Hot Wheels - A tribute to the world's best car

Photo courtesy: http://jamesdepenningphotography.wordpress.com/

"I do not understand the hyperbole surrounding these fancy German cars", pondered the yellow Ambassador taxi languishing along one of the side streets of Calcutta even as a jet black BMW 5 Series whizzed by splashing sludge over his aging body. The taxi wiped the dirt from his foggy wind shield with rusty creaking wipers. "Age teaches one to pardon insolence as inadvertent follies, and it is no different for cars" he thought. The morning sun had risen long ago but the old decrepit buildings of the city had blocked the rays from hitting the street. In a city where the past is often accused of barricading the present it is only apt that such a sight be seen, thought the 1979 Mark IV. But he loved those buildings; They had aged together. Once in a while he would bring an old tenant to these buildings. After the passenger had got down the taxi would wait a little longer just to chit-chat with his old friends. The buildings spoke less but were good listeners. "After all don't all their walls have ears", he thought and chuckled. But these were aging ears hard on hearing and the taxi had to blow its horn harder to send a message across. As he moved on to the next destination he remembered the times when his old friends were newly built and stood proudly as part of city's grand skyline. "Your day will come too!" he said, almost scornfully as he passed a newly made 40-storey block. Why he felt this disdain for the young chap was unclear, since the building only brought new folks in town and that meant more passengers and better business for him.

For about five decades the Ambassador had been the YBC (Yellow Blood Cell) of the city, acting at times as an AMbulance, a BUS or a matADOR (The highlighted letters displaying the phonetic of the Bengali pronunciation of the word). There were days when one could spot it trying to eke a path through the packed city road. Only the incessant honking and a hand frantically waving a ragged red towel gave away the presence of a medically ill occupant, and hence the urgency of the moment. In a city now ill-famed for its lack of empathy this ingenious signal of emergency had proven its worth. Rickshaws had moved over pavements, small cars had angled and bigger vehicles had made that extra inch available. Even the unconcerned jaywalker had turned to pay heed. Over time people had stopped calling the ambulance and relied more on the services of this good yellow Samaritan in times of crisis.

Talking of crisis, in a city whose dwellers have traditionally paid less respect to time it is only natural that a time-bound crisis has shown up once in a while. Be it catching an express train from the Howrah station or an airlines from the Dum Dum airport the yellow cab has inevitably been the man Friday. Almost every Bengali household has gone through heart-sinking moments when at the eleventh hour someone had realized that the taxis were not plying in the city due to a union strike! What followed ranged from preposterous suggestions to cancel the tickets to taking advantage of a neighbour's brand new Maruti800. This has endorsed the importance of the yellow Pegasus in this ever-procrastinating city.

So it was that on a regular sultry summer afternoon  the 1979 Mark IV was ambling down the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. A couple of cars had overtaken it and each time a uniformed chauffeur had thrown a condescending look. Just as the third one was about to overtake him, a sudden rush of adrenaline ran down his spine. Instinctively he stepped on the gas all the way till the paddle touched the floor. The old BMC Austin Motors engine revved and let out a war cry. The dark carbon filled fumes clouded the rear of the vehicle. The chassis shook as the suspensions found it hard to keep pace with the sudden power of the engine. The Mark IV had left its mark and was running his final race. The chauffeur in the other car chuckled and stepped on the gas. He was certain that this was going to be an easy race.

In another time, in another place his efforts had been for a more noble cause than just the healing of a wounded ego, thought the aging vehicle. Ten years back on a similar afternoon he had sped down the Barrackpore Trunk Road. It had been a far narrower and treacherous road compared to the EM bypass. The crowd, the commotion, the regular middle class traffic comprising of public buses, auto-rickshaws, cycles, pedestrians and bullock carts made it the perfect road of the masses. And through it the yellow Ambassador had sped; Not to compete in a petty street fight with an upstart automobile, but to save the life of a passenger. An aged lady who lay in the back seat with her head on her bou ma's lap and her cold bony legs on her little grandson's. Her son was sitting in the front passenger's seat puffing away incessantly at one cigarette after another. The Mark IV was much younger then, but he was as much an automobile then as he was now. He had maneuvered through the busy road with all the dexterity that his ilk was known for; At times raising half his body over the pavement when there wasn't enough space on the road. At other times he nudged the reluctant rickshaw ever so slightly to scare the puller to make space. He jumped the red light knowing well that the lady could not wait for it to turn green. The policeman had scorned at him, but he had scorned back. He was a machine all right; But "even machines have a heart", he remember his grandfather once told him. His grandfather, they called him the Morris Oxford Landmaster. The old timers still remembered him as the best machine, and one with a big heart. As they reached the side street that led to the nursing home, Old Calcutta showed its ugly face. Brick walls of century-old buildings rose on either sides of the street restricting its width barely to the breadth of the car's chassis. Even as people moved to make way there simply wasn't enough space. And they were losing the lady in the back. Slowly and surely, she was sliding into a long dreaded slumber. The little boy was not ready to let grandma go. He did not even know what 'letting go' meant.

