DIVINE INTERVENTION

Art meets art in an unlikely coming together of worlds

- By Ruman Devmane

I may not look it, but I think I'm a bit young to know much about finesse. It takes a great degree of obsession and commitment before finesse becomes a part of your arsenal. It took the late Massimo Tamburini 50 years before he could come up with the Ducati 916, for example. Even then, it's not as if he stopped because, only five years later, he then came up with the MV Agusta F4. Finesse, clearly, is no fluke.

You will, therefore, understand why I have rarely felt more out of place than I did now, in the company of a very fast Ducati (there's a redundancy, if there ever was one) parked within the nondescript confines of the Bikku Gudigar Kala Kendra in a small town called Yellapur in the state of Karnataka. Sandwiched between maestros from wildly different universes, it very quickly descended upon me that I was extremely under-qualified to be here.

Over the years, my conditioning has been coded, largely thanks to the very magazine you happen to be reading, to accept Ducatis as among the world's most beautiful motorcycles. I've never felt the urge to debate that claim, even as I compulsively reserve the widest of my yawns for the Diavel, a motorcycle I have never understood the point of. There are days when I toy dangerously with the idea of bringing a faired Ducati home (anything except a red one should be illegal) and, on others, I feel like owning two. The SuperSport 950S is one of them. In my book, it's an almost-Panigale level of motorcycle and, when the opportunity to ride one presented itself, I didn't care so much about why it came painted the same shade as a mausoleum. It's effortlessly beautiful, down to its last Ducatibranded bolt.