At around 3pm on Tuesday, Mohan knows that he is very close to closing a major deal for his airline, which would break him out of his unknown rut of poor sales. Just before the sun goes down, he loses to the opposing player, this after three days of persistent sweat and sweet talk. His calm expression hides a heavy heart as he wishes the boys good night and he returns home at 5:46, nodding ever so slightly to the beat of his favorite JJ Cale playlist. It has been a hard day.

Mohan walks in and out of the shower, then takes the elevator down to the basement and walks toward a small flash of chrome in that lightless corner. As he approaches the two wheels he is most proud in the world to call his own, a small smile melts away all his previous descriptions of intestinal byproducts of the day. One decompression and two kicks later, he leaves to buy bread from Satya’s bakery, twelve kays away, after deciding not to send it home. Because somehow that Silver Bullet orchestra beat of his never fails to calm stressed neurons.

Gulped down chicken and cheese sandwiches for dinner, she sits on the single sofa and places her prized book on the coffee table, feeling the familiar nirvana of slowly turning the glazed pages of a hardcover Royal Enfield collector’s edition. .

… It was around the time that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Dr. John H. Watson to Sherlock Holmes that the gods smiled at the sight of a sturdy frame for the bicycle that would become quite a famous motorcycle. In the early 1880s, George Townsend Jr. had led the “Townsend Cyclists Saddles and Springs” company from producing a local inventor’s single-coil saddle to making complete bicycles remembered for their sturdy scaffolding.

Some ten years later, after winning a valuable contract to produce precision rifle parts for an arms factory in Enfield, Middlesex, the newly named and controlled Eadie Manufacturing Company Limited commemorated the occasion by launching the “Enfield” bicycle. . The link with ‘royalty’ began when the specialist company that produced these bikes became ‘Royal Enfield Manufacturing Co. Ltd’.

Royal Enfield’s initial foray into mechanized vehicle manufacturing began with three and four wheelers with an unimaginable power of 1.75hp. Very shortly after the hype and hangovers from the biggest right-hand side parties of the 19th century had died down, French designer Louis Goviet penned the first Royal Enfield motorcycle. With the remarkably small Minerva engine mounted above the front wheel, it went into production immediately in 1901.

The front-engine layout soon lost ‘traction’, as the first wheel was overloaded with cornering grip due to excess weight at the front. The engine was moved behind the front wheel in the frame and rested temporarily under the rear of the rider. Royal Enfield then promoted a division purely for automobile and motorcycle production called the Enfield Autocar Company. The Alldays and Onions Company took over the proceedings of the Enfield Autocar, which was soon out of money, from 1907 until 1924, when the “Bullet” name was first adopted for model cars produced with the “Enfield” and “Enfield” badges. “Enfield–Allday”.

Where there is a wheel, there is usually a way to compete. In 1909 Royal Enfield produced a quality two-wheeler that used a powerful 297cc V-twin Motosacoche engine coupled with a belt drive. The V-Twin became highly successful, winning prestigious reliability tests such as the Edinburgh to London 1910. Two years later, the Royal Enfield Model 180 with a JAP 770cc engine and sidecar competed convincingly in the acclaimed races. of Brooklands. Some versions were displayed with a sidecar-mounted machine gun to make the public aware of its versatility. This publicity did not ‘slow down’ the growth of the company in any way, because by the time World War I struck, the strengthened Model 180s were in great demand not only from the UK, but also from France, Belgium and Russia.

However, the motorcycle we so basically know here in India actually spawned in 1934, when 350cc and 500cc displacement iterations with exposed valve gear were released – the first true Royal Enfield Bullets. After World War II in 1947, Enfield reintroduced the 500 Model J with kinder front hydraulic damping. This inexpensive workhorse sold well; The revolutionary rear spring suspension was introduced on the Bullet 350 OHV and soon after on the 25hp 500.

It seems the wonders never ceased with Enfied in that era, as Royal Enfield is credited with producing in 1959 what was arguably the first ever ‘superbike’: the 700cc Constellation Twin. Some Enfields even crossed the borders into the US, renamed Red Livery Indians. The Yankees, however, did not take immigrants very seriously.

