A ₹25,000 Salary and a ₹3 Lakh Bike — Lessons From the Madras Stock Exchange

Anand Talks

A nostalgic conversation between Anand and his nephew Shashwath, reflecting on life experiences from childhood motorcycles to the evolution

Key takeaways

• Anand's choice of the Honda CD 100 was driven by fuel efficiency and low maintenance costs.
• The pre-liberalization era in India was characterized by long waiting periods for vehicles like Bajaj scooters.

Main topics

• Automotive history in India
• Evolution of Indian stock exchanges

Notable quotes

The first and only serious bike which I owned... was a Honda CD 100.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a reflective lesson on how economic shifts influ

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) welcome back to anand talks this is a weekend special this is sunday and so shashpat wanted to play the quiz master with me and he will ask questions and i will answer so it is going to be casual it may have bit of markets it may have a bit of life experiences a banter between an uncle and a nephew so Speaker 2 (0:19) something that uh so yes i wanted to keep it as a as a you know casual segment which which our viewers could enjoy on a sunday morning a lazy sunday morning Speaker 1 (0:29) so Speaker 2 (0:29) i have a few questions prepared for you and we'll go through them as much as time permits so the first question i have for you Speaker 1 (0:37) is Speaker 2 (0:38) uh i know that you used to ride bikes quite a bit in your youth so first i want you to tell the viewers the bike that you used to ride why you chose that bike at that point of time what was the financial calculus in your mind about going for a bike versus let's say an entry level car Let's start with Speaker 1 (0:57) that. I want to know that first. The first bike I did is immediately after I passed 12th and went to college. I stayed with my uncle in Bangalore. This is not today's Bangalore. This is Bangalore of something like 35 years back. It was quite possible and we had to drive something like 22 kilometers to go to my college. And I had to come back 22 kilometers. A protected child living in a colony which my grandfather owned. And from there I had to transit to a... Place where only my uncle was there, uncle and aunt were there and I had no friends. It was decided that I had to use a bike. The very first bike my dad gave me was a TVS 50 XL which I used to try take back and forth from college. The first and only serious bike which I owned, which I had nearly for 30 years, was a Honda CD 100. It was a four-stroke engine. The reason why I bought Honda is very simple. So Honda was one of my inspirations. In fact, in my book, 30 Lives That Inspired Me, which is going to be released on the 26th of September, I talk about Soichoryo Honda. And those days I thought myself as an engineer, which I was not. Honda was one of them. Soichoryo Honda was one of them. And I had a vision that I would make electric motors, small micro motors at that time. The idea was to make micro motors and to because those micro motors were coming from Korea and India did not have micro motors at that time. Micro motors are small motors which are used in electrical and electronic appliances of those days it has become obsolete now, largely obsolete but these variants of these micro motors are now used in electric cars and also in drones and whatnot and this is why I joined engineering so it was quite a distance and so Honda was a big inspiration and I'm not a great speed buff yeah I bought a CD 100 and also in those days Honda was a four-stroke engine so it meant longer greater mileage so I could spend less money and my father also told me that the four-stroke engine maintenance was very cheap of course now I can say because I've had a lot of Japanese vehicles Japanese vehicles per se don't require much maintenance. Whether you had a Toyota or a Honda, you don't have to maintain it much. So that was the financial calculus. The other vehicle which I've used frequently was what my last uncle had, was a bullet, though I never rode it because the start of those days would have kicked back and hurt your leg, I was scared. But I've travelled long distances with him. on the bullet though I had never had interest in writing a bullet no I didn't have so Speaker 2 (3:38) building off of that because today because you brought in the bullet as I'm interested uh because I was born post the the time period after that is by the time I knew what a bullet was so that Lal had already come into the main picture so I wanted to ask you because I wanted to build off of that what was the image when you were growing up because you were born in 1967 when uh Bullet was still a premier bike. So I wanted to know what was the image of a Bullet back then when you were a child? How did it transition in your youth? That is why did you not consider a Bullet? And where do you think we stand today with Enfield bikes? When I was Speaker 1