Lambretta 58..!
It’s been a long time since I’ve ridden pillion on a scooter. “Kick start it then I’ll sit” I tell the youngster who is offering me a lift.
“Kick start?”
“Yes kick start,” I tell him.
“Sit” he says, presses a button and engine springs to life.
“Wow” I think as my memory travels back a quarter century to my old Lamby. If she had a self -starter like this she would have lasted a few decades more. Every kick I gave her knocked off a few years of her life. She was already past her prime when I bought her for the princely sum of fifteen hundred rupees. We rode back on her, my brother and I, in second gear, since the mechanic from whom we had bought her informed us there was suddenly something wrong with her third gear. There was of course no fourth gear; those Nineteen Fifty Eight models came with only three gears. There were a few other differences that made her look different from her sisters on the road; her head light wasn’t on the handlebar, but fixed on front panel, and handlebar had cables springing out, which carried brake and clutch wires.
I‘m sure many of you have never seen such machine; to be frank many even those days stared dumbfounded at ancient scooter. It took a while each morning to wake her from deep slumber, till one day I found it was a waste putting so much effort kicking her into submission and instead got younger brother to push while I sat in majestic splendour and was pushed all over till the old engine spluttered to life, and then he would jump pillion and we would ride into the wild west for a few kilometers till she ran out of gas or spark from the spark plug sparked no more!
One day the side shield fell off. It made such a clanging noise on the road, that a policeman started blowing his whistle hysterically. We put it back, but found the old spring which kept the shield in place was spring no more. A cycle tube was then fitted round the cover to hold everything in place. It looked a little odd. It worked didn’t it?
And then one day when a pretty cousin was visiting our place, and teenage me, wanted to show off my riding skills, I sat her on my old steed, gave starter a hectic kick and felt it breaking off, jumping clear of the bike and falling ten feet away. The bike started, pretty girl sat in place and we breezed off. As was it’s habit, she stopped and I realised with dismay that not only was there no brother to push but no kick starter to kick. “Lets walk” I said.
“Why?” asked my cousin.
“I dunno” I said, “just feel like having a stroll with you.”
She’s wondered ever since why anyone would want to walk a bike and walk a woman together!
With kick starter gone, she lay in my yard; till one day an onion merchant friend of my father offered to buy her for five hundred rupees. Reluctantly I gave in and it wasn’t the onion smell from his shirt that filled my eyes with tears as he led her away.
I sit on the back of the gleaming four stroke machine and my young friend wonders why I suddenly laugh out loud as my heart sings for fun filled days my Lamby 58′ gave me many moons ago.
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