Hero Honda split comes with a sense of loss

Fill it, shut it, forget it. There was something businesslike about that legendary Hero Honda advertising line. But the news of Honda divesting from Hero Honda stops being merely a piece of business news; it comes with a sense of loss and is almost comparable to the sense of void created when Bajaj announced the retirement of its legendary scooter.

At one level we understand the inevitability of such events in neo-liberal India — Bajaj parted ways with Kawasaki, TVS separated from Suzuki. But none of them came with the same sense of loss.

Hero Honda somewhere stopped being a collaboration of an Indian and Japanese corporation. It was a single Indian entity that in many ways defined who we are.

Hero Honda was one of the first expressions of freedom from the extremities of Indian mobility. On one hand, we had the stodgy middle class mobility of a scooter and on the other hand, there was the heavy overdose of machismo of a bullet. Hero Honda was the first time a young Indian male could have an individual expression on the road — it was free from the utilitarian world of the unwieldy scooter or the handle bar moustache world of the rugged 350 CC.

Hero Honda’s biggest contribution to our sense of mobility was the introduction of economy without sacrificing grace, power and respectability. Before the legendary 80 kilometres-perlitre story, our sense of road economy was defined by the moped.

The moped was economical — but in many ways it mocked the concept of a two-wheeler. It was often viewed (both by the maker and the user) as a bicycle with an engine. Hero Honda gave us a sort of respite with the 4-stroke efficiency . Economy suddenly stopped looking ugly and created a sense of desire.

In many ways, Hero Honda pioneered the concept of personal mobility of the executive who couldn’t afford a car. A scooter was a part of family possession and looked perfectly comfortable with Pappa, Mammi, Munnu and Chunnu. Hero Honda created the picture of young Indian office-goers on the road on their two-wheelers . In a way, it contributed greatly to the traffic chaos in the office hours by allowing the young executive to believe that he had the power to beat the traffic.

The Twitter space is filled today with predictions that this may spell the doomsday for the company. I don’t agree with that, neither does the stock market. The break up of a 26-year-old relationship is also not the most significant point. I think what makes us react to the news is that we are afraid that this may mark the loss of another reference point in our collective consciousness.

Nostalgia is a cultural commodity and any loss there conjures up images of loss of comfort and stability. This phenomenon, by its very nature, is not amenable to logic and reasoning. When Bombay is changed to Mumbai or Calcutta to Kolkata, we never feel happy about it though ideally speaking we should appreciate the logic of someone correcting an age-old British mispronunciation. We actually end up lamenting the rechristening, fearing a loss of comfort.

Similarly, the split of Honda and Hero group may be inevitable ; it may make tremendous sense for both the companies ; in liberalised economy, it may mark the beginning of collaborators turning competitors — but it will always be difficult for us to evaluate this event with this sort of cold sensibility.

For us, Hero Honda is not a joint venture, it’s not merely a brand of motorcycle, it marks a significant point in our culture of mobility. We are scared to lose the comfort of its presence.