Driving In India

Imagine sitting in a dark room, on a comfy couch. Now close your eyes, and think of the most basic car you have ever seen; now just imagine driving it….and that’s about it you are now officially a participant in the greatest and probably the scariest reality show in the world, Driving in INDIA. With a license validity of about 20 years and the kind of “rigorous” training that has gone into teaching you to drive and add to the equation that a BILLION other “highly-trained” drivers on the same road, there could be quite a possibility that your license might just outlive you... this I feel is a much easier and shorter way of getting a ‘license to kill’. Don’t know why Mr. Bond was making such a fuzz about his “license to kill” almost every resident Indian above 18 seems to have one of those here, and in some case even younger.

Driving in India is not about precision it’s not entirely about how well you control the car and its certainly not about how well you and others follow traffic rules ‘cause there’s virtually non-present, but it is about your Karma, if you kissed a cow’s arse in the morning, you’ll live to kiss it again, and if you did not…I hope you have a good insurance.

Mika Hakkinen, David Coulthard, Nelson PQ. Jr., Lewis Hamilton, Adrian Sutil are a few names of the greatest drivers alive, they possess the ability to change directions in split seconds at un-imaginable speed…they can defy laws of physics and get through places and corner where normal logic would say otherwise, but there is one thing that binds all F1 drivers alike; none of them ever dared to drive on Indian roads. Agreed  they can change direction in split seconds, great, but the old fiat 1100 in front of you can will inevitable change directions at least twice or thrice in the same time. And forget unimaginable speeds; try doing….err 30 km/hr here. There is a reason why India hasn’t really gone with the speed cams you know.

 In a country where size matters (well, atleast in car-size) and the right of way is dictated by the number of political flags and stickers you have on your number-plate, there comes a ‘oasis in desert’ like moment when someone signal’s before changing lanes, and let’s a faster car pass by, so rare is this event that every time someone does this deed, you’d be tempted to stop them, kiss them and part with half your fortune. And this happens in the cities, don’t even get me started on what happens when you leave behind say the luxury of traffic signals and road-dividers, and as you may have guessed by now ‘all hell breaks loose’.

Over the years I have seen shows like ‘TopGear’ where in a man resembling a giant white gorilla by the name Mr.Jeremy Clarskon and his chimp-mates go on long 1000 mile(1600km) drives on their pre-historic cars bought for less then what they might use in fuel cost, and all throughout they have a rather smooth drive on smooth roads, yet cribbing about the transport authorities and how the power windows don’t work, but I have a feeling and a strong one at that, Mr.’jezza’ would not even dream of trying that here; and if at all he does go ahead by saying “how hard could it be”, he would be in a hospital before crossing the half way mark and his car would have been sold in bits, and ya he can’t even blame the authorities ‘cause then he’d be killed.

I have a dream and I say this from the bottom of my heart, I want a Anna hazare for the Indian automotive scene, only difference is he/she’d  should burn  more fuel for each day the demands are not met, anyway the point being I want a law to be passed empowering; if not me, every traffic cop to rip the horns out of any car found honking unnecessarily and engrave “I GOT MY _____ RIPPED OF” at the back of the car, trust me if this can’t stop the unnecessary honking nothing can, if you live in Mumbai you know what I am on about. it’s just the tip of the iceberg and we have a very long way before queuing is a norm and respecting other drivers and road-users won’t have to be forced upon.

The greatest driver the world has ever known, Mr.Rajni

I know I might sound and show a bad image here, but it isn’t all downhill as it may sound, driving here is like ‘chaos theory’ personified. It’s all wrong it’s all messed up…but somehow in a miraculous way everything just fits in right. Indian automotive scene has come a very long way since the economic flood gates opened up about two decades back, and we have the cars and the bling to be a respected automotive country, now all we need is some good drivers to drive them.


- JD

Revrange

Is there a point, really?

