sunilg

Photos: Sundeep Gajjar/motoGrapher.com
Text: Sandeep Goswami

We catch up with Nitinjit Bawa, PVR CInemas brand manager in the day and a motorcoss superhero on the weekends...



For someone who is professionally so immersed in the glamour of filmdom, Nitinjit Singh Bawa or just ‘Nitin’ to friends, has his feet firmly planted on terra-firma. Nothing make-believe about this gentle yet rock solid, soft and yet resolute young man. Born and brought up in a service class family, his father was an engineer with the Indian Railways and mother an educationist, Nitin shared his childhood and youth with his elder sister and feels her absence in his life since her marriage.



hands-on man, he’s always believed that dreams tempered with pragmatism stand the greatest chances of coming true. As a young boy, he was a conscientious student but what marked him apart from the herd was the determination with which he surmounted each challenge that came up. Habits die hard. In fact, they become stronger with time and application. And that very determination spurred him to success in almost anything he’s dabbled with. A post-graduate in marketing management, Nitin works as a Senior Manager – Brand & Marketing with PVR Cinemas. Not an easy job to juggle with two parallel love lives….family and motorcycling. This is how he sums up his life,” There have been four defining moments in my life...first when my sister got married and went to Canada. Everything just changed...always had her around for any kind of help or support that I needed but now she was not there. Second...when my father passed away. Came to know what people are actually made of. Third...when I married Arti. Just don’t know how the past 7 years have flown. Fourth...when I became a father myself. The happiest day of my life...a dream come true. Changed the way I look at life and the people around me. “




His love for motorcycling started with a longing for motorcycles. A ten year old Nitin would watch fascinated as people astride Yezdi’s, Bullet’s and even Rajdoot’s rode past. The feeling of riding ‘power’ was undeniably magnetic in its pull. But he bided his time and started riding friend’s bikes in his late teens. He got his first bike just after passing school, a Yamaha RX100. A legend of a bike though legends get crowned only in hindsight. Then, it was a mere ‘100cc’! But the RX gave him lessons in two-wheel skills and etiquette that he still remembers and values. And more importantly, it had him hooked to motorcycling for good. With time he would end up owning a Hyosung Comet GT250 and a Karizma modded for off-roading. His search for like-minded people, one’s who were as enamored by the lure of two-wheels as he himself was, brought him to xBhp.com.

This is how Nitin describes his baptism into what he calls ‘real’ motorcycling. “This time I came across an online community called xBHP and a bike called Comet. After a lot of research on both, I decided to give it a shot. With my limited budget, laying hands on a Comet was difficult but once done, next in line was xBHP - An online community that meant no-bars. No matter who one was, where one was from, what one did, he was welcome here. The one common thread that connected everyone here was their love for biking. Read about the Great Indian Road Trip, which fascinated me more to be a part of the community and before I knew, I was on my way to one of the best long rides I’ve ever done on two wheels…Himachal Explorer – 4 and subsequently to Leh on Himachal Explorer 5. Rode with some of the best people I’ve come across, again all from different parts of the country. In the middle of all this, I bought myself a Hero Honda Karizma.”

For someone who inadvertently lists ‘determination’ as one of his long standing habits, Nitin stepped into an arena that proved fertile enough to put it to full use. A fellow xBhpian and close friend, Vivek Sharma, introduced him to off-roading. Vivek had been an ardent convert to the same, despite owning a rated tarmac scorcher in the guise of a Kawasaki ZX10R. Nitin was somewhat vary of waddling in the dirt but Vivek, a Himalayan Raid winner by then, prodded him on and managed to push our man’s ‘determined to do it well’ button. Nitin was hooked all over again to motorcycling and this time it was off the tarmac. In his characteristic hands-on manner, he started practicing diligently, imbued those skills that are so different from those used for tarmac riding, got his Karizma suitably modified for off-road use and steeped into the world of competitive dirt racing. In March 2010, he managed 5th place (in ‘D’ Category) in the very first SJOBA event he participated in as a rookie. And set his eyes on the Raid De Himalaya for the same year. Quite a tall order actually but only someone like Nitin could be expected to pull it off. True to form, he participated in the 12th edition of the Raid (October 2010) and managed to finish the Rally in 2nd place in his category (D). Motorcycling, whatever its form and function, is primarily to do either with speed or power or as is the usual case, with both. Nitin is hooked to both. Speed always attracted him and he craved to know it, to understand it. “I recently read these few lines somewhere and it all came to me, loud and clear”, says he. And never has he seen better expressed the parallels he sees between his passion for motorcycling and that for life itself.

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(Been There Done That) x 3.25

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Aneesh@4GHz

Great... Also loved that modded karizma.

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anmol_1990

Nice pictures and write up.

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Shivanshu

I had a lucky chance to have ridden with him, he is one of the coolest guy and a beautiful person I have seen around.. God Bless you and your family Nitin

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Save the Earth - We are the one who are running out of time, as Earth will take it own time to heal but that time may not be enough for us.

http://www.ridesafewith.me
I dont just ride my bikes, I live with them.
Yamaha RX100 (1987)
Yamaha YZF R15 (2010)
GIRed 2012

dhairya

I rode with him once and must say, his kind of determination is hard to find.

Sunil, you can post a link to the Raid de himalayas thread.