Steel with a Soul

The showroom person told to me “There’s your bike”, I looked at it with so much awe in my eyes…Like I’ve never seen a bike in my life.

It was late August 2002 when I and my cousin walked into the Bajaj showroom in Chennai to get delivery of the bike I always dreamt off. It was all across the news in India and not a single news paper ever got published without its face on the cover pages. The Bajaj Pulsar was so famous that when it launched in India, young fellows all across the country went mad and ran home with just one request to their dad’s and that was to own a Pulsar.

I went home with mine and my dad was actually in the idea of getting a bike for me, as I was old enough and its been a year of college by then. He told me to go ahead and book one for me. After a month the day arrived when it was time to get my dream bike.

When I walked inside the showroom, my eyes rolled all across to see which was the one for me, and in the end of the showroom was a purple, good looking bike which seemed to blink at me with a welcome smile, and before I could check, the person told me “Yup that’s your bike, right there”…. I ran to the corner touched it and felt the bike which looked so new and mighty in my eyes.

I finished my formalities and it was time to drive home my new fellow. I pushed it out of the showroom and when I kick started it, the roar of the engine made a few heads turn my side. I was now a proud owner of one of the most sensational bikes in the country.

It was just a few minutes into the driving when it started raining heavily…. On one side I was happy that it was a good sign, but on the other I was feeling bad that the new bike was getting wet in the city rains, but I didn’t stop, I just kept driving, I enjoyed getting wet and at time like these, it just got even better. I just loved the moment.

Back in my place, every single friend of mine came home to see the new bike, and I always felt the look of jealousy which ran through their minds when they first saw my bike. I still remember the first time I drove it to college, when all my class girls went crazy for a ride on it and it just felt so special, because you don’t get much of a times like these and they don’t last for long either…!! For at least 4 months I enjoyed the best of my bike, because no may had Pulsar’s at that time and every time I stood in a traffic light, people came down to enquire its performance and mileage and it just made you feel big at heart. And after a few months, seeing Pulsar’s was getting common and more usual in the city.

Today when I look back it’s been 7yrs with this fellow and with so many of those crazy incidents and those wonder memories I made and no extra billing, he’s been one of the best buddies I could ever have in my life. Not a single time has he ever let me down, in rain, or without fuel or in that case anything at all. When I look at the new ultra modern bikes in the Ad’s, it does give me a craving to get one of those cool looking ones which go as fast as a storm, but cool is not what I look for. I know he is old, I know people don’t look at him with the look he used to get back in the years, but when I go to the bike mechanics and take him for a service, it’s there I sit down and listen to stories they share of the bikes they admire and to them the 1^st generation Pulsar’s still rule the roads, they are the machines which were meant to rule and still not rust. In Chennai city the highest number of engines being stolen are the ones from the old Pulsar’s, because they are the rigid original and best performing ones ever made. The new Pulsar’s don’t stand a chance with the make of the old ones.

Even though I know one day I have to part my ways with him in life, I still love him and admire him for his trusted beauty and companionship, the young adolescent life he has shared with me, the people he has carried for me and the relationships he has made for me, the happiness and the sorrow he has bore with me, everything he has done has for me not as a machine but as a friend with a soul.

I talk to him every time I drive alone and I keep my hands on his heart and say “U’r the best I could ever get”. And I know he smiles back with a grrrrr……that's how a Pulsar smiles back !!

"Dedicated to my loving bike, my friend n soul mate"

About Bajaj Pulsar:

The Bajaj Pulsar motorcycle is produced by the India-based Bajaj Auto, maker of two- and three-wheeled motorbikes. Since 2005, more than one million Pulsars have been sold in an Indian market thought to be unfriendly to larger motorcycles. Production began in 2001 with two bikes: A 150cc and 180cc model. Each was equipped with an air-cooled, single-cylinder 20-horsepower four-stroke engine. Although basic in every way, the motorcycle featured standarddisc brakes and sat on 17-inch wheels, which was unheard of in an Indian motorcycle.

In 2002, the Pulsar emerged as the most popular 150cc and larger motorcycle in India and also went ahead and received the Auto-Drive most popular bike of the year award.