THE INTERVIEW
Lt Col Sohan Roy (Retd)
BY BIKERS CLUB
BC: How did you start riding?
And how long have you been
riding?
SR: My motivation for riding
was seeing my father riding
the Matchless and then the
Royal Enfield. Whenever his
friends would visit home on a
motorcycle I would run to go
and sit on the rider's seat.
Then like all young kids
would be twisting the throttle,
turning the handle and make
noise of the beat of the
engine and imagine riding it.
I remember a friend of
daddy's named Mr.
Bhattacharya in Whitefield,
Bangalore (1958) who had a
Norton with a side car
attached. He would come
home with his wife and two
children. Whenever he came
home or we visited him I
would run to get on the
rider's seat. I have a
photograph of me sitting on
the rider's seat. It's amongst
my fondest photos.
The first ever time I rode the
motorcycle was around 1964
in Chheoki, Allahabad. It was
summer holidays and daddy
had gone for official work to
Allahabad and wouldn't be
back until evening. I kept
pestering my mother to let
me ride the motorcycle.
With all the No and No, I finally
managed to convince her for a
short ride near the house in the
afternoon. As I was leaving the
gate, I saw a Jawan coming
down the road on a bicycle.
Scared that daddy would come
to know I tried to go through a
kutcha patch to the road in
front. Had a fall... and the same
Jawan came to help me lift the
motorcycle. Scared, I requested
him not to tell anyone. I took a
ride of about half a mile and
parked the motorcycle. Luckily
there were no scratches on the
bike. That was my first time ever
attempt to ride a motorcycle.
I bought my first motorcycle, a
Yezdi in Pune in 1976 while I
was attending a professional
course in Military Intelligence
Training School. The schedule
being very busy I did manage to
ride to places around Pune.
Remember riding to Bobby
Dhaba on way to
Mahabaleshwar, named on the
hit film "Bobby" starring Rishi
Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia. A
scene of the film was shot there
and the dhaba had become
famous.