[Tons of guys. From back to front: Sapan (ChE, MS, BP Maryland), Yash (Electronics, IITK, IES, IIMC, Evalueserve), Me (the dork), Vishad (Electronics, IITK, Business, Noida)]

Now, admittedly, there have been mishaps when it comes to girls and my scooter: A flat at 0100 hrs in the middle of nowhere; A broken clutch-wire at 0030 hours - as a result of which my Vespa is prancing around like a wild, out-of-control, waiting-to-be-tamed horse. Mind you, all this while with a pillion! (Actually in this particular case, for all my scooter-jingoism, I dont really blame her for saying no to my scooter for ever and till the end of the time). But hey, comeone after all its a machine. A lovely one at that! During my Kanpur visit, when I met Mr Lohia, owner of LML group that makes LML Vespa, rather than wasting time talking business, I should have given all this useful feedback: How to make scooter attractive to babes. That one-point strategy could be the revival of scooter business. McKinseys and BCGs of the world can not give you that strategic insight!

Anyways, what the heck, I choose my scooter over girls (I can see that day ain't far when: Main aur mera Vespa, aksar yeh baatein karte hain..)

Enough ranting. Point made. Nobody hurt. Over to the article (Thanks Santosh for such a fantastic piece).

Ode to the vehicle that drove middle-class India
14 Feb 2005, Times of India.

If the Indian middle-class man were to be reborn as a product, chances are it would be as the Bajaj scooter. Squat, a belly going to pot, wearing a grey safari suit, undist i n g u i s h e d but resourceful. With a wife perched uncomfortably at the back, Gudiya squeezed between the two and Cheeku standing up front. No product comes close to capturing the essence of middle-class India as well as the scooter.

For decades the scooter was both literally and metaphorically at the heart of the Indian middle-class consciousness, imparting its own unique flavour to how we lived our lives. Today, with the motorcycle having all but erased the scooter from our hearts and minds, it is worthwhile examining what made the scooter the force it was and asking what does the transition from the scooter to the bike say about the Indian man today.

The scooter carries with it an aura of safety (over its macho cousin the motorcycle) that its engineering does not quite merit. Its smaller wheel size actually makes it a less stable vehicle than the motorcycle but the air of safety that it so convincingly carried has more to do with images that surrounded it. It had a stepney, which provided a welcome safety net on independent-minded Indian roads.

It had space to squeeze in a full family, a place to carry vegetables, a dickey to store sundry needs of the family. In short, it seemed safe because it catered to the all those stable, worldly things that made a man a 'responsible' person. Most importantly, the scooter hid the machine from view. Unlike the bike which revels in displaying its muscular architecture, the scooter covers up the beast within with rotund blandness. The rounded soft shape of the scooter helps it be seen as a domesticated beast of burden, anonymously performing the duties asked of it. Overall, the scooter is middle class and safe because it goes out of its way to advertise its lack of masculine ambition; it wears its unprepossessing modesty on its sleeve, by eschewing any heroics.

This is evident in the manner in which the scooter negotiates the road. If the bike sees the road as a woman to make love to, the scooter prefers instead to haggle with her. If the bike hugs the curves of the road, melting the rider onto the tar, the scooter maintains an awkward distance, unconvinced that continuous mobility is a natural human condition. If the bike purrs, the scooter stammers; where the bike is a gushing river, the scooter a spluttering tap; if the bike an untamed stallion, the scooter a recalcitrant mule. The bike pillion rider fuses into the driver - dropping a girl home on a bike is a rake's pleasure, on a scooter a 'cousin brother's' duty. If John Abraham is the poster boy for bikes, Amol Palekar on his way to the ration shop is the abiding scooter role model. 'Heroes' on bikes wear bubble helmets and boots, on scooters they chew paan and give signals with their feet.

The scooter celebrates the functionality of motorised mobility, not its recreational energy. At a time when we coped with scarcity with heartbreaking dignity, the scooter was our imperfect solution. It needed to be kicked incessantly, first aggressively and then pleadingly, at times it needed to be tilted at an impossible angle for the fuel to start flowing and its spark plugs needed more cleaning than Bihar politics. But it blended in perfectly with how we lived and what we believed in. Restrained, repressed, modest, versatile in an unassuming way, the scooter spoke for us and our way of life like nothing else. No wonder the Hamara Bajaj campaign rung so true. For once advertising made us look into a mirror and told us a truth we all recognised.

The transition to the bike too tells a story. In the year of the scooter, the bike was a Yezdi, Rajdoot or a Bullet, all belonging to the hirsute world of grown-up men. The bikes that actually did well in India were the colourful boy 100 cc bikes that offered the tamer, less intimidating version of the real thing with fuel efficiency to boot. This allowed us to move gradually from the stolid functionality of the scooter to the plastic seduction of the bike in baby steps.

The bike today speaks of the emerging India that is driven more by outward appearances and is not afraid of the motive force of change. It is an eloquent symbol, but it cannot sum up who we are in quite the same way as a scooter could.
- santoshdesai1963 AT indiatimes.com