THE POPE AND THE PANIGALE

The holiest of motorcycles meets its present-day incarnation

- Ruman Devmane

Nobody writes prayers anymore. While religion has grown to influence the political landscape and sociological fabric of the world, isn’t it odd that prayer has entirely evaded refinement? How, for instance, has it escaped the attention of religious bodies around the world to induct the Ducati 916 into the holiest of verses? It isn’t just a Ducati, after all. It’s the Ducati. The most beautiful of them all.

It’s a motorcycle writer’s nightmare, the 916, because it makes you really question your calibration. There are simply so many cliches, so much conditioning around it that it becomes challenging to separate reality from propaganda. Yet, as it stood before me with its sorrowful eyes, I became unable to overcome the urge to feel its face, a feature that has haunted me for practically all of my life. I carefully ran a gloved thumb over one of its headlights and it made me want to cry. Motorcycles don’t always do that to me. Okay, years ago, a Benelli TNT 25 did, too, but that’s because it blew its ECU in the middle of exactly nowhere in Rajasthan. And so did the new Panigale V4 S.

Before you write me off as a complete emotional wreck, allow me to clarify, it was purely down to how uncomfortably locked-in I had been on the Panigale thanks to its brutally aggressive riding position. I sought relief from short bursts of acceleration, but those were as effective as slapping a Band-Aid strip onto a landmine injury. Thirty minutes astride it had made me question all of my life’s decisions and as an overcast Bengaluru morning threatened to add to my overwhelming discomfort, I could do little else but to pray it would all be over very soon.