Ye Bullet Meri Jaan

Thanks to the magic of the internet, and in particular the beneficence of Facebook friends, I discovered this ad after a gap of some 25 years. First check it out and cry tears of joy.

The ad triggered waves of nostalgia – for a way of life so long gone, even the memory of it is unreliable; for a product that is still essentially the same even though the riders have changed immeasurably; and more personally, for at least one childhood aspiration I am still proud of (the others dating from the same period were: climbing buildings like Spider-man, singing on live TV on New Year’s night, and – fresh from FIFA 1986 – playing football for Argentina). The only bits I remembered from the ad were the initial beat of the motorcycle merging into the beat of the song, and the bike going across the stream with ease. Yet it had created such a huge impression on me that I never doubted throughout my youth which bike I wanted to ride when I grew up.

If memory serves me right, I first saw the ad during the 1987 Reliance Cup. Even for the mid-80s, “Bullet Meri Jaan” was decidedly retro. Indian advertising was moving to “Fill it, shut it, forget it” and “Take the world in your stride”, with brands choosing to communicate in English for a premium positioning. Yet Royal Enfield chose to go with Hindi. This was no foreign-educated, long haired boy riding with a pretty girl behind him (think Yamaha print ads from the same period); this was a son of the soil riding a real motorcycle.

The other interesting thing is the choice of music: even though the ad aired only a couple of years after “Disco Dancer”, the brand was tainted neither by Disco nor Bollywood. It would have taken a brave advertising man to set the ad to traditional qawali, probably sung by men with handkerchiefs tied to their wrists, a la Zanjeer. Instead of the shiny shirts of that period we have a decidedly 70s safari suit, again reinforcing that this was not the ride of boys, but of straight-backed grown men. That myth persists even today – countless people told me and my brother in college that we were “too slight to ride a Bullet”, or needed a “more manly body” to ride this bike.

Yet for me the real magic of this ad is in the lyrics. “Ye bullet meri jaan, manzilon ka nishaan”: this bullet is my life, it is a sign of destinations. I love how he doesn’t talk of the brand in general. He doesn’t say “Bullet is my life” but “THIS bullet is my life”. At the most fundamental level the ad works because it shows the personal relationship between the man and his motorcycle. The “manzilon ka nishaan” line is also worth elaborating on. What brand, then or now, has the courage to use (urdu) poetry in advertising? Literally translated, the line “sign of destinations” means nothing. But in the context of the man’s ode to his motorcycle, it means “this bullet is the proof of many journeys”. That one line layers the story with context. You imagine the man and his faithful machine having gone on many journeys together, like the lone man and horse of old westerns. You imagine the trust he places on the bike. You imagine the ruggedness of the bike and its rider. As a young boy, you imagine a life of masculine adventure.

And that line has withstood the passage of time, the onslaught of consumerist desires and the cynicism of more advanced age. It is as true today as it was in 1987 – This Bullet is my life, the proof of many journeys together.