The love affair with cars

My love affair with cars goes a long way back.  The old-timers in my family, my uncles and aunts, swear to a rather, funny story that when I was a young boy, perhaps, 5 or 6 years old, fervently pleading with my dad to drive home the cars that were parked on the road-side, when the owners of these cars were not around!  Lucky for me that, in later years, I didn’t end up being a car thief!  Another of the family secret is out.  Many of my male cousins are obsessed with cars too.

It was the early eighties.  We had no inkling that a new round of car revolution was just around the corner.  The Ambassadors and Fiats (later Premier Padmini) were on the verge of disappearing into oblivion forever.  As fresh recruits at the Head Office of our Bank, we were awe-struck to watch the spectacle of the Bank’s senior management (or executives as they were commonly referred), arrive in their Ambassador or Fiat cars and walk up the few steps at the entrance of the Head Office to reach their respective Offices or Departments on different floors of the Head Office building.  These senior gentlemen started arriving, one after the other, as if on cue, in a space of few minutes just before the clock struck 10’o clock (the Bank’s start time). The liveried drivers opened the rear door of their cars for these gentlemen and carried an assortment of files, hurrying after them.  This parade of the senior management arriving in their Ambassador or Fiat cars was a great spectacle to us young employees (we were in our early twenties); we stood aside respectfully on the stairs, mutely watching after them.  A few of the fresh recruits, who were slightly brazen enough, threw in a smile and Good Morning salute at them, while some of the timid ones, hurried furtively behind the top executives, avoiding their eye.   After the executive had gone inside the building, we looked pensively at the cars in which they had arrived.  The cars, gleaming in the sunlight, would be lined up in style, in the ample parking space by their respective drivers.

The executive cadre was considered a creamy layer in the Bank hierarchy because each position carried with it many perks and powers.  The allotment of a car was the foremost perk that attracted us, the younger Bank recruits.  The highest aspirations of the younger lot of us recruits those days were measured in terms of being provided a car by the Bank along with driver.   The lure of the Ambassador or Fiat car as a perk drove some of my colleagues to seriously think of taking up the tests for promotions to higher cadre.  There was also a mad rush (considered premium posting) for getting a transfer to such of those branches which had a Bank car attached to it.   These cars were considered branch property and the senior most Manager or Senior Manager was most likely to use it as his personal vehicle!

I remember a time, when the Bank’s Chairman & Managing Director had been provided with a Contessa sedan for his personal use.  Some of us youngsters, had rushed out from our Office, just to look at this car and feast our eyes on the new offering.  We were just used to watching with wide-eyed wonder, a Rolls Royce or some fancy Italian sports car in glossy magazines or posters!  Seeing the Contessa sedan right in front of us, was considered, indeed, our good fortune.  Anyway, for Hindustan Motors, the Contessa sedan was not a success, and bombed badly at the car box-office.

Alas, my biggest aspiration of those days, to drive a Bank car, remain unfulfilled!  Nevertheless, my love affair with the cars has ended.  It is a nightmare to drive a car in good old Bangalore, what with the crazy traffic conditions and parking problems.  Even if, by mere luck, some benevolent philanthropist was to offer me a Ferrari or a Porsche now, I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near it!