafts. BTW, Spacecrafts is a legit name. It was a world bereft of social media and mobile camera phones and BMW never got to know this. A ton of German drones would have come after us with micro millimeter precision, if only they saw BMW plastered with pride on the broken silencer !
“Low powered motorcycle” is an achingly insane and insensitive way of telling the truth. A lame truth.
You had to climb on to the pedal and give it half the yank of a full circle for the engine to kick into life. For the next several minutes life would be in an in exhilarating fast lane at speeds that would climb all the way to 50 KMPh at full throttle.
Such memories.
As you grow older you tend to outgrow these machines. The loose adolescent skin gets some muscle beneath. Yet the memories stay.
The mopeds have themselves morphed into becoming important lifelines for several segments of the population.
Like the mom & pop stores and their ‘delivery boys’. A moped with its strategic space in the front of the seat, is just what the doctor ordered for carrying bags of rice and a paraphernalia of goods that can feed a family for times to come. Or so it would seem.
But for some silly nostalgic blokes like me, these are spacecrafts of sorts. That transport you to wonder years that never fail to to elicit an escaping sigh. Every time you think of them.
nostalgic!
I used to drive a moped to the hospital,and when I pass the schools,children would come howling!
I started my journey with moped… though borrowed.. and it was fun…
but I used to think why the hell its not speeding properly. 😀
So true. I had a Luna in my college days.
such a true wordings about mopad that had we earlier
Low power?, the moped didn’t know that, did it?
The moped loaded with memories! We truly miss the essence of being slow paced to the rapid BMW and Swift that leaves no time to look back or out, observing the life.
I enjoyed reading it 🙂
my grandfather had one…
Kavi, I have invited you for the “capture the Colors” contest (this is not a tag)…http://ashokism.blogspot.in/2012/08/capture-colors.html
Iam sure you will enjoy it.
What a refreshing post, Kavi. Loved it!
Only you can write such extra-ordinary posts on ordinary topics! 🙂