The Cro-Magnon Car

Ambassador from Hindusthan Motors, lovingly called Amby, is a car I hate. It is bulky, obnoxious, and belongs to a museum. It is the first car for many Indians, definitely the first Indian car for many Indians. The design is a based on the Morris Oxford of England. The Landmaster was how it was christened when it was first introduced in 1948, a year after the bloody Indian independence, or call it partial independence. Later on it became the Ambassador with versions called Mark 1, 2, 3, 4, and I think that is how far it has gone.

It is the Midnight’s Children of Indian cars; inextricably linked with the Indian nation, it’s psyche, it’s bourgeoisie, and it’s bureaucracy. It still remains, in this age of Japanese, Korean, American and French cars, a favourite with the Indian government, who somehow have a fetish for the colours white and black, no shades of gray here. My dislike of it started as an aesthetic issue and then, later, as I grew older, aware and mature, the dislike’s flora and fauna spread to engulf other issues of economics, politics and ideology. Let me clear the stigma from the word ideology, which really scares and scars me. The ideology I mean is something very personal, it is more like a principle that I have imbibed, inculcated from my assimilation as a political animal, that has changed with times, with knowledge, with emancipation of the soul, one could say cheekily. One more clarification is becoming unavoidable as I am taking the braves of Virgina Woolf to use these purloined words in their unhistorical contexts. I am a political animal and I would argue who isn’t? How can anyone who is a part of a nation state not be an implicit political animal? I can choose to be tacit with the way I dispense with my political thought and ration, but I can’t impinge on my self the word apolitical however distant fence sitter I choose to be on the issues of politics that touch my life every moment, that invade my personal spaces every now and then. Ironically, if this ideology of mine were to be poured into any set-in-stone moulds of ideological isms it would be incongruous, it would either sediment in the block or evaporate in the free air. I am a political animal without my asking or accepting. I am a political animal circumstantially.

Now, with that tricky part out of harm’s way I can continue with my rambling account of that unique car called the Amby. I was saying that my initial dislike was of an aesthetic nature; even a low priest of beauty like me couldn’t buy into the cult of the Amby. From the outside it looked like it had a permanent scowl of an ill-tempered man with a mid-life crisis. So many things about it doesn’t sit well with me: it belches (oh, even with its Bharat II or Euro III, or whatever environment clean chit it has got now, it still does); it groans; it stutters; it abuses; it bullies; it curses. In sum it is so unsavoury that my soul refuses to romance it. And this is not all, inside, the Amby has two once-in-the-living-room-left-in-the-garage-to-rot type sofa sets that are supposed to be the front and the rear seats. A 1920s Grundig valve system radio set looks more modern than the dashboard it sports. You have to wrestle with the wheel to go left or right and once you have done that you have to wrestle it back again to ensure going onward with your journey or it will keep going in a circle. The switch for the interior light looks like the designer ran out of his mediocre imagination, or maybe in a sudden burst of inspiration he was bitten by the White House being modeled after a middle class American home Americanism, and plucked a switch out from a domestic switchboard and stuck it there. In all, the incongruity was so congruous that it was a caricature for everything that the normative India stood for, in spirit—the bedraggled post partition confusion, the desperate search for an identity, the coming to terms with a new form of governance called democracy, the dousing of parochial identities that were raising their heads, especially in the North East, the unsure and the hostile borders with China and Pakistan (on both east and the west), the nascent Nehruvian Non Aligned foreign policy definition, the saner all-encompassing secular identity in favour of a mindless, bloody, partisan communal bigotry, the eagerness and haste of a debutante nation—they were trying times. The economic reality was like the sound of a paisa on a tin plate. In spite of the gyre that India found itself in it took some graceful defeats and bold decisions: the humiliating loss to China and the decision to develop its own mixed economy model (a little private enterprise and a more than little government owned enterprise, a little capitalism and a lot of socialism). A wise choice one should say for an agro-based, non-industrial, and largely poor country. It had decided to set sail on the course of self-reliance. And the Amby was the most visible icon of that self-reliance, a belief in a little private enterprise and a lot of government control. It gave rise to one of the biggest, the ugliest, and the most corrupt bureaucracies of the world and the found the Ambassador as its perfect motif. Much like India’s reality the Ambassador shed its colonial Morris Oxford Landmaster image to become the totally desi-bred Hindusthan Motors Ambassador. As India changed its gears from self-reliance to self-sufficiency to self-confidence so did the Ambassador from Mark I to II to III to IV. It clearly was the metaphorical wheels of the Indian nation in motion but more than just a metaphysical one. It is till date the perfect symbol of Indian protectionism that allowed its saplings of enterprise to flourish without being under the shadow of the foreign behemoths that would have killed the struggling sapling with lack of light or limelight. This went on till the 1990s when India cut loose from its my-well-is-my-ocean mirage or doctrine call what you may and invited the world to open their factories and shops. By this time the sapling of Indian enterprise had grown into strapping young tree with a head full of swaying ambition. The Ambassador too, irrespective of my irreverence, clung to the asphalt of the Indian roads with a dogged determination.

