Akshai Varde's 2005 vow and John Abraham's Royal Enfield commission

In August 2005, in a parking lot somewhere in Mumbai, Akshai Varde watched someone else's custom motorcycle outclass his own and made himself a promise. "Standing right there in that parking lot in the August of 2005, I swore with every thing honest inside me that I would build my bike bigger, better and wilder than any other custom motorcycle India was ever to see," he told the blog Helmet Stories.

Varde was not a mechanic by trade. He was cabin crew, a flight supervisor who had spent roughly thirty months in the air before that parking lot moment pushed him toward a workshop instead. He described the six months that followed to Helmet Stories as gruelling, "running pillar to post, with 20 hour work days, pleading and begging, cursing and yelling, frustration of every kind." Out of that came Vardenchi, the custom bike shop he set up in Mumbai, which Helmet Stories reports now also runs out of Pune and Goa.

It matters to a reader in India today because Vardenchi, more than two decades after that vow, is still trading, and still selling what the builder directory Bikes4Sale describes as a graded menu: Royal Enfield based "Type I" work that runs up to full "Type IV" choppers built around Harley Davidson engines. That span, from a mild dress up to a ground up rebuild, is roughly what any Indian owner walking into a custom bike shop is still choosing from.

About four years after Varde's vow, in Jaipur, Vijay Singh came home from a mass communication degree in Canada and started Rajputana Customs in June 2009, about seventeen years ago now, he told CrazyEngineers in an interview with the site.

Singh's bikes carry koftgari, which he told Bikedekho is "a traditional Rajasthani art," applied to brake levers and oil tank flaps by artists he sources from Udaipur. Bikedekho also reported that the saddle leather on Rajputana's builds is stitched by craftsmen who are experienced horse saddle makers. Singh said the inclination came from home rather than from training. "I was born and brought up in Rajasthan, and hence, the inclination to use this kind of work evidently came from my cultural heritage," he told Bikedekho, adding that he inherited his love of bikes from his father, who put him on his first motorcycle at the age of seven.

Rajputana showed its first bike, Original Gangster, at the Delhi Auto Expo in 2010. Singh told CrazyEngineers the response was positive enough that he started taking customer orders right after.

The order that mattered most came from the actor John Abraham. Rajputana finished his bike, called Light Foot, in July 2010, built around a Royal Enfield Bullet Classic 500 engine with a girder front end carrying an original 1948 BSA spring and hand engraved brass fittings throughout, Pipeburn reported. "The bike we have built for John is an extension of his personality and taste. For instance, the bike is subtle, simplistic, and a complete stand out, much like John's calm and uncomplicated demeanor but amazing presence," Singh told Pipeburn. A Bollywood actor's name on a Royal Enfield did more to make custom bike building look like a serious trade in India than any motor show could.

More than two decades after that parking lot in Mumbai and about seventeen years after Singh's return from Canada, both men are still running their own workshops, still deciding by hand what a Royal Enfield is allowed to become.

Sources

• Interview with Vijay Singh, Founder, Rajputana Customs
• Rajputana Custom Motorcycles: heritage, customised
• Royal Enfield 'Light Foot' built by Rajputana Customs
• A Time To Ride: Interview with Akshai Varde of Vardenchi Customs
• Vardenchi, Maharashtra, custom motorcycle builder directory