The World Rolls On
by Raghav Roll
I’ve been on more roads than I can remember, and a few that refused to be remembered.
Some ended in fog. Some fireworks. Most in tyre dust and chai stains.
You learn, after a while, that the world doesn’t move on ideas, it moves on wheels.
And every wheel tells a story: of friction, faith, and that quiet pact between rubber and road.
I’m Raghav Roll. Some call me a wanderer. Some a columnist, some just a man who won’t stop talking about tyres at dinner. But I call myself a listener, to engines, to treads, to the silence between two honks. Because the thing about tyres is that they’re poets of motion.
They don’t chase applause, they just keep rolling through potholes, parliaments, and policy shifts.
Through factory floors that smell of raw compound and ambition.
Through test tracks where silence is measured in decibels.
Through lives, yours, mine, and every driver who’s ever whispered a prayer before a long curve.
So no, I’m not here to sell you a product. I’m here to remind you of a truth:
That a wheel isn’t round because it looks perfect, it’s round because it must return to where it began. That’s the secret of every journey, every brand, every dream that dares to call itself global.
Not geography. Geometry.
You want to be global? Start by rolling, not running.
Because those who run arrive.
But those who roll, evolve.
Welcome to The World Rolls On.
We’re not going anywhere.
We’re just going everywhere.
The Road Remembers Everything
I’ve been around tyres long enough to know they have moods.
Yes, moods.
Some mornings they’re quiet and obedient, hugging the asphalt like a polite handshake.
Other days, they sulk, humming, vibrating, protesting every bump like a drama queen who skipped breakfast.
I used to test tyres for a living, which basically means I’ve spent half my life listening to rubber complain about human behaviour.
And trust me, it’s quite a story.
The road never lies
See, roads are like diaries. They remember everything, the late brakes, the impatient lane changes, the pothole diplomacy. They don’t judge, but they record.
I once tested a new set of radials on a dusty Pune highway. Halfway through, something felt different, not wrong, just… alive. The car wasn’t misbehaving; it was responding. That’s when I realised the tarmac had been freshly patched, the friction had changed, and the tyres were telling me a story.
That day, I learned a simple truth:
Tyres don’t touch the road, they negotiate with it.
Just like people.
Everyone’s just trying to find grip in a world that keeps resurfacing itself.
The illusion of control
The funny thing about control is that it’s mostly marketing.
Every driver believes they’re in control until rain happens, traffic happens, or life happens.
The same guy who boasts about horsepower and torque spends his weekends fixing punctures with borrowed air pumps. I’ve seen tyres behave better than drivers. At least tyres accept they can’t control the road.
Humans still haven’t learned that part.
We overinflate everything, our tyres, our egos, our LinkedIn bios.
And then we’re surprised when things burst under pressure.
Rubber and religion
In India, people pray to their cars before long drives. They decorate dashboards with gods, flowers, and lemon-chilli charms.
But no one ever prays for the tyres.
I’ve always found that odd. They’re the only part that actually touches the earth, four small circles of rubber carrying your dreams, fears, and EMI payments at 100 km/h.
And we never once say thank you.
Maybe that’s what faith really is, trusting something you rarely notice to keep you safe.
Wear and wisdom
A tyre’s tread tells stories. You can read it like palm lines. A clean shoulder means balance. A worn edge means impatience. A patchy centre means too much pressure.
If you’re observant, tyres can tell you what kind of person owns the car.
The gentle ones rotate their tyres. The aggressive ones forget.
The overthinkers check pressure three times a week. The reckless ones find out the hard way.
Everything you are, your habits, your hurry, your hope, shows up in that black rubber.
Maybe that’s why I respect tyres so much. They live short lives, do thankless work, and still stay grounded.
Why I’m here
I left the pits and test tracks years ago. I now live in Nashik, near a vineyard I don’t tend to, with a cat named Torque who ignores me unless I spill milk. But I still think in RPMs and friction coefficients.
So when Tyre Times told me that they were back on the scene again and asked me to write this column, I said yes. Not because I miss the grease. But because I miss the humanity inside the machines. You’ll find me here every once in a while, talking about rubber, road, and the restless human behind the wheel.
I promise not to sound like your car manual. Manuals are written to explain, I write to remind.
Because when you spend decades listening to tyres, you realise something, they’re not just round objects. They’re mirrors.
They reflect us: inflated, worn, grippy, sometimes bald, always moving.
The world rolls on. The road remembers everything.
And I’m just here, listening to both.
–Raghav Roll
