Never meet your heroes. If that’s true, my Royal Enfield Interceptor is living proof.

My brother and I grew up without a car or a motorcycle. The only thing in the garage was an old yellow Chetak that my dad rode everywhere. I think that’s exactly why we both ended up the way we did, noticing every bike on the road, having opinions about all of them.

My earliest motorcycle memory isn’t even a real motorcycle. It’s Street Hawk, the show that used to air on Doordarshan in the early 90s. A crime-fighting hero on a black sportsbike. I watched it with my dad. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen, and I still think so.

My first real bike was a Kawasaki Caliber 115, the Hoodibaba, launched around the 2003 World Cup final, the one India lost. That bike ran for over 150,000 kilometres between the two of us. I rode it through college, then my brother did the same. When he moved to Bangalore for work he took it with him, and eventually the engine gave up. I still spot the same model on the road sometimes and feel something I can’t quite name.

Then came the Interceptor.

My friend had asked what I’d name the bike. I thought about it and landed on Mashooqa — she’s that beautiful, the kind of motorcycle you find yourself staring at in the garage for no reason. What I didn’t know then was how fitting the name would turn out to be.

Five years in, the honest verdict: ride quality is average, RE’s service is pathetic, the parts are middling, the stock tyres are wrong for a bike this heavy. And the brakes, in a genuine emergency, prayer is about as effective. That combination of mediocre tyres and uninspiring brakes on a motorcycle this heavy is not something you want to discover at speed.

And yet I still have her. Not because any of this is forgivable. Because this was the motorcycle my brother and I talked about from the day it launched, back when owning one felt like a distant thing. When we could finally afford it there wasn’t much discussion. We just bought it.

Some machines are like that. They become markers of a particular time in your life. Of ambitions fulfilled. Of conversations shared. Of dreams that once seemed out of reach.

Five years in, I’m at a crossroads. Keep her for what she means, or accept that some love affairs aren’t built to last, intense, memorable, and done.

I still don’t know the answer.