The Mark IV had seen many deaths. There was a time when he had stood in the taxi booth in front of the Nilratan Sirkar Hospital. He had learnt to tell by looking at the passenger's face when it was time for the short painful trip to the crematorium. Those tears, the wailing, those tortured muffled cries never left his car long after the people had left. So he knew what "letting go" meant. And today he was not going to let the old lady go. The Mark IV switched on its strong halogens as if to warn an invisible adversary and began to move, slowly and surely. The onlookers at the far end of the lane stepped inside their doors and bobbed out their indistinct heads. Almost immediately there was a long incessant screech of  hard metal scraping along the bare porous bricks as powders of cement mixed in yellow car paint kept falling. After a few agonizing minutes the Mark IV came to a halt at the entrance of the nursing home. The stretcher was laid and the lady was briskly taken away even as her daughter-in-law and grandson scrambled to keep pace behind the entourage of nurses. The son got busy in the formalities of paperwork at the reception and in making provisions for his mother's operation. The onlookers who had just witnessed the car bulldozing through their dingy lane came around to take a look at the wound. Someone mentioned a broken side mirror lying in the gutter. Another picked the metal handle of one of the doors that was lying on the street. Sardarji opened the driver's door and stood beside his car, carefully examining the wound like a trainer examining his pet lion. "Oye kuch nahi hota, Yeh to mera sher hai" he bellowed in a voice that made the others cower. The Mark IV stood there, broken, battered, and proud, just like the Sardar who had driven him to his destination. For the rest of the afternoon they both sat under the banyan tree watching people walk in and out of the infirmary. The bonnet remained open supported by a metal rod and a red towel spread over the car's front windshield. Inside, Sardarji was sleeping with his mouth open and a red wet handkerchief spread over his eyes. Like man, like machine.

The boy did not have to let go of his grandmother. Not that time. Two weeks later they went back in the same yellow taxi to their home. As she got down from the car with the help of several pairs of hands she looked at the long paintless scratch on the door. With her frail fingers she touched it and murmured something at the beaming Sardar before being taken away to the comfort of her bedroom. Only the Sardar and the car understood the muffled expression of gratitude. "It was not long before the last of those trips were made, but that was the one where I had changed destiny instead of bowing to it", proudly thought the Mark IV.

Just then the reverie broke and he realized that the EM bypass had taken an acute turn and the black BMW he was racing with was making the larger arch to stabilize itself. The Ambassador lacking the technology of his rival, conjuring all his skills tried to control the swerve, but the few moments that had been lost in the speed transition proved decisive. As the rubber screeched through the shoulder of the road, pebbles sprayed in all directions and the Mark IV was engulfed in a cloud of dust. The sound of metal hitting concrete startled all who were driving within a hunder yards. All they saw was the round rear trunk of a yellow taxi and figured that a poor outdated vehicle must have met its timely demise. The BMW sped away not wanting to be a part of the tragedy.

The dust had settled, but the Mark IV had not got back his vision back. With a cracked windshield, a broken axle, a damaged carburetor and a blood smeared turban resting on its steering wheel he lay there by the highway. The city lights were glowing brighter with every moment inching towards dusk. A couple of fancy German cars raced by as the executives returned to the comfort of their lavish homes. This time the Mark IV bore no malice. He had fought his final battle in this colosseum of a city. Immortality was his. The smoke stopped coming out of the exhaust pipes.



PS: I grew up in Calcutta, and that means I walked in and out of the Ambassador through most of my childhood. The image of the car remained unchanged from the time when I had to be hoisted by a pair of adult hands to the back seat till the time when those adult hands became mine. So when I saw an old battered yellow taxi with paint scraped from the side door from some old skirmish I felt sorry for the old chap. I thought how representative it was to the spirit of a city that eggs on while disregarding the advancements in the world around and the rebuke it faces for being old-school. Those seats torn at places not only reveal the foam and choir beneath but also tell many a tale. They tell of trips when newborns were carried home in these seats; of teerth yatras made by the aged to nearby Tarapeeth, Mayapur and Nabadweep; of weekend family trips to the Botanical Garden , or to the chiria-khana. The car epitomises the city itself. A city that has never promised luxury and comfort, without a little bit of pain.