A wise man once said: “One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” A father should present the fundamental qualities of leadership, responsibility, and accountability, as well as the capabilities of planning, disciplining, and loving. To think about it, fathering is nothing less than a full-time job. In a country like India, a father is perceived as someone who wants his son to be more successful as he never got the opportunity in his time or as someone whose biggest responsibility in life is to see through his daughter’s marriage into a good family. However, just like in every other case, there are exceptions to this as well. There are also Indian fathers who are not just worried about their children’s future and what they are going to do for a living when they grow up but go the extra mile to teach them how to find happiness in the little things in life – like riding a motorcycle.
Vasudeva Acharya, a 71-year-old retired business businessman from the city of Bangalore is a fitting example of such a personality. An avid motorcyclist since his early days and a father of two, Vasudeva has traversed across the length and breadth of the country on two-wheelers. His undying spirit of motorcycling reflects in his recent purchase of the Royal Enfield Interceptor 650. Vasudeva’s daughter Shubhra, who is now 32, learned how to ride a motorcycle from him when she was a teenager and has accompanied him in all of his expeditions in the last 10 years. Shubhra’s first motorcycle was a Classic 500, which she got when she was 22 as a gift from her brother.
Being able to dominate the road on a two-wheeler, be it on the tarmac or off it, has turned Shubhra into the confident woman that she is today. Riding through terrible conditions for the longest of hours at a stretch has helped Shubra learn the imperative life skill of perseverance and she is ever grateful to her father for that. She considers herself extremely lucky to have parents who not only support her passion but are also the very fuel that drives it.
Over the years, the father-daughter duo has laughed together, struggled together, and ridden together over 2 lac km in all sorts of terrains. For them, the most memorable of these rides being a 21-day trip from Bangalore to Ladakh where they were joined by their whole family, each on their own motorcycle.
The duo has traveled together extensively across the country completing round trips from Bangalore to Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Bhutan. Their latest expedition was a cross-country trip in 2020, starting from Bangalore to Assam and Arunachal Pradesh before the pandemic took over.
According to Shubhra, there are certain things they both understand about each other owing to their shared motorcycling experiences, which are otherwise very difficult to learn about someone in day-to-day life. While Vasudeva often speaks about his idea of riding from Bangalore Palace to Buckingham Palace, Shubhra’s dream is to someday ride across the European continent alongside her father.