Efficient Japanese motorcycles would become all the rage when the world’s greatest concert was held at that ranch near Woodstock, New York. What was to follow could have been predicted at the time the first frugal import was tested. The demise of British Royal Enfield finally occurred in 1970 when its Bradford-on-Avon factory was closed, meekly mimicking the end of the Redditch facility in 1967…

Mohan pours himself a strong whiskey and lights up his cigarette after his meal.

… India, meanwhile, had more than twenty years before becoming familiar with the instantly recognizable bullet stroke. In 1955 the government ordered a consignment of 800 Enfields to be pressed mainly for border patrol service. Working to reduce production costs, the Redditch firm chose Madras Motors as a partner to assemble British-made components into the largely unchanged Bullet 350s under the company name “Enfield India”.

By the late 1950s, the Indian subsidiary was manufacturing Royal Enfield components locally after purchasing all the necessary tooling. Enfield India became a fully independent producer of Bullets in 1967. The company continued to produce examples of these singles for nearly thirty years, until Eicher bought the company in 1994 and obtained the rights to the “Royal Enfield” name the following year.

Unfortunately, there was a long time when bullets were not “made like a gun” as their original 1893 mantra intended them to be. Troubling oil spills occurred anywhere the knockers were parked more than momentarily, and the urge to rid lube of any supposedly sealed joint had a knack for creating random shiny black streaks on freshly washed rides. There weren’t too many complaints at the time, as there really weren’t too many options on the market at the time to threaten to switch allegiances to another bike manufacturer.

Buyer demographics have especially changed in recent years. Younger, more “sophisticated” buyers in pristine chinos who demand everything upgraded have added to the taken-for-granted older customer base of yore, making Enfield sit up and take notice of their workmanship of poor quality. A good thing for the company turned out to be.

Royal Enfield is currently unable to meet demand and is increasing production capacity. Steps are constantly being made in the right direction, and while most of today’s Bullets are still based on the basic 1960 design, they are now exponentially more reliable and easier to use and live with. The gear stick is located on the left, as opposed to its previous unusual (and occasionally unsafe for beginners) position on the right side. Many shoppers today even use them for their daily commute, something even the most passionate enthusiast could not have been bribed for in the past.

The Royal Enfield Bullet has also been a favorite of the customizer for displaying his art. While the results haven’t always been entirely scrumptious due to bank statements often taking precedence over quality customization work, a handful of low-key mod-gurus are keeping the quality flag at the pole. Aftermarket modification, such as muffler replacements to achieve the perfect pipe length and achieve the correct acoustic personality, is an almost unwritten regulation of new Enfield owners today. Let’s not forget international names like respected Swiss Enfield dealer and tuner Fritz W. Elgi and Englishman Andy Berry, who transcend geographical boundaries to showcase their skill and passion on the Bullet canvas.

Royal Enfield’s portfolio today has a dozen single-cylinder models in 350cc and 500cc displacement variants, true to its unique mechanical upbringing. A remarkable longest continuous production for any motorcycle in the two-wheeled history of our spinning sphere belongs to the leading man: the Bullet has become an obvious stalwart in the Indian Motorcycling Hall of Fame.

There’s simply no alternative to that iconic bass resonance that sends jitters down the chassis of an efficiently characterless, under-performing new-age competition during a carefree pass on open tarmac. With phrases like ‘glorious history’ and ‘timeless heritage’ often parroted in conjunction with ‘Bullet’, this unwavering one-boat icon warranted a little digging in Royal Enfield’s time capsule…

Mohan drinks the last of his second drink, bangs the stubby glass on the oval balsa table, and reads the epilogue to the Enfield story to which he is always deeply attached:

A family in the nineties

A sick man in his fifties,

And a bullet from the sixties

They eventually went their separate ways.

It was an emotional goodbye

But the next meeting is on hold.

A stretch, a scratch, and a few steps later, she’s under the covers with the fan on full blast. It is one o’clock in the morning and he is exhausted, but with a supremely happy soul. Mohan’s day improved at night, when he took advantage of that precious couple of hours to exercise a blessing that he knew was his: to be able to taste and understand why only some legends are truly fit for royalty.