Born in the age of the flower power and Woodstock which had some of its strings attached to the mercurial ascendancy of Indian spiritualism, which was so much about the soul and the beauty and the peace, that no wonder I didn’t take well to that lump of a car. But, don’t get me wrong my pride in what it stood for is still not tainted or overshadowed by my eclectic euphemisms of beauty. It played its role in coming of age of a little boy back then in that 70s show. We, my family, never owned a car. Even now, technically, we don’t own one. I have a car but that is company provided. But some of our richer relatives, back then, did own cars and, you guessed it, they were mostly Ambys. The first time I got into a car, that is if I don’t include the taxi rides in Calcutta that I took with my father during the vacations from my suburban convent school, which were all, of course, Ambys, was during one of the Durga Puja festivals.

One can’t go further without talking a little about the grandest festival of the Hindu Bengali. It is a time to celebrate. It is a time for new clothes, new shoes and a long vacation from school or college or work. It is a time to bond with cousins near and far, with uncles and aunts hated and loved, and friends favourite and distant. It is a time for laughter and eating. It is a time when Calcutta, albeit the whole of Hindu Bengal, leaves its concerns on the shelves and chooses new clothes and smiles, instead, to cover them shortcomings and miseries. It is a rare time, especially for children, when joy knows no bounds. All curfews are lifted. They can roll in the bed and go to sleep as late as they want. The pre-winter sky dazzles brilliantly with torn white clouds sailing merrily along. The sun is slippery and aslant. The long-stalked and white kash flowers, that challenges the clouds their whiteness, sways from every patch of green that the city offers or guards. The sticky monsoon gives way to chilly evenings and chillier nights. It is excuse enough for Bengalis to be out with their woolens and monkey caps. The mornings smell different during these four days of the Durga Puja. That fragrance that I first smelt when I was a school-going boy still swirls in my nostrils. It smelt like all the flowers of the world had blossomed together. I don’t know whether I imagine this but there is a perpetual mist in the mornings and evenings, a mist of expectation, a mist of mirth. One lungful of those magical Puja days from my childhood has lasted me three decades. It is the smell of memories. It is the smell of love. Calcutta is one whole carnival. Everywhere you go there is rejoicing, there is the dancing drummers called dhakis, there are beautiful girls in white saris with red borders, there are flowers, there are incense sticks, and there is laughter.

As the golden twilight dims and the evening darkens, the city lights up in garlands of lights. The pandals, the temporary cloth and bamboo temples of worship, buzzes with the drumbeats calling life to come and join the revelry of the gods. People having rested the afternoon wear their new fashion for the world to see and they pour into the streets to harvest the night. It is time for visits to the pandals where the goddess Durga stands resplendent in her silk sari hitched on her mount, the lion, her ten hands fanning out, in each a different object, her big kohl-lined eyes opened wide with the sparkle that determination brings, to conquer the evil of evil ashuras, the Mahishashura, who lies bloody and defeated at her feet with the spear piercing his toned and muscled heart. The frenzied drums echo the mythological war cry like an incessant reminder, as mesmerised devotees stand in front of the Mother Goddess in reverence, deference and effervescence. This was Mother Durga’s annual visit to the home and abode of her father from the heavens, the earth.

