April 25, 2012

 
Prologue
 
At the age of 28 my brother had died in a car crash. He worked for a large Government company in Bangalore as an Electrical Engineer. When I was a little boy, he used to walk me to school two kilometers away by holding my one hand firmly because I, six years junior to him, was the naughtiest brat in the family; I had the habit of breaking into a mindless run onto the middle of the road without the slightest warning. Often, he made fun of my strange habits: my unplumbed fear of needles and house-mice. Once he got a job, I had found a source in him to nag for stuff; although, Father never appreciated me asking my brother for expensive branded t-shirts and denims and so on. Father believed that brands were just a show-off. He was incredibly proud of my brother. Both he and Mother who were approaching their sixties had now managed to do what was every parent’s worst nightmare: they had outlived their child.
 
While returning from a Friend’s wedding party, in his Hyundai, a truck driven by an intoxicated driver, crashed into him. He was believed to have been killed instantly; although, I often wonder about that claim. The stretch of the road where the accident took place was away from the city; there weren't many vehicles or people around. I'm not aware how much time exactly it had taken for help to reach him. I had however seen the unrecognizable Hyundai in the pictures of the accident that appeared on the following day's newspaper. It seemed like during the last few seconds, my brother had slammed the brakes and swerved the vehicle hard to the left, but the impact was so colossal that it had nevertheless killed him.
 
I am often haunted by the thoughts of his final moments.
 
I later learned that the truck driver was arrested and the Hyundai was dispatched to a scrap yard.
 
Father had to travel 300 kilometers away to Bangalore, to bring his son’s body to perform the last rites.
 
 
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This story is neither about my Brother, nor about his ill-fated Hyundai. This story is about my Father's car--a white 1990 Maruti 800. Appa had kind of inherited it, which had nothing to do with family. One of Appa's friends owed him a little money, a few thousand rupees, for many years. Appa is not someone who would ask for the return of money (or anything for that matter once lent), because according to him, it defied principles of 'good will'. The friend in this case was a little exceptional and remembered the debt. He felt he could strike a deal with Appa by offering his old battered car which had survived the country roads for several years of dust and rain, not to mention a couple of accidents.

Appa spent a good amount of his hard earned moolah (more than what his friend owed him plus the interest) in a garage, to a mechanic, to an automobile spare parts dealer, and to whom else who knows, to make the 800 which was almost destined to be teared down as scrap metal, again, road-worthy.
 
Appa practiced driving (he had always owned a scooter but never a car), got his driver's license for a four-wheeler, and was off on the road enjoying his 'new' bride - a pristine white, 20 year old Maruti 800, who had now undergone a makeover which could put both the Hollywood film actresses and world-renowned cosmetologists to shame.
 
Appa drove his car with fervent emotions and ardent love. He used it almost everyday with utmost loyalty. The wheel was as hard as a rock and one would require the energy of a baby elephant to rotate, and I often wondered how Appa, a person of small build, maneuvered the vehicle. The brake and the clutch and the accelerator were all so impossibly stubborn. The car would break down on the narrow roads with two-way traffic without a warning, it would suddenly stop moving and refuse to budge on an upward slope, its wipers would never work in the ‘rainy season', and nearly half the year could be termed so in the coastal town where I lived. Yet Appa religiously took his car to everywhere. Not just to the local co-operative bank where he worked, but to every errand he had to meet during the day, every single wedding, baby shower and funeral that he attended.
 
On occasions where he needed company, he made sure he did have one. Mother went with Appa invariably to weekly temple visits and to weddings and funerals. Both my Brother( whenever he visited us during his work holidays) and I, were asked to lodge ourselves unceremoniously in the backseat. Any visiting uncles and aunts were invited to join the car-party. The couple who lived in a portion of the house, my Appa had to-let, accepted generous rides in the car. Not to be left behind, random pedestrians to the market on regular errands were offered free rides.
 
