Mindset of India’s first female Royal Enfield mechanic

Royal Enfield bikes are built like a tank. The first thing that comes to our mind when we speak about these bikes is ‘power’. The bike is better in the hands of a person well built and capable of handling it. Although the number of female riders in India has been on a constant rise, the concept of a female Royal Enfield mechanic is unheard of. To be able to lift some of these bike components is a task for the strong.

On my all-India cycle tour, I had the privilege of meeting Meet Kaur, the first female Royal Enfield mechanic from India. Settled down in Goa where she runs the repairs from her home, Meet Kaur has been able to win a series of awards and recognition nationwide.

Having lost her parents early on in her life, she has managed to bring up both her younger brothers by operating as a Royal Enfield bike mechanic. She has single-handedly taken care of her family by doing something unheard of.

I wanted to know what goes on in the mind of a strong woman who took up the task upon her shoulders and lives with it. Speaking with her, I got to learn that nobody becomes anything without having strength from within. Some people are hand tailored to achieve great things in life and Meet Kaur is one of them. A fine one indeed.

Link to workshop: https://g.co/kgs/KJh2Xc

So, how is the life and mindset of India’s first female Royal Enfield mechanic?

Table of Contents

Why become India’s first female Royal Enfield mechanic?

When I asked this question to Miss Meet Kaur, she just brushed it aside. She threw another question back at me asking me “Why do people decide to choose and achieve anything in life?”. It is the passion that propels one in the direction. She continued saying “If a girl is asked to carry a large amount of weight on her head at an early age, she has no option but to become strong”. Having been exposed to such great difficulty in her life when she lost her parents at the age of 10, the situation chiselled her to be the person she is. One with strength.

She told me, right from the start, being strong was her gift. Royal Enfield symbolised strength. At the early age of 10, she had to passion to ride them even when her legs wouldn’t reach the ground when sat on one. She happily recalled the time when she asked one of the owners of Royal Enfield if she could sit on one. She said she recollects it even to date. It was a special moment.

Something about these bikes always pulled her into liking them. Nobody told her or taught her what the bike or its components are. Meet would eventually turn out to learn all of them by herself to the extent that she is called by Royal Enfield and looked at as an asset.

How does one decide to become India’s first female Royal Enfield mechanic?

I asked Meet if anybody helped her in her pursuit of knowing the bikes. Meet simply denied. She said every single thing that she has learnt is self-taught. This has allowed her to know the bikes better. She feels them more than any mechanic does. All the while when I was interacting with her, Karmjeet Kaur, her brother had been listening to us speak. He tried to explain her sister’s thought process. Looking at a small djembe drum on the table, he said “My sister is gifted. If the wiring of this drum had to go loose, she can simply put her mind and hands into it and set it right”. Seemed to be an extremely rare talent arising from an equally rare story.

Meet said initially when some bikes used to break down, she would go around and help people fix them. It all started that way. It gave her the opportunity to learn from the experience of operating the bike. Little by little, operating these bikes, she would pick up newer skills. Over decades of setting bikes right, she has been able to study every inch of the bike.

The lifestyle of India’s first female Royal Enfield mechanic?

At the time I went to visit meet, she was just recovering from an accident she had on her bike. She had a dislocated left-hand elbow that was healing. She said this was one of the toughest times for her. Not being able to set right the bikes. She had just started earning from all this after decades of grinding and just when things were going well, an accident had to take place.

Meet said that initially, she feared what people would think about her as she is a bike mechanic. Eventually, she has let go of such thoughts. But some residual part seems to remain. She prefers to work at night in her house as she does not have a mechanic shop of her own. She loosens the nuts and bolts of the bike during the daytime and her brothers help her get them inside the house. Here she peacefully fixes them without the worry of anybody looking at her.

She said, my satisfaction is the primary thing I look for while servicing a bike. If I am not satisfied, I will not hand the bike back. In the comfort of my home, I am able to feel satisfied with my service. She sometimes sets them right outside the house and many times goes to the house of the owner. She could also have as many as 8 bikes simultaneously being serviced at one go on one single day.

