“When you are flying 200 people with you, it is serious business. With motorcycles, it is more relaxed. The restrictions are less and I can be the person I want to be.” These are the words of Karna Verma, a resident of Delhi, a professional pilot who flies an Airbus A320 for Air Asia India, and, of course, an avid motorcyclist. 

Karna Verma had always been fond of machines. It started with motorcycles but gradually, he realized that everything mechanical piqued his interest. He was always fascinated by how machines worked and how they moved. But his connect with motorcycles remained strong and only got stronger with time. 

He has been in Delhi and he has been here for a while now. His father is in the Army but he had always been a North Indian kid. Then out of nowhere, his father got posted to Chennai. And that is where motorcycling really caught a hold of him. 

It started off even younger when Karna rode around with his father on his motorcycle. But when they got to Chennai, his passion for motorcycling grew leaps and bounds due to the strong motorcycling culture in Chennai. In no time, he was already in love with the venerable Yamaha RD350. Other two strokes of the time such as the Shogun, the RX-100, and the RDJ350 also interested him deeply. 

During his time in Chennai, Karna would frequent motorcycle workshops and in the process, ended up making a lot of friends who were in motorcycling. He believes motorcycling and familiarizing himself with all its facets was a process. It started with riding, then travelling, then rallying and now racing on the tarmac. In essence, playing around with motorcycles and preparing them has been an indispensable part of his life while growing up. 

Seeing his love for motorcycling, we asked him what he found more fun among aeroplanes and motorcycles. His answer was as frank as we expected. He said that he enjoys riding more as flying a plane comes with a lot of responsibility and that it is a serious thing. Riding is more liberating in that regard. 

Flying aeroplanes and riding motorcycles seem like the constituents of a perfect life but that comes with its own challenges. Karna’s profession does not give him weekends per se. Instead, he has to make do with random holidays here and there. So balancing his profession with other things in his life is always chaotic. 

He also mentioned that people around him know him for that very chaos, trying to balance his professional life, his personal life, along with his hobbies and passions. He said that he perpetually feels like he is trying to fit 48 hours into 24. So this chaos is a part of his everyday life. 

Despite all that, his love for motorcycling is relentless. And for him, a short spin with his son feels just as good as riding around on the Buddh International Circuit. He has always maintained he does not love any one particular thing about motorcycling, or one particular style for that matter. He just enjoys motorcycling in general. 

To him, motorcycling brings about a different level of satisfaction. His message to everyone also pertains to that; enjoying what one does and enjoying every moment of it. He says that there may be times when one may not be able to give their 100% to whatever it is they love, but the more important thing is to not let it die. If one does that, the happiness they will experience would be priceless.