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Showing posts with label custom motorcycles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label custom motorcycles. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

F-LIGHT OF FANTASY

It's been awhile since I scribbled anything down here. But the thing is that this was intended to be a blog, not a cesspool of meaningless twat. And when I think I don't have anything worth mentioning, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I'll say nothing. Even if it means months of you staring at the same damn screen.

Anyway, I've been meaning to go out shopping for bike stuff - the kind of goodies that everyone seems to have seen somewhere but can't place where. My RX 100 project sorely needed a tail light, and my wallet was sore shelling out fines extracted by the well meaning men in uniform. And I thought to myself that illuminated parts are something that I could do with having around the shed, up for grabs at a moments notice.

Besides keeping your rear end from resembling pita bread, these things are great tools to keep you from noticing the flaws in a motorcycle. Don't know how to clean up that gangrenous tail of your new and spiffy customised motorcycle? I'll tell you what; just slap on the largest red light you can find back there and then never forget to proclaim how responsible a motorist you are whenever the occasion permits.

As with all things of this nature, the day you choose to actually get off your ass to get something done, the stars and fate sit together the night before, plotting on how to ruin whatever semblance of a plan you might have had. This time they concluded that rain coupled with unimaginable traffic would do wonders to fuck up my scheming.

I wouldn't have any of that, though. I mean, if it was for anything other than motorcycles, I probably wouldn't have even got out of bed and put on my slippers, but here I was going shop to shop to find the perfect specimen of something that I didn't even have the faintest of a clue about. I would go to the bloke behind the counter, ask him for lights with very accurate and helpful descriptions like 'long', 'circular' and 'motorcycle'.



This is what I ended up with, and in retrospect, I don't think any of the stuff I got home was ever intended to grace a motorcycle. I know for a fact that the olive green bits go into Indian Army jeeps while the spherical one in the centre appears to be a replica of what used to be fitted onto the old Nissan Patrols.

Friday, April 1, 2011

CUSTOM MOTORCYCLES, THE RAJPUT WAY

As I've always maintained, I have met some of the best people in my life through motorcycles. I don't exactly know what it is about them, or may be it's my inability to put it into words, but there's something about motorcycles and the envelope around them. Rider and machine, a bond that can lie dormant, but never dead.

We were two blokes in different cities, divided by large expanses of the Indian subcontinent. I didn't have a clue of who he was; neither did he about me. Yet, now, I can count him as a very good friend of mine. And a way better artisan. And his art medium is motorcycles; no surprise really!

Here's a glimpse into Vijay's world and his Rajputana Customs movement. I call it a movement because it is bound to change the way we perceive the term 'customised' when it comes to motorcycles in this country.