Still crazy after all these years

INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL/ MOTORING

Bikes have come, bikes have gone, but the Royal Enfield Bullet still chugs on.

1949, England. Royal Enfield unveils a new 350cc motorcycle called the Bullet. An appropriate name perhaps, since Enfield's primary products were guns. Then in the 1950s came the 500cc model, which gained popularity and fame thanks to an almost unending string of successes in motorsport. The Royal Enfield Bullet had arrived.

And not just in Great Britain. In 1954, the Indian government placed an order for 800 Bullets. The number doesn't look that large today, but it was a huge strain on the company then, which struggled successfully to meet that demand.

Two more orders of a similar size in the following two years led to the opening of the Royal Enfield factory in India. The Chennai factory started assembling Bullets using knock-down kits shipped from England and slowly went into full Indian production. The Bullet had become an Indian citizen.

You can use as many metaphors as you like, but the Bullet has very literally been the constant in the evolution of our country.

First as Enfield India, then as an Eicher-owned company, Royal Enfield's Bullet has changed little outwardly and changed a lot inside to keep up with the march of time. Its place in Indian culture began with the all-black one that was the backbone of all things motorcycling for decades. It was the standard, the workhorse, the aspirational motorcycle, an all-in-one icon.

In time, chrome and colour arrived, urbanisation changed the demographic, and today, the Bullet lives on proudly in the era of the quicksilver Indo-Jap motorcycle, having discarded the workhorse role for a more urbane retro-chic and still highly aspirational niche.

Bullets now have some of the latest technology complementing their essentially 50-year old soul "" like disc brakes, gas-charged shock absorbers and so forth.

Not weeks ago, Royal Enfield took the wraps off their newest 500cc engine, an Austrian-tuned, more powerful motor that promises a lot.

And there is still more to come, with a new engine-gearbox format lurking just around the corner. You could almost say that Enfield has come a long, long way, without really ever leaving.