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