The Ambassador is one of only a few Indian institutions not to fall under the Tata umbrella. It is primitive by modern standards, but like the Nissan Figaro, has all the essentials whilst retaining something of the old world. Chrome headlights, running boards and sensuously rounded arches sit at comfortable odds with the sit up and beg driving position and the big, bus steering wheel. The colonial comfort of the rear makes you feel like a Vice-Roy, conveyed by your driver in a scaled down Rolls-Royce.
Outside the crowded but protective cocoon of the fast bus, the realities of Indian traffic started to dawn on us in a way that the hair raising tuk-tuk journeys never did. On the x/y-axis write ‘speed’ and ‘fear’. Plot your lines as circumstance dictates and at their convergence write the words ‘Danger, Will Robinson’ in large, red, capital letters. Underline it for good measure as death stalks these roads and the cheerful chaos of cows and lorries, hand carts and tuk-tuks, belies Newton’s lesser known law that stipulates that the smaller the mass, the more likely it is to be squashed by a lorry. Our driver was slow and deliberate and unlike most Indian drivers, stuck to his lane and accorded priority, at least to bigger vehicles.
That is, until I mentioned how well he drove.
Like the proverbial red rag, he snorted in derision, floored the gas and slewed the back end of the Ambassador into the boiling cauldron of the Kovolam road, like – well like all our lives depended on it. The happy chat stopped. We scrabbled down the seat backs for the seatbelts that were not fitted. Finally, all pleas for clemency having fallen on deaf ears, we hurriedly constructed rudimentary impact protection from whatever came to hand. I was rather pleased with the origami air bag, fashioned from yesterday’s copy of the Times of India, until I became engrossed in a worrying expose about the tuk-tuk’s apparently poor NCAP safety rating.
India’s own Carlos Fandango powered through the turns like a beast unleashed, wheels smoking, weld points creaking. Newton’s law would have gone out of the window, if it wasn’t cringing in the foot well. Carlos held his position in the oncoming lane for longer than seemed physically possible. Improbably, the hierarchy was momentarily inverted by his madness. Buses screeched and lorries hit the dirt to avoid him. I only pray that you never have to see the offence against nature that is a JCB in a mad two wheel weave, desperately skirting the path of Satan’s hackney cab, flaming eyed Carlos at the wheel.
At our destination, thankfully Kovolam and not the Seventh Ring, 1,200 rupees seemed a more than reasonable price for having survived, let alone arrived.
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