For someone like me, expressing anything at all can take some effort. And doing that with a motorcycle I saw in the dark and rode for maybe 200 metres — in a parking lot, no less — it should’ve been a challenge. An interesting one, sure. But a challenge, nonetheless. It wasn’t.
Because the Sawed Off, Bombay Custom Works’ wild take on the Royal Enfield Shotgun 650, didn’t need daylight to make itself understood. It didn’t need speed, or scenery, or even a crowd, though it drew a lot of attention at Motoverse 2024. It said what it had to say in stillness. In silence. And in the dark. Maybe that’s why it stayed with me — long after I climbed off.
Even in the dark, the Sawed Off didn’t hide. It wasn’t loud, but also it was impossible to ignore. Its proportions felt deliberate, as if everything unnecessary had been stripped away — not just for style, but for the sake of clarity. BCW had pared the Shotgun into something lean, raw and I’d go as far as to say uncivil. There was no rear subframe. No soft touches. No distractions. Just presence.
The girder-style front fork was the first thing that really unsettled my expectations. It looked more industrial than mechanical — like something borrowed from another era. No polished tubes or clever design hid its purpose. It was brutally honest. And it held the rest of the motorcycle together with the same kind of unflinching character.
The blacked-out finish made the metal look heavier than it was. The tank was asymmetrical — a detail left over from the stock Shotgun 650, where the left side housed the fuel pump. It didn’t quite match the rest of the build’s minimalism. It stood out. Maybe slightly off to some or slightly wrong, even. Shail, the man behind BCW, had chosen to leave it that way. Not to prove a point, but because not everything needed to be perfect to feel true.
And stickered on the tank, in Morse code, were the words:
‘Keep calm. See you on the other side’
The message was Kartik’s idea, but it landed harder than expected. On the surface, it pointed to the better-looking right side. But to me, it also felt like something else — a quiet signal sent through metal. A reminder that there’s always more than what meets the eye. Always something waiting underneath.
The Sawed Off wasn’t road-legal. There were no lights, no number plate, no compliance in sight. It couldn’t be registered, couldn’t be taken out for a proper ride. And that should have been frustrating. But it wasn’t.
Because the more I got lost in its raw, unfiltered beauty, the more it made sense to me. This was a machine that didn’t need distance to say something. It didn’t need movement to feel alive. In fact, maybe it was the stillness or the refusal to participate that made it powerful. In that quiet dim-lit parking lot, the Sawed Off seemed to represent a kind of freedom that had nothing to do with going anywhere. It was freedom as presence. As clarity and conviction.
This bike stood for the idea that something could be complete without being useful. That it could express anything it wanted to — without ever raising its voice. And in some way, it reminded me of the parts of myself that stayed beneath the surface. The parts that didn’t explain, didn’t ask for approval. Maybe that was the real paradox — the more this bike was limited by the world around it, the more honest it became.
I rode it for barely fifteen minutes. A slow crawl through the lower levels of a parking lot, avoiding speed-breakers and reflectors. And yet, even in that confined space, the Sawed Off didn’t feel like it was holding back.
The riding position felt like a compromise between aggression and detachment. The ’bars were wide. The footpegs sat somewhere neutral. The saddle was just enough. The And everything around me echoed — the sound, the shape, the tension of a bike that seemed like it didn’t want to be tamed.
The engine was familiar — that parallel-twin thrum I’d heard in the Shotgun 650 before. But here, with the chopped pipes and stripped-down weight, it felt louder. Cruder. Like the bike had nothing to filter its voice. It wasn’t trying to sound good. It was just letting that engine speak for itself — baritone, uneven, and somehow perfect. It only spoke once that day — but I’ve been listening to that voice ever since.
Back in 2016, Bombay Custom Works built Barood. It was elegant, raw, and impossible to ignore — a custom 350cc cast-iron Royal Enfield that looked like it was the rebellious child of the royal family who wanted nothing to do with the weight of the legacy. It wanted to build its own identity. And that was the point. Barood was noise, energy, and rebellion made visible. Maybe back then, that kind of expression felt like a necessary outburst. And the Barood delivered.
Where the Barood exploded, the Sawed Off aimed. Its stare carried more weight than noise ever could. Every cut, every deletion, every hard edge was intentional. The message hadn’t changed. It had just become more precise. More dangerous. In the Sawed Off, BCW didn’t revisit Barood. They reloaded it — into something leaner, lower, and even more unwilling to compromise.
I didn’t spend long on the Sawed Off. A short ride. A few hours in the basement of a parking lot. No open roads. No great chase. But some machines don’t need distance to leave a mark. There was something about the way it existed — so sure of itself, so unwilling to be softened — that stayed with me. It reminded me of how rare it is to see something, or someone, that isn’t trying to fit in. That doesn’t perform. That doesn’t apologise for its sharp edges.
And maybe that’s why writing about it wasn’t difficult. Because the Sawed Off didn’t ask to be explained. It simply stood there and dared me to see it for what it was. In the end, that’s what freedom of expression looks like to me. Not noise. Not spectacle. Just a refusal to be anything other than what you are. A motorcycle that couldn’t be ridden, seen only in the dark, built to serve no one — and yet, it said more than most things built to be understood. I saw myself in that silence. And maybe for once, I didn’t mind being seen.
