May 21, 2016 08:03 PM
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In the late 1960s, a high-ranking technician from the Jawa motorcycle company in the then-Czechoslovakia came to India. His brief was to train and guide staffers at the Mysore-based Ideal Jawa. The Czech company had a technological collaboration with the Indian firm, which manufactured its motorcycles, including the Yezdi Roadking.
In Mysore, the technician, despite the barriers of language, struck up a friendship with BS Shinde, the factory foreman. One cool evening, as young motorcycle-loving men are wont to do, they debated about how fast the Roadking could actually go. The Czech technician was certain that the Roadking would struggle to breach 90kph.
He knew the motorcycle inside out, he said, and had been building Jawas for the last decade or so. Shinde didn’t quite agree. He told his blond friend that he, too, had been around and among Jawas since he was a teenager, and that he had ridden it at around 120 a few times.
