The many rides on Lamby

Maxwell Pereira

LEO, my friend and class fellow from St Aloysius boarding school, Mangalore, shared with me a picture of a Lambretta scooter, saying he drove it in his youth, for his first job in Calcutta.

All of us are nostalgic over some stuff, and experiences from our past, particularly the first vehicle we drove, making us fly ‘like a bird’. Overnight it changed our status, and sent elation levels soaring. The vehicle helped our young blood squeeze the last bit of juice out of every slice of life.

Leo’s post reminded me of the time I rode a Lambretta, which, however, was not my first ride. In college and thereafter, as a junior lawyer in Bangalore, I was lucky to have a car — my dad’s spare Studebaker Champion, after I promised I would never ask him moolah for the gas! But despite the pooling-in by friends who enjoyed the car ride, my meagre earnings were not enough. And so, I bought a Jawa motorcycle; having secretly envied those in my group with mobikes. With encircled arms, their girlfriends clung to them for dear life as they sped through traffic trying to break the sound barrier! Girls had no excuse to do that in a car without raising eyebrows!

Brother Manu sold my bike when I left town to join the police. But the need for a vehicle was acutely felt while training at Phillaur’s Punjab Police Academy when I needed to commute to neighbouring towns for Sunday mass. Hence an SOS to my brother-in-law Boniface (then a chief engineer at Kolar gold fields) to send me his brand new Lambretta; he graciously did, since he only used a car. 

I was blissfully unaware that this was against regulations; trainees were not permitted to keep a vehicle. I got promptly pulled up, with a written communication from the Commandant to remove it from the complex. I tried my luck, sought permission to appear before Jagdish Chhabra —  ‘Tiger of Punjab’ as the Commandant was known — and simultaneously called on Laxmi, his wife, to unabashedly drop hints I may be constrained to surrender my appointment and return to Bangalore if they insisted on my complying with the order.

Miraculously, a concession came through — the Lamby remained, with instructions never to ride it inside Maharaja Ranjit Singh Fort, where the training then was situate. No problem, the GO’s Mess where I was quartered was outside the fort! 

And with that started a glorious chapter of travels through Punjab; not only weekend trips for Holy Eucharist to Ludhiana, Viroo and Gerry in Jalandhar, Laaljee in Gurdaspur, and Chahal in his pind on the Beas, but also cities on other Indus tributaries — the Sutlej, Ravi and Jhelum. I remember driving in freezing December cold, a hundred miles to the Sirhind Club in Ambala with my Nigerian friend on the pillion, just for the New Year’s Eve dance!

The scooter followed me to Delhi where it became my mainstay for the next five years; till in 1976, I went to Sikkim as its first SP when that Shangrila joined the Indian Union. And that is when I retired my favourite Lamby and sent it back to Boniface in KGF.