The highway, my way.
It was the summer of 79 in Ranchi, Bihar and in many other places around the world. I was eight, and my little sister was six. My father taught Vishi how to drive and we set off, seven of us, in an Ambassador Mark 3, from Ranchi to Guruvayur (and back). For those who don’t know what that means, it means 4800 km of driving on the National and State Highways of 1979. My father, my mother and Vishi, my father’s PA and our dear friend, drove the hell out of those 4800 kms without fear. We had two accidents that could have ended it all. Fortunately, fate intervened in the shape of water in one ditch at the bottom of a steep embankment and in the shape of a large stone on a hairpin bend with a steep fall. I remember those accidents vividly. I will never know what my mother or Vishi felt or saw as they were happening. Luckily for me, I can guess. Read on and I’ll tell you why.
That trip taught me a lot. My first memory of random human kindness comes from the lorry driver who pulled us out of aditch in Orissa. The embankment was steep and deep and his rope wasn’t long enough to tow us without his truck risking a fall itself. He, and some others that he had collected, tugged at the car to get it up to a point where it could then be towed. When it was all done, my father offered him some money. This was the first time i heard the words “insaan insaan ka kaam nahin ayega toh kaun ayega?.” I have no idea what his name was. I remember his orange pagdi and his lungi. My respect and fondness for sardars started that day.
The second accident bored a hole in the oil sump. It happened somewhere between Gundlupet and Sultan Battery. I am one of the few people who got to know what an oil sump was at the age of eight. I am also one of the few people who got offered a beer by their father at the age of eight. Anyway, the sump was leaking and we had limited time to figure out a way to fix it lest the engine cease due to overheating. My father explained this whole thing to me while he was driving, trying to find a mechanic. Vishi was shocked out of his wits because he was driving when the accident happened. He sat in the back, scared that someone would say something hurtful. No one did. We were a team.
We met a mechanic who had seen enough to know that desperate government servants with family in tow could be fleeced in moments of need. He said a few things that my father wasn’t too impressed with. I can’t remember what. Much to everyone’s surprise, like Dhoni leaving it till the last over, my father moved on. With a leaking oil sump!. A few kilometres down the line, he found another mechanic who used basic science to fix the problem until we could get the sump welded in a city. He used soap to seal the sump to the extent possible. He got us some engine oil and we were on our way again. Leaking, but leaking less.
Since my parents were government servants, we had decent guest house accommodation all along our journey. We didn’t need guest houses once we reached the South. Every city had someone who would receive us with open arms. Vishakapatnam, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mysore and Madras on the way back. Relatives and friends were intrigued that we would undertake such an adventure. Well, we didn’t have much of a choice. The man wanted to do it and we trusted the man. If I was asked to pick someone who would undertake such a journey with their family and a 2 month old neo-driver, with everything I know today, I would pick my father ahead of anyone else. He did so many crazy wonderful things that I find it tough to talk about him without sounding like I am peddling my “my dad is better than yours’ story. He was a super guy in many ways and not so super in some others.
We did many, many trips in the years that followed. Madras — Guruvayur about 5 times. Once in a Morris Minor, stuck in Nilambur for the better part of two days. Great mechanics saved the day yet again. Hyderabad- Trichur via Bangalore and Mysore about 8 times, if not more.
It was when the Hyderabad trips started that I started driving. Legally that is. The first trip was the most fun. I was young enough to press the pedal without a second thought and caring enough to know that one wrong move would mean a mangled family if not a dead one. All eggs in one basket.
Early 1999. The last time that we drove together as a family. Mother, father, daughter and son. I was back home for a vacation, pretty sure that I would leave the USA for a stint at home very soon. We had done thousands of kilometres on Indian roads by then, but nothing would prepare me for what happened that night.
We left early because we had planned to reach Mysore without an overnight halt in Bangalore. Our chariot was a second hand Tata Estate that was suspect at best. But we were the Swiss Family Robinson. It was possibly 3.30 when we left Secunderabad. It happened a few kilometres after Shahabad, I was driving at about 60–65 kmph. We were behind a truck. I always kept enough distance just in case. But this happened as I was swerving to overtake the truck. He braked. And I braked instantaneously. His brake worked and mine didn’t. I swerved to avoid the hit and I avoided it. I couldn’t have gone to the left of the truck because I was committed to overtaking. No option sometimes is the best option. I barely managed to get the car out of that situation before a speeding car stared at me from the other side. I had just enough time to swerve back in front of the truck and I hoped to God that the brakes would work. I believed in a God back in the day. They didn’t. I pumped the brakes like a madman. Nothing happened. All I knew was that I had everything important to me in that car. No one said a thing. My guess is that my sister and mother were sleeping in the back until I exclaimed when the hand brake failed. i don’t know for sure. Luckily for me the rest of the road in front was empty. Once the truck overtook me, I started snaking around the full breadth of the highway to reduce my speed. No accelerator, no brake, just the steering wheel. When I had reduced to about 20, I guess, I turned the car almost 180 degrees on the mud. We stopped.
I can’t remember what my father said, but it must have been something to the effect of “Arrebhai. Kamaal kar diya”. The shock was wearing off as we waited at the Shahabad station for a train back to Secunderabad. It struck me that I had seen something of what Vishi and Amma had seen in 1979. 20 years after we first set out, we folded our cards and cashed our chips. Engine oil leak then, Break oil leak now. We were on a train to Kerala within days. We never talked about it again.
