Being an Indian woman biker isn’t easy

Earlier this week, a woman biker shared a video on social media showing a car ramming into her in Gurugram. The biker, Shivani Chauhan, said that she had repeatedly signalled the driver to maintain a safe distance. Despite this, she alleged, the vehicle continued to pursue her before hitting her deliberately.

She was thrown off her bike. The car sped away.

The widely shared clip prompted the police to arrest Kalyan Bainsla, the man driving the car. A day before he was arrested, Bainsla claimed he did not know that a woman had been riding the bike and that he hit her “accidentally”.

That is a claim 35-year-old Ishani Sachdeva from Delhi finds difficult to believe. She has been riding motorcycles for 12 years and has lost count of how often men, seeing her Royal Enfield go by, view it as an opportunity to race against her.

“...Men tend to show their machismo by constantly riding either next to me, or trying to overtake me,” Sachdeva said.

She said that while she had not experienced anything like the incident in Gurugram, “everything that could have led to it has happened to me”.

It is not just men on motorcycles or driving cars that try to speed past women bikers, pointed out 27-year-old Kelley, a Mumbai resident.

“Even those who...

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