WHEELING DREAMS

CE explores the concept of bike-riding communities and their growing contribution to training middle-aged and senior women

- RAKSHITHA PRIYA G

EVEN before we are born, many stereotypes are attached to us. They linger in the colours we're wrapped in, the toys placed in our hands and the expectations adults whisper. Even the machines we ride have assigned gender. Somewhere along the way, a gearless two-wheeler, aka scooty, became the ‘sensible’ and ‘safe’ choice for women, while the ‘heavier’, ‘more powerful’ motorcycle was framed as a natural extension of masculinity. The road never made these rules; society did. A woman riding a bike becomes a cultural decay, and a man choosing a scooty is teased for being ‘less manly’.

But slowly, and quietly, this has begun to shift. Recently, social media has been flooded with videos and advertisements about motorcycle training communities, and most of them are dedicated specially for women, opening new lanes of confidence, independence, and long-awaited freedom for many. One such reel that has been trending with nearly 290 thousand views is of a retired 60-year-old woman from Coimbatore, who took up a two-day bike-training to fulfill her desire to ride a gear-bike, thereby ticking it off her bucket list.

Hitting the road

The sexagenarian was trained by Café Cruisers, founded by Abisek Shravn, who saw a gap in training. “Almost no one was focusing on creating riders,” he says. Riders’ groups welcomed those who already knew how to ride, but rarely those who didn’t. His goal became clear: build riders, not just gather them. As structured riding modules took shape — from slow-speed mastery to road simulations — the unexpected happened. “During our early sessions, we noticed many women approaching us discreetly,” he says. Today, the fastest-growing group in Café Cruisers is women aged between 28 and 45 years, with a significant rise in women aged above 40 and 50 years.