Silencer Boy

“Don’t ever touch the silencer… It’s hot,” said the hippie uncle soon after parking his brand new Royal Enfield Bullet on the street where we played cricket. “It will burn your hands. Be careful.” With two garlands, one tied around the headlight and the other on the rear lamp, the Bullet had a dozen sandal-paste marks on its body. The
potbellied uncle was never in a mood to leave the Bullet, foreseeing the possible harm I would have given to his new machine. So he checked the vehicle a couple of times to ensure that it stood firmly on the middle-stand. After walking a bit, he would return and stay close to the Bullet, adjusting the garland around its headlight. He wanted to know whether I would approach his machine in his absence. The action went on for almost half-an-hour, and finally the uncle gave up, smiling at me.
I could still feel the heat evaporating from the silencer as I stood close by it. But what attracted me to it was a wide-angle image of my face on the silencer, spreading from one end to the other. I watched the funniest forms of my face from different angles. As the chins grew wider, the nose ran out of the silver frame. Likewise, eyes popped up like ice-cream balls. It was the biggest comedy of life in two versions: vertical as well as horizontal. Even though the view was not as clear as the one you get from a mirror, it gave me immense pleasure, evoking in me a sense of existence, of many forms and moods.
Out of curiosity, I ignored the advice given by the uncle. Soon the fingers on my right hand turned brown. The delicate, chocolate spread remained on the palm with a mouth-watering curiosity. But I didn’t give up. With the burnt fingers, I held the handle of the Bullet and looked through its rear mirrors. Soon I saw some one running towards the Bullet through one of the mirrors. It was hippie uncle.
At home, mother applied some yellow-colour ointment on the burnt skin. Mother was always scared of Royal Enfield Bullet and Java because of their frightening beats. “You should never buy bikes that make heavy
noise,” she would advise me. Years later, when I bought my first Bullet, I told my seven-year-old daughter what the hippie uncle had told me. Despite my repeated advice, she hurt her fingers twice.
Unlike me, she was not fond of images reflected on the surface of the silencer. She rather liked the beats of the machine, and that too in high throttle. This would irritate my mother like anything.
A couple of weeks ago, I met a businessman, who is a member of the local Royal Enfield riders club in Madurai (Tamil Nadu). At 65, the name of this gentleman have appeared in the ‘topper’s list’ in almost all the monthly tours organised by the club so far. While listening to his 45-year affair with the Bullet, he took out a mug from the shelf. Made of Chinese clay, it was black in colour with a white interior. He soon poured hot water into the mug. The black colour gave way, and there appeared a beautiful Bullet, with a logo of the club. Once the water turned cold, the Bullet disappeared from the mug. I was happy when he gifted one such magic mug to me.
So these days whenever my mother asks me why I bought a noise-maker, daughter and I play this trick. Looking at the mug, mother will say: “Is the water still hot? The Bullet will disappear otherwise.”