You had to tilt the Chetak to the left before it would start on cold mornings — thirty degrees, Papa said, no more, like you were pouring it a drink. He never told me why; I only learned it was the fuel finding its way to the carburettor when I was already old enough to have stopped asking him things. Every winter dawn he kicked it awake in the dark, the choke pulled out, that grey exhaust hanging in the lane until the neighbour's dog complained. He dropped me to school on the petrol tank, my satchel between his arms, the two of us leaning into the turn by Tilak Chowk without a word, because a word would have meant one of us had to steer.
The year I got my licence he let me ride it alone to Camp and back. I came home too proud to tilt it, and it wouldn't catch, and I kicked until my ankle sang, and he watched from the balcony and did not come down. A machine remembers who's patient, he called, finally. That was as close as Papa ever came to telling me things.
He is eight months gone now and the Chetak sits under a blue tarp behind the building, two flat tyres, a number plate gone the colour of weak tea. The scrap man offered nine hundred rupees. I told him to wait. This morning I pulled off the tarp and tilted it left — thirty degrees, like pouring it a drink — and kicked. Nothing. Kicked again. I am forty and my ankle still sings.
It will not start for me. Maybe it is only the fuel, dried to varnish in the lines. Maybe the machine remembers. I folded the tarp back the way he used to, corners tucked, and told the scrap man to come next week. Next week, I said. I keep saying next week.