Where are your papers, O rider?

If you own a motorcycle and drive one in any decent-sized Indian city, you would know what a menace the "regular police check" can be. Groups of policemen stand at high-traffic corners, signalling to every passing motorised two wheeler, stop them indefinitely, and ask for licence and papers. If you are not carrying either, get ready to be threatened by challans and fines, after which you would rather pay a bribe, which can amount from anything from a fifty to a fifteen-hundred. Well, you can bargain your way from a fifteen-hundred to a fifty always, depending on who it is you are bargaining with.

But the point of this post is, that unless you have smart cards for the driving licence and the registration, which you can carry in your wallet itself, you are stuck with lots of papers. At least the insurance (and in some cases of "migration", the NOC) are A4 to legal size sheets of paper, which are fragile and will tear at the slightest jerk. And then there is the ever-necessary and not-at-all-standard-sized PUC. Can we carry all of these in our wallets? I guess not.

Most people get around this problem by carrying these documents in their backpacks and bags which they carry. But how many of us do carry backpacks every time we go out on a ride, or are just going to the market or are going for a haircut? And it certainly looks silly carrying a backpack when all you have to carry is an envelope full of papers.

It has long been a problem. Shouldn't the motorcycle manufacturers look at providing a decent-sized, waterproof, lockable compartment in the vehicle itself where we can store the necessary papers so that we don't have to go through this hassle of lugging around bags just so we don't have to fall on the "wrong side of law"?

X-Man Amit