ST1 - On a motorcycle made for ….

At what point does a motorcycle cease to be a thing of the imagination and then become an indispensable tool? Or rather, at what point does it become both, because you wonder if it ever ceases to be a thing of the imagination even though you happen to own ten motorcycles or one hundred…or, like Malcolm Forbes, one thousand.

Forget Malcolm Forbes. As far as I know, motorcycles were never indispensable tools to him. He was a millionaire who became motorcycle-mad and began collecting them. I'm talking about ordinary mortals who can't afford to run cars and therefore must depend on motorcycles to do the work of a four-wheeler - albeit with a degree of excitement which no four-wheeler can bring.

The hard facts are catching up with you all the time. These days, they have not only caught up - they are leaving you behind. Take the cost of petrol. It has become so expensive that those car owners who looked at motorcycles with fear and disdain (suppressed desire, too, one suspects) are now looking at them with more and more interest, for that's a perfectly good way to cut running costs (and travelling time) in the home to work slog.

But none, as far as I know, have actually taken the plunge. They are still running their cars and sweating about the fuel bills. That's as far as the men are concerned. Some urban middle-class women, on the other hand, have taken the plunge. I see more and more them riding mopeds, scooters and small-capacity motorcycles (the step-thru kind). The numbers aren't large, but they are growing every day.

Importers of motorcycles, surely not the kind of people to miss a good bargain when they see it, are now advertising with women in mind. A recent, large and expensive colour ad in the English-language newspapers showed a Barbie-type model sitting on a futuristic-looking scooter. You can see clearly the market they're aiming at. They want to sell two-wheelers to well-educated, upwardly mobile young women who hate the buses and can't afford cars on a daily basis.

Women have been riding motorcycles in the countryside for a long time. But advertisers don't get excited about that, because rural women have less worries about traffic accidents, are presumably hardier against the elements, and in any case the scarcity of public transport in the villages leaves them without any choice. They start with bicycles and graduate to a motorcycle.

In the cities, things are different. The traffic is awful, the family usually has a car, or buses are easier to find, and you don't have agricultural products and merchandise to carry to the market and back and there is also the social stigma attached to what is seen as a socially-inferior form of transport. To be seen riding a bicycle or motorcycle is something of a social comedown.

But the times are changing. In urban life, time is the all-important factor. Buses are not only terrible. They are slow. And they are no longer cheap. Three-wheelers have become far too expensive for regular use. For the young executive who must commute anywhere between ten or more kilometres daily to work and back, who must visit a number of different locations in the course of her work, a two-wheeler of her own is the best solution. As for those who have cars, just think what the fuel bill will be like after a dozen stop-and-start situations in a day even in a subcompact, not to mention clutch, brakes and parking headaches.

Clearly, the two-wheeler is not only desirable under such circumstances, it is quite logical. The smaller machines will do at least 60 km per litre, sometimes more. Fuel consumption figures, mind you, vary considerably and manufacturers' claims are often exaggerated. But any two wheeler under 125cc will do a lot better than even the most fuel-efficient car in city traffic, and both revenue license and insurance figures are considerably lower.

All the factors point in one direction: more and more urban women are going to ride two-wheelers. For less than a thousand rupees, quite good waterproofs are now available in many places, so there's no need to dread the monsoon. Let's not forget one thing, though. Extremely good reflexes are necessary on a bike. There's no outer shell to protect you. Anyone who insists on talking on the mobile phone or daydreaming while riding a bike is clearly asking for trouble. And wear a crash helmet while riding that Indian or Chinese moped. Many of them actually have motorcycle engines, too powerful to be mopeds, and anyone who sits on one without a helmet and opens the throttle is asking for trouble!