Back then it felt as if I was walking through heaven. Our extended families gathered at my aunt’s home late in the evening and after a feast of the best Bengali cuisine we trooped out in a caravan of Ambassadors to hop from pandal to pandal to see the various artistic renditions of the Mother Goddess. Every pandal themselves were renditions of the great structures of the world: the Taj Mahal, the Sistine Chapel, the Blue Mosque and other such man-made structures. It transcended religion, culture and civilisation. It was one big human celebration. I sat in the darkened interior of my uncle’s Amby as it tediously wove through people and potholes of Calcutta shimmering with light, drowned in the drone of people. I looked out of the window and basked in the envy in the eyes of the less fortunate that trundled the streets with dusty feet; I felt privileged like some maharaja on a tour of his kingdom. I fell in love with the smell of the leather seats, the glow of the meters on the wooden dashboard, and the deep guttural groan of the car. I fell in love with the hand gear, the metal horn which was like a smaller steering within the steering wheel. I fell in love with the warmth of the bodies packed in. With all of this I also fell in love with my cousin Jhinuk, whose name means seashell. And though I never lifted the seashells to my mouth to whisper my love, it stayed with me for years. It mingles with all those memories and especially the memory of the ubiquitous, undaunted lump of a car lovingly called the Amby. For years after that Puja she was my favourite cousin number one, but sadly the Amby, as you must have realised fell from grace.

We might not, but love finds us

Love, like Winnie the Pooh, and this is one of my favourite quotes, just is. It is out there much before we become aware of it as love. It is out there much before we can define it as love. It is out there much before we dedicate it to someone as love. The moment we have sprung the stages of toddling and taken our first independent strides we walk through it without knowing what it means or what the consequences will be. We are not purloined by this much-abused theme of love as extolled in books. However ancient the theme of love might be, we all discover it once again for the first time, unlike the wheels. So there I was walking blindly into it without knowing what I was walking into, till much later when my mind dug the roots of atavism. From then on I have been chased by love as much as I have been chasing it. But that first time remains hallowed, secret and novel. I was barely out of my toddling days, barely into school, barely into my first arousal when it found me, love. She was barely a few years elder to me, this neigbour of mine, when I felt the first stirrings, as I now realise of that feeling of love. I used to, fascinated by her charms and brownilocks, hold on to her little hands with my littler hands till parents do us part. And from her reciprocation, that I still remember, she held on to mine with as much devotion. This is a recollection of my first love so I presume it would be difficult to tell this tale without flaw. I am sure they are fraught with embellishments and adornments of my adult fantasy, that I believe you will forgive. Back from school done with my chores of undressing and eating and cleaning up under my mother’s hawk-eyed supervision I would hop over to hers. And, then it was bliss. Nothing I remember smelled as good as her. Nothing I remember looked as beautiful as she. In my adult life love has had so many expressions, at times a tribulation, at times bitterness, at times a searing pain, at times an earthly shudder of ejaculation, at times a greed of the flesh (not to be confused with lust). But what could it have been, then, at that age? We hadn’t really discovered the pleasure of sex or poetry. We hadn’t discovered the art of writing or kissing, either. We hadn’t mastered these worldly things that were the essentials in the caravan of love. We hadn’t, but I suspect, our hearts did, our humanness did, our DNA did. So the chemicals must have been produced and ejected into our innocent bloodstreams. Our brains must have processed the information that the synapses sang and undoubtedly it ordered our little minds and bodies to perform on the altar of love. It must have urged our little souls to discover that one thing which is the most precious of human belongings, longing. And, as my memory now prompts, it did. One hot afternoon, after school we ran, our hands clasped tight and our strides matched. We ran into a small hut that stored the red clay for the tennis courts of the club. It was there that we gave in to our heavenly gift with our mortal ministrations. Oh, I know what the books say and what Sigmund Freud said about, penis envy and curiosity and all that. This recollection however faded is not jaded. We did touch each other with our little fingers and learned our first lessons in longing but I remember clearly that it was not mere you show yours I will show mine kind of a thing. It was clearly not just a precursor to sex. It was an act divined to touch the depth of the most beautiful human feeling ever. I don’t remember how many times we had soiled our clothes with the red earth and it is not important either. In my mind it was one big Lila (I am sorry I don’t have an English equivalent of that unique word). Later till time took away our innocence and scattered it amongst the nooks and crannies of life, which we call growing up, we continued to clasp our little hands in tight embraces. Then things started to happen, my voice broke to a croak, her bad hair days started and changes occurred thick and fast and we became strangers. I think we even forgot about it all. No, not out of shame or deliberation but because of the nature of growing up, as other things more immediate caught us in its swirl and lifted us in to the real world where we traded our innocence for guile and paid the cost with this memory. I don’t really know what it was that we must have felt then. Was it love is a question that still begs an answer. I don’t want to speculate or wager because I know that even if we didn’t find love then, I am sure, love found us.