During the time of my brother's death, the 800 had been with Appa for over two years braving through a million garage visits and repeated replacements of virtually irreplaceable spare parts. The mechanic thought that the car was really beyond repair, but never said so for the fear of losing business and also because he didn't want to disappoint Appa. For a few months before he died, my brother had been pestering Appa to invest in a new car where he promised to pay the down payment and the subsequent installments. But like my requests for branded clothes, the need for a new car was termed by Appa as unnecessary, and 'show-off', because a car's duty was to run on a road ferrying people in its belly which his 800 did 'fabulously'. At least that's what he believed. Moreover, Appa didn't want to burden my brother with the scary, ghost-like monthly car-loan installments; he feared it will have an impact on Brother's future marriage. For there were chances that such an arrangement might be disliked by my brother's future wife and lead to an unhealthy situation in the family. In hindsight, this was Appa's wishful thinking. Because my brother died before he could select a wife and get married.
 
At this point it becomes important to talk about my mother. She had always been weary about the car which looked fresh out of a museum, and Appa's driving skills, which he had picked up quite late in life. But commonsense told her that anyone and anything could drive and be driven around on Indian roads (the only ones she was ever practically exposed to in her life), therefore she had always played along. Even on the day when Appa and she had driven to the airport an hour and half away braving the hilly roads and insane July rain, to drop off the neighborhood aunty who was flying to Dubai to see her daughter. It was a day to remember because the 800 had broken down a record number of times that evening, the wipers had given up totally so the car had to be parked by the roadside for a stretch of every one kilometer to have the rainwater manually wiped off the windshield in order to clear the view. On the way back from the airport the sun had set and the incessant rains caused one of the headlights to go boom. For Mother, there was a lot more to thank God for on that day, when she and Appa finally made it home unscathed.
 
However, when my Brother died on that ill-fated day in an auto-accident, all hell broke lose. Mother cried for days out of grief for losing her older son. She cursed the car (or was it the truck?), that had killed him. When like a good Hindu family we arranged for a Uttara Kriya for Brother the thirteenth day after his death, and had to invite family and friends for the same, Mother refused to let me or Appa to use the car. We had to use my Appa's scooter to visit the family and friends who stayed close-by. For the distant ones, cards were couriered except in one or two occasions when Appa traveled by bus to give away the invites.
 
On the day of Uttara Kriya, we had to travel to Appa's ancestral village in the wee hours of the morning for a ritual that included a traditional pooja seeking eternal peace of my Brother's departed soul and then immersing his ashes in the river. As we had to set out very early and there would be no bus available at that time, Appa decided to bring out the 800 which was in a two-week hiatus in the car-shed. I looked at Mother expecting protests but found her completely absorbed in sadness, with that look of solitary desolation where she had inadvertently resigned to fate.
 
Appa refused when I offered to drive and we set off with him at wheels. After an hour's drive we reached the temple in the ancestral village and in the next hour the formalities were completed with the aid of a priest. With a heavy heart we bid a final good-bye to my brother whom I was never ever going to see again and started our journey back home. When I silently observed my parents I realized in what a pity state my brother had left them and continued on his journey to the next world. Appa, a diabetic, had aged a few years in the last couple weeks. His eyes were stone because he possibly with-held shedding tears for too long for the fear of wrecking my mother further. Mother couldn't come into terms with her child's passing. And suddenly I realized that I who was always branded as a kid of the family, had now in a matter of minutes become someone on whom all hopes rested. I was the only living child of my parents. But Appa insisted that he was bent but not broken and was still in control. I wasn't sure I believed him anymore.
 
The return journey was more horrendous than I had imagined. Appa was still at the wheel and had to labour more than usual to avoid bumping into a cow, a rickshaw, and even a bus. Mother sat through without moving a muscle. There were a few additions to the travel-party on the way back. Appa's two brothers, a sister, and a child had joined us. When the travel-party finally reached home I noticed from the corner of my eye, Lobo, a neighbor, observing us with undisguised amusement. Appa parked the 800 outside the gate and a little army got out of its swelling belly in no particular sequence. I was able to guess that Lobo was trying to get a head-count of the occupants.
 
We had a memorial the same day for my brother in a public hall at some distance from my house. There would be a short speech by two gentlemen who were family friends and knew my brother from close proximity, followed by a traditional lunch on plantain leaves for four hundred guests. Appa was a popular person in the town and it was expected that many mourners would turn up to pay their customary respects to my brother.
 