 Someone very great once said, “Common sense is so uncommon”, giggled at his own smart-assed punchline and promptly forwarded it to a couple of dozen of his buddies. All his creativity went down the stinking flush as he watched people buying stuff mentioned later here. He realized he had uttered something which people already knew and practiced. He realized it was all a bit pointless.

This got him really worked up. He gathered an army of like-minded aristocrats (which were two, on the last count!), had a deep, verbose two minute long conference about some of the most pointless things in the automotive world, spent the rest of his time chick spotting with them and got pig-drunk later.

He hated the recently launched Ford Figo. He hated the ersatz aura around the thing. He couldn’t really understand why autojocks fawned all over it, parking tons of awards up its understandably cavernous ass!  He had an overwhelming feeling that this car was like that kid in your class who was programmed to top every damn subject there was, but who wet his unmentionables at the first sight of the arena- the playground, where they rip your character down to who you really are. Apart from the irritating pretense, it looked plain ugly to his eyes (Upen Patel, according to him, had seen better days when he was about a month old!). He drove it and found it was about as involving as buttering toast and as much fun as chemotherapy! 

'Look Ma....I got an award for the cutest tire tread in my class!!!'

His hatred stemmed partially from the fact that he couldn’t stand the sight of whatever facelift they had done to the Endeavour: they could as well have painted it pink, put little flowers on the dash, teddies in the boot and called it Barbie! The makeover in this case and the whole car in the earlier one was what he regarded pointless. 

'HIS'

'HERS'

This brought him to the Volkswagen Beetle- widely regarded by a handful of people as second only to a certain George Bush, in terms of stupidity! He just couldn’t get his head round the fact that VW chose to drag an icon out of retirement and snatch away whatever semblance of dignity and masculinity it had only to replace it with a wuss of a machine! Charging 20 big ones for it just sealed its fate. Rich girl’s toy? No, he mused- If he ever had that sort of money to blow, he’d rather get himself the Chevrolet Cruze and spend the remainder on a snazzy paintjob and more beer!

He could not stop only at the cars. A couple of pints down, he ranted about the ridiculous technologies introduced in the recent history. “Why should there be a thing such as dual-zone climate control?” he bawled. He justified his outrage by explaining that he’d never come across a case where one person wanted to be in the Tundra while the other preferred the Gobi desert climate in the same damn vehicle! “There exists a temperature where everybody is comfortable. The tech for achieving this is called air conditioning. We get in the most basic of cars and guess what? It works!!! And we are all perfectly happy that the world is a better place!” 

Another example of techno-buffoonery gone wrong is ‘Night Vision’. It involves thermal sensors which project images to the screen on the center console enabling you to see in the dark. “You’ve got headlights”, four pints of beer screamed from within him,” put them ON!” In case you’ve damaged your headlights in a crash, they very thoughtfully provide a phone in the vehicle for you to dial help. There’s no question of zero network as you won’t be scaling the Himalayas in your Rs. 80 lakh uber saloon anytime soon. Ironically enough, this tech refuses to work until you’ve got your headlights on- as a safety measure! This was where the whole pack of cards tumbled. Conversely, he thought, it would be fun to cover the windshield and drive the thing using just the night vision- video game style!!

 “Why the LEDs?” our man slurred as the sixth pint disappeared down his throat. They look classy on an Audi because it’s got a point to prove; a point which says that you’ve arrived in life bigtime! Putting them on your Innova, coupled with that equally ridiculous blue neon lighting, doesn’t make you go any faster apart from making the poor vehicle look like a mobile brothel. “There’s a reason for making cars the way they are sold!!!” he banged his fists on every solid surface he could reach, “Why mess around with them?” Finally, the decals bothered him a bit. ‘Sportz’, ‘NOS’, ‘Racing’ et all look jarringly out of place beside ‘Sonu’, ‘Monu’, ‘Preeti’ and ‘Aai Babancha Ashirvaad’. On a car as family oriented as the Alto.

“Seriously”, he said, as the lights went out from his eyes,” is there really a point to it all?”

Great guy. True story. Respects.

-Abhishek Joshi

    Revrange