Auto mated

Over the past few months I have been looking for the perfect car. While I know that just does not exist, I do want one that is stylish and makes some sort of statement, even if it whispers it only into my ears and no one else’s. I may just have found it – a leisurely prowl around its sleek, Starship Enterprise shape, a test drive and a discussion, presumably erudite, where I do not sound terribly bimboish, with the mechanics and some minor argument with my father and, presumably, the kitten, and I may just have a new car, once my check has cleared, that is. It will be bigger than anything I have owned and perhaps a little too large for comfort on Mumbai’s congested roads, but it will be comfortable and, hopefully, easily accommodate the whole family, feline and her vast luggage included.

But that is still a while away from happening. For now, I look back fondly at all the various cars I have driven and wonder how I could have kept them all in my limited parking space. After all, each one has a special history that is unforgettable, special.

The first car I remember driving is my parents’ Fiat. It was a zippy little thing and I was all of 13, wavering along the road in the cantonement area in Pune. Once I got legal, I was less unsteady, and drove a little too fast for the comfort of the various cohorts in assorted crimes who happened to be foolhardy enough to want a ride to wherever we were going. By then, I was working and having little disasters that, thankfully, my father had taught me to deal with a long time before I could steer straight, like flat tires, silenced horns and, one drizzly, slippery, scary afternoon, a broken headlight – I decided to get a little too intimate with a taxi that stopped suddenly, and the slick road objected to my braking without notice.

But long before that I had been driving a neat little VW Golf in Geneva, Switzerland. I would cautiously inch my way through the early morning traffic from the house to the tram station, where I would get off, and Papa would take the car back home. Once I got my license, I drove whatever I could get my hands…and feet…on – my soul sister’s Toyota, a dear friend’s Ford Nova (which gave me recurring tendonitis of the shoulder), a Dodge station wagon that was closely related to the QEII, a wonderfully pancaked sports model that was born in Malaysia but tooled through the streets of England with élan, a Jeep Cherokee with dreadful automatic transmission, even a minibus along the fog-dimmed motorway across Long Island!

Perhaps my favourite car was a small gold Zen that I drove in Delhi. It was a pet, since it was my first ‘office car’, and I loved it dearly. Every scratch was touched up almost as it was acquired (and in Delhi, you acquire them just by breathing in the car), with gold nailpolish if the auto-paint was not available or not affordable. When I came back to Mumbai, it had to be sold for various excellent reasons, but it broke my heart to watch it being driven away by the buyer, who promised to give it a good home. Once in a while I pull out a picture of that little chariot and sigh – it was a symbol, in a way, of triumph, of a bad period in my life that I managed to make good.

Perhaps a new car will have new memories built around it. A history that is all good, all laughter and sunshine, all positivity and optimism. Apart from which, it should take us where we need to go in infinite and absolute comfort. Now to schedule the test drive…!