BRIXTON CROMWELL 1200

For the second part of this series, Mandar reflects on his time with a neo-retro Austrian motorcycle that didn't just accompany him on the road, but also through a poignant personal moment26th July, 2005 — a date seared into the memory of every Mumbaikar, and many beyond the city limits.

- MANDAR SAWANT

It was the day the skies broke loose in an unforgiving cloudburst, drowning Mumbai in a deluge like never before. Streets turned into rivers, cars floated like boats, and life came to a standstill. It wasn’t just a flood — it was one of the most harrowing natural disasters the city had ever faced. And yet, through the chaos, the Maximum City’s spirit refused to sink.

Among the countless stories of resilience that emerged that day is my mother’s. She was trapped in her barely one-month-old Hyundai Santro, stranded in knee-deep water for nearly six hours — waiting, hoping, braving it all. I was just five years old, and when she returned to Pune the next day — with a shattered windscreen, completely fried electricals, a rather nasty cold and eyes heavy with exhaustion — I hugged her like I never had before. I didn’t quite grasp the gravity of what she had endured, but I knew enough to realise I'd almost not gotten my mum back. And yet — despite it all — she brought back some of my favourite sweets. Somehow, she had protected them better than herself - they were perfectly intact as if they'd travelled in another world. So, what does any of this have to do with our Living with Big Cats feature?

Well, to honour the twentieth anniversary of that moment, I decided to retrace her steps. My destination: the ParsiDairyFarm in Marine Lines, Mumbai. My mission: to bring back those very same sweets, two decades later. And the companion for this full-circle ride? The Brixton Cromwell 1200 — a machine I'd been running long-term for the past month for our Living with Big Cats feature. With its return date looming, I figured it deserved a final sendoff. A ride layered with nostalgia, reverence, and a touch of rebellion.