Drive on!

We visited a friend on Sunday to eat delicious Bengali food and got a small bonus - a ride in her brand new car. Sliding into the back seat with her, while her husband and Father sat in front, was an experience, because she was beaming proudly all over her pretty face, even as she sniffed deeply and remarked on the 'new car' smell. She would keep her old small car to drive to work every day, she thought, since the traffic was so bad and even if there was a small ding or dent, she would not be heartbroken...well, not too much anyway. We went on a short spin around the complex where she lived and admired every aspect of her new vehicle. What was more fun was watching the way she was enjoying it. It was the same colour as ours, which was about six months older and had lost its 'new car' fragrance some time ago, and gleamed with the same smug just-out-of-the-shop shine as ours had done. I am still awed when I see ours approaching or even just parked in its spot in the compound of the apartment block where we live, wondering whether this was really something we owned and used. So I know exactly how my friend feels and rejoice with her in that feeling.

For all that and many more reasons, I half expected her to have driven in to work today in her new car. After all, it was a bank holiday for the city and the generally hideous traffic was greatly reduced. In fact, the ride from home to where I was going took me under an hour, where it would normally need two, much of that time spent standing in a jam at a traffic light or at a bottleneck created by construction activity in the middle of a busy main road. We zipped in to where I needed to go, zipped out again, stopping to do some errands, and were home before a decently-timed lunch could be served up. On the way, instead of fretting at the delay or chafing at the time it was taking to get past a red light, I listened to music, chatted with a friend over the phone and hummed my favourite song as it played on the radio. And we even managed to stop by the office - which is no longer my office, but where my friend still works - and say hi and a belated Happy Diwali to her and her team.

Did you bring your new car, I demanded of my friend and her driver. Both said no, even though the day would be very easy driving, since the vehicle had been driven out of town over the festival holidays and was very dirty. The driver beamed as wide and happily as my friend did, both enjoying the wonder of the new car and its bells, whistles, beeps and clicks. We did that once not so long ago. And will do that for not just ourselves, but for my friend, sharing her joy and adding to it with our own.