I was asked to ferry the guests in my home to the venue by Appa when he himself rushed there on his scooter to oversee the arrangements. I filled the 800 with the first batch of people and cruised the streets of my little town to traverse the distance of a kilometer and half. When the first batch was dropped off, I returned to fetch the second group, which included Mother, her 3 sisters, the tenant couple and their 3 year old child. It was a Saturday. The town was busier than usual and five minutes into the street we were stuck in a traffic jam. When the road ahead cleared for movement, I released the brakes and pressed the accelerator but the car wouldn't move. It had gone into an instant comatose stage in the middle of the road blocking the traffic flow behind me. There were several loud honks but no matter how much hard I pressed the accelerator or veered the gears into different positions, the car wouldn't budge an inch. The aunts were telling me to start the car and take off - as if this car was only waiting for me to move my little finger before racing through the road. A few shop owners who were watching this mid-day drama came to my aid. Someone said there was possibly something wrong with the 'point', whatever that meant. Somebody opened the bonnet and fixed a wire. Someone said something about releasing the clutch and brakes slowly.
 
After a demonstration of a mini Herculean effort, the car finally moved. There was this terrible noise coming from the engine though. It kept coming at intervals of few seconds. One of my aunts suspected that the car was going to blow into bits as if it were in a bomb blast and insisted on getting off and walking the group to the hall. Curious onlookers watched this specimen of a noisy car that rattled along the street. Ten minutes later we were at the venue.
 
Appa suspected that the 800 had overworked that day and asked me to park it in shade and keep the bonnet open to let it cool down. It was a hot, dry day in March, and perhaps the aging car did need some rest.
 
After the ceremony when we reached home, a sudden idea formed in my mind. I called my friend Shiva and explained my plan. It took some cajoling to have him agree. That evening, after dark, the 800 was parked outside the gate in front of my house. It wasn't an uncommon sight and it stayed there overnight most times. Thieves wouldn't be particularly interested in stealing a car that was only worth as much. They'd rather invest their effort into something that would yield better results. All I had to do was silently put the keys back into the ignition when nobody was watching.
 
The next morning came and when Appa came out of the house he was perplexed to see the vacant spot in front of the gate. He tried to refresh his memory on where he'd parked the car the previous night and checked the car-shed. The 800 had disappeared into thin air. For a while he suspected that someone must have borrowed it (without asking), but when neither the car nor any news of it came through during the rest of the day, he slowly got convinced that the unthinkable had happened. His car was stolen. Only thing I were thankful to was him not raising a doubt on how the keys had miraculously disappeared from the drawer. He had completely forgotten that he'd left them there in the first place. A complaint was lodged in the Police Station.
 
Appa often kept talking about his car. He couldn't believe the thief could have driven it to a great distance from the house. He cited the example of his old Bajaj scooter theft a few years ago. It was again a used scooter Appa had bought from someone and which would start only when he kicked it. Once he had left the scooter on the road along with the keys and was visiting a grocer. A sly thief had attempted to steal the scooter. It didn't take him long to discover what a bad idea it was because the wretched vehicle broke down on the middle of the road and no amounts of kicks would start it again. The thief had fled abandoning the scooter a few kilometers from where he had picked it up.
 
On Appa's request, the Police did look for an abandoned car in the neighborhood, strangely, none was found. Both Appa and the Police gave up their quests after a few weeks. Appa never forgot his car though - he kept talking about it often amidst family conversations.
 
 
Epilogue
 
It's been close to 6 months since my brother died. His absence is very much felt in my household but Appa's health has improved owing to the fact that he no more needs to battle with a stubborn car on a daily basis. My mother heaved a sigh of relief the day the car was stolen and has forgotten all about it. I have started working as a Site Engineer for a construction company. I hope to save some money and fulfill my brother's wish of buying a new, nice car for Appa. 
 
Shiva once told me that the 800 was still alive, in the neighboring town. On that night he and my couple of other friends drove the car to a friend's place, a country-house just outside the town, and hid it in the barn where they stored grains. They waited for a couple of weeks until they could bribe a RTO officer to get a new number plate along with registration papers. Although Shiva said all these expenses and the risk were not worth the trouble, he had to do it for my sake. I wonder who drives the car in the next town now. If I meet that person someday, I would like to say a quiet 'Hello', and 'Thank you'.