She said she is majorly into breakdown service and goes to the spot to fix them wherever such a situation arises in Goa.

You can take a look at all the photos of her working on the bikes in the link below.

Link: https://g.co/kgs/KJh2Xc

Otherwise, when she is not working she spends time with her dog ‘Trigger’ and her two brothers. The eldest one works in car wiring repairs and the younger one in online marketing and as a comedy YouTuber. Occasionally the elder brother also works as a Zomato delivery person.

The mindset of India’s first female Royal Enfield mechanic?

Justification

I asked Meet Ma’am why is it that she does all that she does. She could choose to work anywhere else or be anything she wanted to be. Why a Royal Enfield bike mechanic?

Meet said she wants to be an example that women are no less. She said she has the same brain as another bike mechanic. Nothing differentiates the two. The fact that she is a woman shouldn’t hold her back from being able to pursue her dream. She loves these bikes and if that’s the case she could as well do the work herself. She told she has seen quite a few skinny guys repairing heavy bikes and thought to herself what is stopping her from doing it?

Meet was clear about the fact that she wants to stand up as an example and speak to the woman who think else wise. As much as she wants to follow her passion, she equally wants to set an example for women in India as well.

Validation

Meet said she dislikes the concept of competing. She never wishes to compete with anyone. Although she could fare better than men when it came to servicing, she didn’t want anybody’s appreciation for the fact. God has given her the power to go out there and do good things and she wants to do it to the best of her capability.

Meet said when she works on a bike, she doesn’t even eat food. Work is worship for her. If at all awards come along the way, let it. That never has been her main motto. She wants her two brothers well settled and doing good things. She kept reiterating that she has only taught good things to them. Never venture into wrongdoings. Her brothers are her life and whatever she does is for the love of it and not anybody else to see.

Meet said, sometimes we deviate from our goals held up by all the drama. What others have to say, what they expect, suggest, and hate. She looked at me in my eyes and told me never to lose focus on the long-term goals.

Complaints

The moment I asked Meet what her biggest complaints in life are, she paused for a second and tore down. Weeping and choking for breath she replied: “Just this much that why has God done this to me? Why has he put me through this much pain and struggles? Why am I born as a girl? Am I born on earth only to take care of my two brothers?”. Holding back my tears, I tried to comfort her. The trauma she has faced in her life seemed way too big for me to imagine. Right from the start she was reluctant in speaking about how she lost her parents and so I kept it that way. Bringing up two brothers at the age of 10 as a woman, not just any but a strong one must have been tough.

Materialism

Curious to hear her say that she didn’t want to lose track of her long-term goals, I asked her what they were. She said she wanted to earn enough to see her brothers married and settled in their own houses. She didn’t seem to care about her marriage. She said, “I am okay with not getting married”.

She said, once she sees her brothers settled down, she would become a social welfare worker. She will keep a part of whatever she earns for herself and put the rest into helping animals on the street and the elderly who are homeless.

There was no reason for me to ask her what she would do with the money if she was handed it.

Meet said she got Trigger home when he was a pup. It was one among 5 other puppies. As this one had a skin disease and its skin had fallen off, nobody got this dog and the rest of them got sold. The moment Meet saw this dog, she felt from within that the dog needed her and so she picked him up. Something I would have found hard to imagine doing.

During the lockdown period, Meet has even gone and given food to the street dogs. She said she loves animals. They too feel pain just like us and it is absolutely necessary that we look at them like we look at each other. Even before asking what she would do with the money if she was handed out with it, she was clear that she would open an NGO one day.

In the near future, she plans to bike the entire India on a new model of Royal Enfield. She will do it with a message for women to go out and achieve something in their lives.

We had spoken for long. Although I didn’t feel like leaving the place I was bound by time and bid her farewell with a heavy heart. We took a selfie and wished each other good luck on our way out.

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Asutosh

I am a 31 year young PhD graduate who has decided to travel the length and breadth of India on my cycle, to document the journey of meeting a vast array of people. In my journey, I intend to understand the characteristic features of the people of this nation and categorize them based on their demographics, age, profession, gender, traditions, and cultural differences.