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When Bahrain-loving Partha ‘Willy’ Choudhuri and his merry band of friends rode mopeds for 18,000 kilometres in 90 days all over India in 1982, they definitely didn’t expect that 40 years later, a TV series would be in the works centred on their adventures.
At the time, Willy, Arnab ‘Banny’ Bannerjee, Nataraj ‘Nutty’ Aiyar, Anil ‘Sancho’ Sirur and Michael ‘Mike’ Gandhi just wanted to ride hard and live free – like most 19 to 20-year-olds. But they were on university student budgets – again, like most 19 to 20-year-olds.
But where they deviated from their peers was an out-of-the-box pitch to Kinetic Engineering, the Indian manufacturer of the Luna moped.
“We got a lukewarm response from the company at first, until the owner Arun Ferodiya happened to see the written proposal we had submitted and loved it!” Willy, now 60, told GulfWeekly.
“We asked for four bikes and 20,000 rupees (BD92 in 1982, roughly equivalent to Rs365,000 or BD1,671 today) , but once Mike joined us, we ended up getting five bikes and Rs22,000 (BD101 in 1982, roughly equivalent to Rs400,000 or BD1,830 today).
“The deal was that we would ride the new Luna TFR Plus mopeds to Kinetic dealerships in cities and towns all over India.”
Called the ‘Around India in 90 Days: On Luna TFR Plus’, the tour started and ended in Pune, Bangalore.
On May 30, 1982, the five friends, who called themselves Lunatix – a portmanteau of the mopeds they rode and Asterix, their favourite comic books – were seen off by their headmaster as well as Arun.
For the uninitiated, a moped is basically a bicycle with a motor, travelling just a bit faster than bicycles on public roads. The name is a portmanteau of motor and pedal referring to the two acceleration options available to riders.
With just 49cc of power under each of them, the five quickly found a groove with Nagesh, the driver of their support van. Often, the Bajaj Matador van, an icon of 1980s-India, would drive past them much farther down the road and wait for a few hours as the riders caught up.
And of course, there were no cell phones or GPS receivers at this time, and many of the roads were unpaved, making for a bumpy albeit adventurous ride. To top it all off, the Lunatix were on a strict schedule, giving them just one night for most of the 87 stopovers they had, with the exception of Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai, where they spent two nights each.
“Every day was a brilliant adventure, and we were in the newspapers in every town and city we ended up in,” Willy recollected.
“We were there mainly for the riding, but part of our deal with Kinetic included press junkets and public appearances, where we met some incredible people.
“It was only as we grew older that we appreciated the fact that we had met former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, as well as her son and then-general secretary of the Congress party Rajiv Gandhi, along the way. When we met them, we were more interested in getting back on the road!” Willy added, laughing.
With university and adulthood awaiting them at the end of their road, the five friends returned to Pune on August 29, 1982, deeply tanned and each having had at least one accident along the way, but triumphant and treasure-laden with memories in the form of gifts, news clippings and photos.
Willy moved to the Middle East in 1990 and came to Saudi Arabia in 2009. Today, he is the general manager for Kanoo Machinery, and splits his time between work in Saudi Arabia and weekends in Bahrain. He has two children – son, Rana, 31, and daughter Rea, 29.
About 36 years after their adventures, after Arun Ferodiya, their benefactor, wrote his autobiography, it captured the imagination of Indian director Sidharth Sengupta, who recently released Indian black comedy-crime film Good Luck Jerry.
And now, after many rounds of discussion about how their story would be editorialised, writing is underway to create a streaming television series based on their escapades.
For Willy, however, his heart has always been on the road and his soul in the throttle of a motorcycle, though, he admits, “It’d be fantastic to see our story being shared on the big screen, with a famous actor, playing Willy!”