Crossing the line

At any given moment I cross a thousand lines, a million moralities, a billion norms. If anyone were to ever take a hike inside my mind at any moment they would judge me, try me and finally crucify me. If they were to take that journey within their own minds, they would deny, they would lobotomize, they would hide themselves from those sinful thoughts that generate on their own, and most of them, poof, disappear moments later, maybe for lack of encouragement or scope of practicality.

I thought the other day of making love to this colleague of mine. All she did was bite her full swollen lips in a particular way (which she does when she is considering something) and when she turned her breasts were straining against her dress in a way the threads gave way to the shape of the nipple. Just a moment, a miniscule moment; in real time a few seconds and in my mind a few more, but I crossed the line. In reality I told her, you could come to me whenever you need.

A friend of mine looked remorse and sad. After a lot of probing— you know how you have to sometimes coax and cajole to get people’s secret out which they are dying to share but wait for ritual before they do— he told me with overpowering sadness in his voice that he had broken off with his girlfriend. Immediately I felt happy and thought, oh finally, she is available. In reality I told him, I think everything happens for a purpose and I am sure you will find your true soul mate.

A relation of mine was sitting on the bed and as she stooped down to pick up a fallen article her breasts dangled free in those precious few moments before she sat up. I was thinking within those precious few moments of holding her breathing breast in my hand dancing to a swaying music. In reality I said, the other day at the party that prick was ogling at your breasts like crazy.

I think we all have these thoughts of sinner. They are pernicious, they are debasing, but they are delicious. I think we all have these crossings but we once we cross we forget them, we move on feeling cleaner till the next nano-second. I am strange, and you are stranger. I collect them and keep the subplots alive; you hide them because you feel dirty. Though all of these wild musings happen within the protected and reserved forests of our mind, we still leave behind clues, no matter how like a skilful tiger we have tread the vegetation; a leaf trampled here, a twig broken there. If you notice all the things I actually said immediately after these occurrences, they had some connect to the liberty my mind had had taken. If you are thinking I am the devil you have got it, because you are a devil too. Hey, what line did you cross right now?

When The Streets Have No Direction

To be around in this oppressive humidity is by itself quite an achievement. The sky it seems is sagging with its own weight and pressing down, making it harder to breathe (I wonder if the band Maroon 5 ever came to this part of the world when they coined the song ‘Harder to Breathe).

As we huff and puff in this stranglehold of heat, losing our frail tempers, our soft constitutions buckling under exhaustion, it is amazing to see the frail beggar kids, shirtless, on the streets of Dhaka tapping the windows of waiting cars hoping for a crumb of sympathy to come their way, and when they do come, to see the smiles tear their faces and their deep, not-so-innocent eyes return the blaze to the sun, as if saying, ha, see how I dance under your condescending rays. Defiance and pride wash their faces, as does the dripping rivulets of sweat.

