Most women have to be led kicking and screaming away from their old car.
BMU 7757. The registration number of a sky-blue Baby Hindustan. A family car, circa 1965. It featured in family photographs. The parents and two kids standing besides its small hulking form. A sundry dog waiting to get in. The baby soon to be delivered.
Till one day, the Ambassador arrives. In trendy two-tone colours. And the Baby Hindustan changes hands. While father and son swarm all over the new car, and efficiently hand over papers and keys of the Baby to its new owner, mother and daughters come out to take one last look, eyes all wet, voices just this side of sobbing. The new Baby owner looks a bit aghast. His wife, however, tells them - we’ll look after it well.
Suddenly the family, circa 1979, spots the Baby – in Pune. Follow it, follow it, they cry out. Father and son awestruck by the fact that it’s still around and has made it up the hairpin bends of the Bhor Ghat. Mother and daughters simply wanting to see its face again.
And so it goes on. We’re in the next century now. Women do talk of differentials and gear boxes and bhp or whatever. They eye new models, they’re all for upgrades. But when it comes to parting with the first car, suddenly it feels like you’re trading in your old nanny for a washing machine.
My neigbour, confined for a week to a hospital bed, asks her husband to delay handing over their old car – she wants to get home and take one last look. Say goodbye. Actually. She loves the new upgrade he’s opted for, and she talks knowledgeably about how 1.4 is so much better on the Expressway than 800 and all that, but when she’s back home and the new car stands proudly in the drive way, she gives it the ignore – she hasn’t made friends with it yet and she won’t, till the old one’s been mourned enough.
That’s how it is with us. It starts, the misgivings and the sadness, right from when you first talk of changing cars. Women are known (seriously) to whisper urgently: “not now”– if men talk about the new car while driving the old one.
I made a down payment on a new car this week. The feel of power- steering clinched the deal for me. I returned home in my 5-year-old car. It was pouring. The first rain of the season. I was dry, warm and moving. In my old car. And I felt guilty as hell. Suddenly the steering wheel didn’t feel so tough on the arms anymore.
A day earlier, I’d made a deal for the old car. Great price. Horrible feeling. The image of the old car being led quietly away, to make place for the new set of wheels – it simply slayed me. I ran a slight fever that night. Really.
It is so much easier for men, god bless their pragmatic souls. A new car doesn’t just happen to them. While they may adore their car, they’ve got all their senses out there, figuring the next upgrade. So when they do make the switch over, they’re not prone to blubber and take to their beds.
(Why cars, a policeman recently visited when I’d had a house break-in. Looking at my slightly shabby 11-year-old dog (who’d slept through the break-in) he said: “Madam, abhi naya ley lo – Doberman, Alsation - yeh abhi kaam ka nahi hai. Kitna din chalayega isko?”)
Thank god for this balancing-out practicality. Or we’d be going nowhere. With Upgrading men by our sides, we learn to move on. And we are gently prevented from stalking the new owners of our old cars.
It’s even worse for us when an old car is to be junked. Visions of just the chassis sitting in some yard – with the soul all gone - haunt us. I once saw a cat had given birth to kittens in the back seat of an abandoned car. It felt good – like the car hadn’t been totally abandoned.
Can we be accused of horrible sentimentality? Of anthropomorphizing what is, after all, a piece of metal? Maybe. What to do.
We console ourselves that our old cars are happy in the Great Showroom in the Sky.
BMU 7757. The registration number of a sky-blue Baby Hindustan. A family car, circa 1965. It featured in family photographs. The parents and two kids standing besides its small hulking form. A sundry dog waiting to get in. The baby soon to be delivered.
Till one day, the Ambassador arrives. In trendy two-tone colours. And the Baby Hindustan changes hands. While father and son swarm all over the new car, and efficiently hand over papers and keys of the Baby to its new owner, mother and daughters come out to take one last look, eyes all wet, voices just this side of sobbing. The new Baby owner looks a bit aghast. His wife, however, tells them - we’ll look after it well.
Suddenly the family, circa 1979, spots the Baby – in Pune. Follow it, follow it, they cry out. Father and son awestruck by the fact that it’s still around and has made it up the hairpin bends of the Bhor Ghat. Mother and daughters simply wanting to see its face again.
And so it goes on. We’re in the next century now. Women do talk of differentials and gear boxes and bhp or whatever. They eye new models, they’re all for upgrades. But when it comes to parting with the first car, suddenly it feels like you’re trading in your old nanny for a washing machine.
My neigbour, confined for a week to a hospital bed, asks her husband to delay handing over their old car – she wants to get home and take one last look. Say goodbye. Actually. She loves the new upgrade he’s opted for, and she talks knowledgeably about how 1.4 is so much better on the Expressway than 800 and all that, but when she’s back home and the new car stands proudly in the drive way, she gives it the ignore – she hasn’t made friends with it yet and she won’t, till the old one’s been mourned enough.
That’s how it is with us. It starts, the misgivings and the sadness, right from when you first talk of changing cars. Women are known (seriously) to whisper urgently: “not now”– if men talk about the new car while driving the old one.
I made a down payment on a new car this week. The feel of power- steering clinched the deal for me. I returned home in my 5-year-old car. It was pouring. The first rain of the season. I was dry, warm and moving. In my old car. And I felt guilty as hell. Suddenly the steering wheel didn’t feel so tough on the arms anymore.
A day earlier, I’d made a deal for the old car. Great price. Horrible feeling. The image of the old car being led quietly away, to make place for the new set of wheels – it simply slayed me. I ran a slight fever that night. Really.
It is so much easier for men, god bless their pragmatic souls. A new car doesn’t just happen to them. While they may adore their car, they’ve got all their senses out there, figuring the next upgrade. So when they do make the switch over, they’re not prone to blubber and take to their beds.
(Why cars, a policeman recently visited when I’d had a house break-in. Looking at my slightly shabby 11-year-old dog (who’d slept through the break-in) he said: “Madam, abhi naya ley lo – Doberman, Alsation - yeh abhi kaam ka nahi hai. Kitna din chalayega isko?”)
Thank god for this balancing-out practicality. Or we’d be going nowhere. With Upgrading men by our sides, we learn to move on. And we are gently prevented from stalking the new owners of our old cars.
It’s even worse for us when an old car is to be junked. Visions of just the chassis sitting in some yard – with the soul all gone - haunt us. I once saw a cat had given birth to kittens in the back seat of an abandoned car. It felt good – like the car hadn’t been totally abandoned.
Can we be accused of horrible sentimentality? Of anthropomorphizing what is, after all, a piece of metal? Maybe. What to do.
We console ourselves that our old cars are happy in the Great Showroom in the Sky.
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1 comment:
Oh my...you seem to have written this from my heart! :) I sobbed and sobbed when my first car was sold off before buying a new one..almost felt like having abandoned somewhere. Same thing with the techie things around the house..I have to show this article to my husband :)
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