I wrote this following a recent visit to some friends from way-back…a delightful visit.
As a young man, my husband rode a Royal Enfield 350cc motorbike known as a Bullet: a single cylinder, four stroke, 17 HP, four-speed, air-cooled Indian icon of the roads. With a top speed of 110 kilometres per hour, the Bullet was part of our courtship and became our family vehicle. Bullets have a distinctive pulsing exhaust thump, so I usually heard my husband return home 300 metres before he rode into view.
he takes me
to meet his family –
I hang on
wind in my eyes
and six metres of sari
Thirty years later, on one of our regular trips back to Chennai, we visit an old college friend of my husband’s: a fine leather craftsman and an exceptional photographer who, having turned sixty, has just invested everything into restoring and selling Enfield Bullets. His wife greets us on a gloomy wet evening at a narrow entrance. She guides us under a dripping roof along planks placed above pooled water.
The workroom-cum-showroom is filled with motorbikes – all Bullets – in various stages of repair and re-construction. We pull up chairs, chat and take tea and cake from a table cluttered with tools and paraphernalia.
wrenches, wheels
disassembled chrome bits
from a chassis –
rear-view mirrors reflect
a jigsaw dream
My husband’s friend and his wife have difficulty finding mechanics with sufficient specialisation for their business; they both spend long days at the workshop. The man eats his cake with hands engrained with grease; enthuses about being able to indulge his passion for the Bullet; is cheerful about his lack of business acumen. His wife shrugs at the “showroom” her husband has turned into a work-pit; at the fact they live in a partially constructed home. She is dressed in loose top and long pants, her hair caught up in a soft twist. Her skin is flawless, without make-up. She is charming, elegant and radiant.
incessant rain
drips through cracks
into a dark pool
rainbowed with oil
a single lotus
India, October 2015
Published in Skylark, 4:1, Summer 2016