I was the twelfth person in the country to own a Kawasaki Ninja 250R,” gushes Kunal Mukherjee. A final-year student of Mechanical Engineering at PESIT (People’s Education Society Institute of Technology), Bangalore, he is fascinated by two-wheeled machines and dreams of owning the beast, Suzuki Hayabusa, one day.
Kunal fell in love with biking when he got the Kawasaki, his first ever bike, on his 18th birthday. “When I came to know I was getting a bike as a gift, I started taking lessons in riding for two months. I did not have a licence then, so I used to practise riding a bike in my colony,” he says. Since then, this Delhiite has gone on many long and short trips. “Back home, we used to travel regularly to Jaipur, Agra and Ranikhet. The Delhi to Jaipur highway is a motoring heaven. I am also part of xBHP, a biking community. Every Sunday, we used to travel a distance of 40 km with around 20-25 bikers,” he tells us. Here in Bangalore, he doesn’t have his bike but he manages to tame the roads on the machines of his friends. He adds, “Our favourite jaunt is to the international airport.”
Sports bikes are notorious for being too fast and much more unreliable than normal bikes. That is the reason, he reiterates, that safety is a priority for him. “I make sure I wear a helmet and other necessary gear, like gloves and a jacket with padding for the spine when I ride. I see guys trying to show off, who ride recklessly on the road without helmets. I think it is plain stupidity. You need to protect yourself first,” he says.
svetlana@newindianexpress.com