And while I swear, even in the comfort of conditioned air in my Toyota Corolla, outside brave lovers meet and their fingers, eyes and breath consummate another little oath, another little promise of endless love under the swaying Deodars planted systematically on the Zia Udyan, named after erstwhile ruler of Bangladesh, General Zia, the one who proclaimed freedom. What an epithet, what a bloody legacy to be connected to the word, freedom. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, goes a song. But these legacies are in chains: they have lost this country a rightful ownership to history as warring legacies can’t say the words: Your truth is not my truth but your truth is as true as mine; is all we have to say. Is that so difficult?

But, Love is bliss, unlike Ignorance it doesn’t bury the reality. Love is bliss because it gives you the courage to pave a path of happiness even through the squalor of mistrust, disagreement and lies. Love is so blessed that it is wrong to quarantine it within the four walls of fidelity. Why shouldn’t love be cast far and wide? Why should we be misers when sharing love? Why shouldn’t my love, every kind of love, be sowed in any and every heart that we want to sow it in? It is self-defeating and an oxymoron to chain love to the bedposts of eternity. So, even if sometimes in our lives we have been able to honestly love for just a moment or few, we should be glad, because that feeling will always be eternal. Relationships may not be, but love is. So judging a love affair with just length of time of a relationship is cruel. I have fallen in love so many times, and more than most times the ones that I have fallen in love with didn’t even know that they have been subjects of a stranger’s love.
And those Loves live in me, they will eternally. In that sense I am a thief. I have robbed beauty of so many passing faces just to love them within the confines and in the luxury of my heart. I am a thief but these are not crimes because there was honesty in those thefts; I did fall in love in those miniscule moments. Those lovers in Zia Udyan and many like them anywhere in the world, when they whisper those eulogies to love they are eternal proclamations of love. And that is the freedom that love bears within its womb.

Just like the sun in the Dhaka sky succumbs and accepts the freedom of rain bearing clouds to lash the earth with their welcome spray, and a chorus of voices go up mingling with the descending droplets of rain: eshechay, kaal boishaki eshechay (it’s here, the kaal boishakhi is here). And suddenly the sky drowns, a whole river flows above; the water caresses those children’s faces at traffic intersections, and, maybe, drenches those lovers in the park as they rush to take cover under the nearest Deodar; the man’s chance of chivalry presents itself, he wraps an arm around the woman and ties his handkerchief like a bandana on her head: she rewards him by pressing her body and the softness of her breasts against his wet open chest. Droplets of love inundate his heart. They look up, I look up, many others look up and some curse.

At that moment so many things happen, one leading to another: my car swivels unexpectedly to avoid a pothole, the car following in the lane beside us adjusts to avoid hitting my car and bumps into a rickshaw in the outer lane, the rickshaw overturns, passengers fall in the muddy cesspool that will soon become a river, bystanders with any and all kinds of covering, from a bona fide umbrella to a makeshift plastic, gather around the car and remonstrate with the driver, the driver blames my car as he pulls down his window, the rain kisses his cheek first and slowly gushes in like a frivolous lover and totally wets him, people gathered around laugh at the spectacle, the driver laughs too, relieved, I smile, my driver avoids my eye.

My car windshield suddenly swells up with water. The wipers hum happily, more in mirth than out of duty. A pushcart comes and stands beside me at the last traffic signal before I hit my office. The coolies pushing the pushcart are dripping wet. I look at them brazenly and they look back at me. One of them smiles and his teeth light up like a thousand windows in the darkness of his face. Somewhere inside a voice says, turn around, we needn’t go to work today. My mind harks back to those schooldays when we expectantly waited outside the study hall, looking down at the courtyard, expecting a declaration that rarely came by because the day scholars like the pushcart wallahs didn’t let the rain tame them, and it all depended on their percentage attendance, the fate of our Rainy Day Holiday.

It gets darker by the minute and the streets all look confused not knowing anymore where they are headed. My car enters the garage of my office and I reluctantly get swallowed up by the building and resign myself to another day of routine retinue of campaigns, television commercials, strategies etc.

The rain, though, keeps pouring inside of me.