Cars over the years

Despite living in a bungalow and having two gardeners who watered the plants in shifts, Baba pledged his Provident fund at the age of fifty to buy our first car in India. The old faithful was a second hand voluptuous turquoise colored Ambassador with the number plate MXT 8153. She spent most of the time parked in our garage and had an acute attention deficiency syndrome (ADS) for unless she was started every alternate day, she would throw a tantrum and refuse to work. In cold weather she needed the engine to be flooded with warm petrol and would splutter to a start in an intoxicated manner. When she went on long journeys, she got unbearably hot and her radiator would start to steam in fury until we gingerly opened her radiator’s cap at the roadside and fed it cool distilled water. I bought a fan and installed it in the car since Ma would get very hot trying to maneuver the lady into the narrow confines of double parking outside our flat in Kolkata. However one had to chose between the fan functioning or the car since the batteries could not handled two prima donnas at the same time.

My boyfriend’s father was one among a few hundred thousand Indians who had booked a Maruti 800 in 1982 and was one of the fortunate ones to be awarded a bright red Maruti in 1985. The family resisted all offers to make a huge profit by selling the booking and it was the car of my youth. Those were the heady days when one drove the car at a speed of close to 100 kmph, the windows down and the breeze blowing one’s hair amuck. As built in music systems were not a regular feature, one would have conversations and sing in the car. Our lovely red did get a trifle giddy when climbing the circuitous routes of the Himalayan roads but faithfully let us traverse to all corners of the country since holidays were usually planned at the spur of the moment with the number of passengers always being an unknown figure.

With progress and a child, our organizations asked us to choose a fancy air-conditioned car which in our case was the Premier Padmini Deluxe. Since we were “bal bachchewala dilliwallahs”, we decided to take this car - the first in our name, to the mohalla mandir for blessings. By the time the pujari located his sindoor dani and followed us to draw the mandatory swastika on the white bonnet, a friendly Dilliwallah had deflated all our tyres since our shiny new car was parked in an inconvenient position. Hanging lemons and chillies at the rear of the car, reversing over eggs and the puja had no impact on the destiny of the car. The white elephant refused to budge on most occasions and was a perennial source of frustration.

When Maruti announced that it was going to launch the luxury car - Esteem, every self respecting yuppie who could get financing scurried to book the car. Being part of the banking system which was financing the booking certainly helped in getting a preferential allotment and we were thrilled to be in a car where the air-conditioning worked, it had no ADS and had a built in music system for casettes. Our elation was short-lived as the economy opened up and a multitude of cars arrived on the scene, each bigger than the other, making the task of one-upmanship impossible.

As I reach middle age and now posses a mammoth petrol guzzling machine that has been primarily bought to boost my ego and ensure that people in snooty establishments open the door and smile a greeting, my life has taken an about turn. My elegant car is nowadays parked in the university precincts and ferries my daughter’s nukkad group buddies. I am contemplating a new car and the only thing that interests me now is high fuel efficiency, a sturdy body and low cost of maintenance. The kid mutters that such parameters are surely an indication of a complete lack luster approach to life while I argue that being green and conserving fuel is the correct and fashionable attitude today.