CAR STORIES

CAR STORIES 1

My fascination for Ford must have started in my early days. The memory of the first car I rode was a ford 1946 vintage run as a taxi.

I must have been 5 or so. We used to hire it to drive to Trivandrum from the place near Kanyakumari where my father worked at that time as a doctor. The driver had a funny name, Adima - literally translated, slave -. He must have been a good driver since my father was a terribly short tempered back seat driver and we never heard any shouting matches.

Later on I lived with my grandfather in Kerala when my father moved to Nilgris. During this time we used to hire the newly introduced Ambassador driven by Mathai.

He was a good driver; the only problem was that the maximum speed was 25 miles even if there was an emergency. But then during those times it must have been a good speed. For the Kerala monsoon the wipers were of no much use. So chewing tobacco will be smeared on the windscreen when the rains got bad (the water will drain away fast with tobacco)

It was also the time when my father decided to buy a car. I do not know the reasons but we landed up with a Vauxhall Wyvern of the 1950s vintage.

It had a flying horse on the bonnet with red plastic wings which could be lit up in the night. It also had turn indicators on the B pillar which will pop out as a hand when you put the switch on; of course hand indication was mandatory with various signs for left turn, right turn, u turn etc. Air conditioning was unknown and so we drove around with windows down or up as the weather condition demanded. If I remember correct, the glasses had to be manually pulled up.

My father I think had a pathological fear of driving himself even though he had a driving licence (he used to say that he had seen umpteen motor accidental deaths and injuries during his time in Shillong with the British army during the world war and this really scared him). However once in a while he will take over the wheels and most of the times we had close shaves. The one I still remember is when we were on the way to Coonoor for the weekly shopping and were going up hill through the tea gardens. The driver realised that my father had to change gears which he was not very adept at. So the driver told “clutch and gear change” to remind my father. But my father only heard “clutch” and promptly pressed it with disastrous results. The car lost the momentum and started to roll back. The driver shouted brake but my father in the confusion continued to accelerate; so we went on going backward with the engine roaring and all of us in the car screaming. Luckily for all of us the car landed in a small ditch and did not roll over. The driver got a mouthful from my father for not advising him correctly (he would never accept that he made a mistake). The aftermath of this incident was that he never drove when we children were around.

We used to make our annual holidays in Nilgris from our boarding schools in Kerala. My father will drive down with the driver and pick us up. The drive was over 300 km and with the road conditions it used to be a whole day trip or some times two days with visiting relatives on the way. One memorable drive was when we left Palghat at 9 in the evening and drove late night through the Nilgiri ghats with fog making the drive difficult. We had Thomas as our driver who had a huge Jesus on the Cross tattooed on his arm. I think Jesus was with us all through.

We graduated to a standard Ten and later on to Standard eight (even though it was an older vehicle it was well maintained) which was exactly similar to Standard 10.

Only problem with standard eight was that luggage had to be kept from inside by folding back the back seat since there was no dickey opening at the back. Standard 8 also took me to my college in Calicut the first time. It was a drive of around 200 km from Nilgris; almost a full day. Midway the front wheel started to make rubbing noise. The driver had a look and said there was too much grease in the bearing and so he cleaned up the bearing. But he or none of us realized that the wheel bearing was damaged and the grease was running out due to over heating. The car must have run nearly 100 km in this condition through ghat roads till we reached Calicut. After dropping me at the college, they went to a garage where they found that the bearing had seized and it took the whole day to get it out. Imagine being stranded in Nilgiri ghats in the night; we escaped that.We had this car for five years. When my father retired I pleaded with him not to sell it so that I can drive around; we had good fights but it was impossible to win. He got Rs.6500 for the car.

I wowed to buy my car when I got a job (not a two wheeler which has a side story. While in the engineering college I tried my hand to learn to drive a scooter; I already could drive the car but scooter was another kettle of fish. My brother in law had left his Lambretta scooter at our house during a holiday and I decided to try my hand. The ride started with all the village children running after me shouting… see…see… isaacachayan on the scooter…. the scooter landed in the paddy field and I on the road. That was the last time I rode a two-wheeler).

It was the late sixties and jobs were hard to come by even for an engineer from a Regional Engineering College. I helped around in my father’s dispensary, taught in an ITI and looked around. When I got my posting under government of India training scheme for unemployed engineers in 1970 I moved over to Hyderabad and that is where part 2 of my car stories unfolded.

INTERESTING ENCOUNTERS

What can you say about meeting a malayalee at an airport in Europe? Very common these days.... I always used to tell my friends in Europe that there is a Kerala mafia and you will find them everywhere.

I was at the Vienna Airport waiting for my flight to Mumbai. As I looked around I could spot atleast 3 women, gossipping and acting to be nonchalant....typical mallu behaviour.

Then a young guy flopped on to the seat beside me. To be nice I asked him from where he is. "kerala" he said. "What are you doing?" i aksed. then came the interesting story of ahmed from calicut. (place and name changed).

Ahmed wanted to earn some money for his family. So he got a visa made - of course paying the middleman through the nose- for Kuwait. He was to be the personal cook for a sheik. When he landed in Kuwait he learnt that he will be one of the cook's assistant doing odd jobs and being paid peanuts. But he was smart and the sheik trusted him to take him with him on his annual sojourns in Europe. The sheik liked to gamble and the casinos of CANNES were his favorite place. France attracted Ahmed... But what to do?

REJU - MY FAVORITE COUSIN

So Reju left to join his Creator. He was young compared to me.. 58 and his departure was so sudden and it hurts.

My first memory about him is when he was around 10 when he came to Ullannur. He used to keep us entertained with silent 8 mm movies for which he provided his own background music from a tape recorder. Then he went off to Bangalore for schooling and our roads rarely crossed.

It was when he landed up in Hyderabad for his training at the State Bank of India Training College that we met him after several years. We had some inkling of what was cooking and hence his marriage to Nalini did not come as a real surprise. He had a different attitude to life which was very refreshing.

During my business trips to Mumbai we found time to meet up and enjoy a lunch of rice and fish curry. I still remember one such lunch for which he came in pure white shirt since he had an appointment with a client after lunch. A drop of fish curry landed on his clean shirt. He never fussed about it and enjoyed the lunch unlike me( i would have been worried about my appearance for the meeting and it would have spoiled my mood).

When he heard about Anup's passing away he managed to fly from Bangalore to Mysore and then take another flight from there to Hyderabad to be in time for the funeral. He was the only one representing my family. His presence in the house after the funeral when nobody else was there was a big solace for molly and me. This is one incident which I can never forget.

Ten years ago we had met up for a wedding in cochin when we all noticed a swelling on his neck. It was the starting point for another chapter in his life. It was confirmed as the dreaded disease and he was on to a long fight. He took the brave decision to migrate to new Zealand where he could get better treatment. The first few years must have been nightmares when his health deteriorated. He was advised bone marrow transplant but the cost was prohibitive and his age also was a bottle neck. Strangely his health slowly improved and he was almost back to normal with a few breaks in between. He started his own property consultancy business with his son avinash also being part of it. Nalini also found a job and also Aneesha as a successful Chartered Accountant.

He made a few trips to India and we managed to meet up every time.

Things were not that bad and his health was was not creating a big concern. Hence his going off all of a sudden was a big shock for all of us. But then God has His own plans..

So reju... take care... we will meet up for another round of rice and fish curry.....