Perception, to me, is the single most interesting phenomenon of a human mind. The obvious fact is that perceptions differ from person to person and it is the reason we are, who we are. The perception in general, depends a lot on the society, culture and the environment in which we grow or live in. It is this perception that creates the generation gap, the gender differences, culture differences and so on. When you think of how something is perfectly normal somewhere, completely abnormal somewhere else and not even possible in yet another place, it really is intriguing.

Of course, there are a lot of examples for this, with the most obvious one being the way divorce is looked at in the Western societies and in our society. As always, I hate treading on the usual path and so, I’m going to talk about something different. Again, this may seem less important like my last topic might’ve been, but I guess my perception is simply different. Moving back to the topic, everybody is aware of the trend of American choppers. Fat guys with beards and tattoos riding big bikes on the open roads in America, is a simple way of explaining the trend. This is nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary, at least for them. It is a way of life. They love the open roads, the usual wind in their hairs and their not-so-usual monstrosities that they call as ‘choppers’. These are journeys without destinations or rather, journeys where the destination is the journey itself.

Then, there is this weird phenomenon in a country called Finland. You may or may not know this, but, Finland is all about racing. It has a huge history of race veterans and with valid reasons. The country is like a hillside, where the roads are full of crests and dips. Driving through these roads in itself, is a challenging task. To them, racing is a part of their life. There are local races every weekend around Finland, where the participants are the usual family folks. From a 12 year old boy to a 75 year old person and everyone in between, including the mother of a 2 year old baby, participate in these races. It is just another weekend in Finland.

Finally, we come to the South Indian way of life. Here, bikes are a dangerous, uncomfortable, machine used for travel. We need to understand responsibility before taking one out. As much as possible, we need to avoid highways and any open road where heavy vehicles may travel. The worst part is that, some people believe that a long road trip on a bike is something stupid and pointless. Don’t take me in the wrong sense, of course, the perception differs simply because, we don’t have long open roads like America where such travel is a necessity; we don’t have a hilly road where every person driving a car needs to be a racer. Our way of life is indeed much different. But it doesn’t mean that none of us can be skilled racers or that none of us can enjoy a long ride. A few of us, even in this society and culture, have a different perception. There is no logic behind our perceptions or maybe there is one and we are not yet aware of it consciously, but that is irrelevant. We enjoy what we do, and that is enough of a reason to do it. As long as we stay within the boundaries of what is rationally acceptable, anything is good.