Cars & Company....

Okay, I need a wife.....and a car...

No, that’s kind of wrong…. I need a jeep and I need company…..

Yeah….that makes some kind of sense…..I guess….

I mean, they go together, yeah? Like when you’re single, you have a bike and you are usually broke….and then you get a girl and you eventually move towards a car and then a flat and get more broke and stuff like that…..

I am always the contrary one…..so I got myself a thunderbird when I was younger…..

Am older now, so a car maybe……naaah, I want a jeep…..

The women, you ask? They’re company…….cant figure out how to decide which one I want or will do for me……jeeps, cars, bikes – they’re easy……women, not really….I mean, you cant really test drive a woman and then decide, yeah?

And before you get married, women can seriously confuse you and themselves that a test drive doesnt seem enough.......you end up thinking of insurance......COMPREHENSIVE insurance from all the mistakes you might make!!!!

However, I just took a test drive on the Mahindra Invader…… boy, it was cool……but its gonna get cooler….its the platform vehicle for the Inspira, you see……

You don’t??

Okay, lemme explain…..

My latest obsession is with the customised Mahindra Inspira – the Indian version of the Jeep Wrangler……its time, I bought a car and of course, me being yours truly……it will have to be something that stands apart from the crowd…… of course, at times, considering my size, I am a crowd…..

Anyway, observe my thunderbird…….when initially bought, it was one of the most expensive motorcycles in India and the first proper cruiser…….not satisfied with that, I further modified it as you can see in the pics below…. I built it to resemble the lean harley chopper with the high back and the pulled back handlebars…..plus a few other things….

So, it’s kind of like obvious that I will want something similar when I buy a car…..

A jeep is what I want…..a modified, customised one at that…….like the Inspira….

So here it goes…….everyone I know has bought a car ……. Thus, no reason why I should not, yeah?

Rahul states in horrified tones that driving in delhi is madness………I’ll kind of agree with that…..driving anywhere in India is madness…….which is why I disliked driving in the west……its too sane!!!

At times, Rahul reminds me of my relations in Jorhat and other sleepy towns in Upper Assam. They are filled with people 68 years old who were going to do something big in their lives but waited till it was safe. Now it is safe and they are 68 years old.

It’s the same with driving…..you cant wait till all the streets are clear and all the traffic lights are green….. You just have to make the most of what you get…..

Indians are possibly the most accomplished drivers in the world, followed closely by the Portuguese, the Greeks and the Italians……..well, the order is interchangeable but the singular first place is held by Indians…..

Driving in any city in India is a dog-fight pure and simple…….right back to the days of WWII when the British, American and German pilots slugged it out over the English Channel and the fields of Normandy, the idea of a dog fight meant exactly what it says……a fight for simple survival where the enemy can pop out of any damn where and you better have your ears, eyes and every sense attuned and alert for any change in the present circumstances…..you can expect the same on any Indian road and the enemy might turn out to be little boys, men, women, animals and other vehicles of any random order to pop out anywhere and at anytime……

Therefore, If you want to drive in India, you better be good…….

Its the ultimate challenge for any driver to simply get to his destination…….you can jump lanes, even borders and curbs, go up wrong ways, take illegal u-turns, double park and everything else that you aren’t supposed to do……in essence, traffic in india is still in its adolescence while the rest of the world has reached senility!!!

So anyway, after that soporific digression, to the main issue…..the meat, as it were;

At law school, life was hard enough what with lack of funds, resources, so I would dream about having this open top convertible or a beast of a jeep where I could sit up high and good and scare the shit out of anything smaller on the road…..

So, when I saw the Inspira, I was hooked……

Built on the above mentioned Mahindra Invader platform, it has a stupendous amount of customized add-on’s…….the price is a bit steep, but hell I waited like 10 years to get here, so fuck I’ll be deterred by price now…..

The handling is much smoother than I expected but the ride is still that of a jeep…..ready to take on anything…..the gear handle is a little short and the steering wheel a tad small for such a large vehicle, but those are cosmetic changes…..so off I went…..

I laughed at the pot holes in lado sarai and scared the living daylights out of drivers on the moolchand flyover…..the company representative sitting next to me was willing to agree to everything I said, as long as I didn’t ask him to let go of the crash bar and the door clutches…..

My neighbours asked me when I was buying the jeep and I told them not for the next 6 months or so……

I mean, as I told panks today……its not just about going out to the showroom and just picking up a car or any product and then saying its yours and you wanted it….. ANYONE can do that….

You have to wait for it……plan for it, save for it……even if you have the money, you should savour the delicious taste of the wanting, the desire to possess should completely overwhelm you…..and then you should weigh the merits and the demerits…..

I have joined at least three different online forum’s for car aficionado’s and jeep owners…….posted threads about this specific jeep asking about its performance, its qualities etc….

Over the next 6 months, I would date this car, get snaps, probe, test ride and do all in my power to check it out from every possible angle or manner of thought…..Loan options, saving schemes, everything that could possibly give me more information or means to completely own this magnificient vehicle…..

Madness you say……obsession I say…..and it is better to obsess than to merely possess…..

Well, its easy to write about machines……but as for the company, the wife etc etc…....

I guess, I’ll just stay silent on that one……for now !!!