Subir Roy: The romance of a new car

OFF BEAT/ It's reserved for the very young and naive

When my son reached 18, I grandly announced to him what I considered was a prize: you can now start learning to drive, take us around a bit when it's needed and maybe also use the car yourself if you are good. But to my surprise, he seemed totally uninterested. Learning how to drive a car was no big deal for him, in fact, it was a bit of a pain. Cars to people like him were a part of the furniture, just short of being a part of the plumbing.

Not only the car, but the fact that there was always someone to drive it, was taken for granted. Eyebrows would be raised at the sight of an extremely ramshackle or posh car, but that's about it.

My son didn't seriously expect to be allowed to use the car when he went out with his friends. So there was only a downside in being an unpaid standby driver, called out in emergencies when the chore could not be refused.

My feelings couldn't have been more different. My father never owned a car. When he was posted in small towns we easily made do with cycle rickshaws. When we lived in Kolkata, transportation modes were more varied but often posed a problem.

During student days, I always did a quarter of the journey from Bhowanipur to College Street partly hanging out of the bus. On important occasions we would hire a taxi but there was a minor crisis when during peak hours no taxi was in sight and Kolkata buses fully lived up to their reputation of passengers coming out of their ears.

To me, it was a great thing to own a car, which I was able to do only when I was pushing 40. Overjoyed at the prospects, I quickly picked up driving and was quite proud that soon I became a fairly competent driver when everybody said it is was difficult to really learn driving when you are 40 or more.

Negotiating Delhi's traffic was an additional challenge and between my mistakes and everybody else's, my first car, a 10-year-old third-hand Fiat or Premier Padmini, was soon banged up fairly frequently till it became vital to junk it.

My next car was a bit of a celebrity. Kapil Dev was its first owner, having won it along with the "man of the match" award circa 1985 from Parle Exports. It was one of those early batch of Maruti cars, almost entirely Japanese, beautiful to drive and the AC so much more effective than the later Maruti models.

It is the only car I owned that my children, then around five, have been excited about. It is also the car that allowed me to give full vent to my pent-up love of driving, accumulated over the years when I didn't have a car.

In that little contraption (during one puja traffic jam at Delhi's Chittaranjan Park, four people had gingerly picked it up and put it on the sidewalk to clear the way for the buses when I was missing with the keys) my family and I toured the length and breadth of north India and still cherish the memory of every moment of those trips.

The finely balanced, adequately powered car drove like a dream in the most difficult of roads in the Himachal and Uttar Pradesh hills. And when we did the other dream run from Pokhran to Jaisalmer with only the roadside scrubs and sand for company, it fairly flew.

My first taste of a car as an indicator of one's status came when Business Standard gave me a new car shortly after I joined it. When the friends we were visiting came to know that we had come in my new car, they insisted on coming out to see it.

But they were quite disappointed and couldn't help uttering, Oh! Maruti. I realised that the Ananda Bazar group's reputation for providing its senior editors Contessas had travelled far and wide.

As my well wishers, they were sorry that the paper had started me off a peg or two below their expectations. But to me a new car that worked perfectly well was all you needed to keep doing dream holidays in the north Indian hills or the tiger sanctuaries of Madhya Pradesh, depending on the time of the year. And work was the time you had to bide after one driving holiday till you could go on another.

My children may have become blasé about cars, but I am happy to report that the romance of cars still lives among the middle class. The other day when I sat in the dealer's show room with a scowl on my face because they had broken a key pre-delivery promise, there was the quintessential middle class family seated before another table.

Not only the wife but the little child also had come along. I doubt if they heard or understood all the dos and don'ts that the dealer's staff patiently listed for them. There were stars in their eyes; they had come to take home their new car.

Down below in the parking lot their mood couldn't be more different from mine. I lit into the staffer for not having put the seat covers that were part of the promised free accessories. Those we have don't match the car colour and you wanted matching seat covers, he replied accusingly.

He seemed mystified over my irritation over having to make an unnecessary additional visit. Worse was to follow. The number plates were missing because the regional transport office releases the day's registration numbers only at 6 p m.

They were equally mystified why I could not make do with the temporary registration number, stuck with two pieces of paper aft and forward, and come by for the number plates with the proper registration number the next day.

While I fumed and waited for the number plates with the real registration number, I saw the family drive off in their new car, all smiles and tipping the workman who had been polishing their car, unconcerned about driving around with the temporary registration number.

Unlike my children, I hadn't become blasé about cars, but some of the joys of owning a new car, which the other family possessed despite their model being more modest than mine, were no longer there in me.

(sub@business-standard.com)