PCAS?
Prevention of Cruelty against Scooters? Well, call it whatever you want to call it, I do have a soft corner for old Vespas and Vespas made in India under license from Piaggio. That includes scores of Bajaj 150s/Supers/Chetaks/Cubs/Priya 150s and even LML Vespas and the odd Vespa PL170s. But primarily I am concentrating on rescuing Bajaj 150s and Priya 150s that have the look and feel of the original from the 1950s and 1960s, complete with the curvaceous wasp-ish rear end that gave rise to the Vespa tag. What makes me love them? The simplicity of design, the classic origins, the numerous movies and the lore and all of the above. Actually, more than anything else, a Vespa 150 or a clone is a piece of art in itself. And I think of unloved, abandoned examples as blank pieces of canvas that can be used to speak my mind. I know, psychedelic scooters are done to death already but what the heck, I have just started!
The process is simple as it happened with Roxanne and Alice — a Bajaj 150 and a Priya 150 that came my way. Identify the scooter, pay a maximum of Rs 4,000 for it, then do the essential repair and bodywork. Finally, paint it for another Rs 6,000 and you get a piece of art that can do the morning milk run.
Roxanne was supposed to be a Lamborghini edition but I couldn’t get the right stickers and hence decided to settle for a chequered tape that lent the scooter a degree of sportiness. But when Alice was given the matte black-and-red paint job that was inspired by the black-and-red that makes up Ferraris, I was also determined to get the livery right. So one flank of the scooter pays homage to the Formula One car (F2009) while the other side apes the road-going supercar. A painstakingly cut-and-pasted Italian Tricolore and a prancing horse (okay, that was a bit blatant, but what the heck!) later, we had a scooter that, in my eyes, looked just perfect. Cost? Rs 10,000 only, including the donor scooter.
Sadly, the scooter is not going to be mine and I felt a pang in my heart when it was time to let her go. Alice will ferry my friend Vishal to the starting points of various half-marathons and training sessions as I embark on the next project that revolves around a theme of WWII aircraft nose art (semi-naked women, of course) and a panels-and-rivets look overall. After that I will start considering an installation art exhibition on Indian Vesp-art!
I am loving it.