Cars ......

My father being brought up in the socialistic upper middle class Bengali house of his maternal grandfather during 1960's had developed severe apathy to the idea of luxury, and he still maintains that apathy maybe owing to his hard working days as an officer at New India Assurance or maybe because of the subject accountancy which he studied at college. But this wasn't just him or that particular household. The working class of the Bengali society from clerks to Managing Directors were all followers of socialistic simple living. As my father's maternal grandfather was the Senior General manager of The Royal Insurance Company he unlike other Indians at that period was able to buy several cars. My fathers paternal grandfather Shri Rajendranath Bhattacharya had a GM Buick in 1940's. It is to be noted that during that era cars were an extreme luxury, only royal families could afford one. At that time in Burdwan only 2 families had cars, the Burdwan Maharaja and my great grandfather Shri Rajendranath Bhattacharya. (Presently the Burdwan Maharaja lives at Bihaymanjil at Alipore, Kolkata. So owing to the fact that both his grandparents owned cars it was quite obvious he had developed a love for cars quite early in his life. So the moment he started earning comfortably he bought a car of his own in 1990. The light grey fiat, sold by Premier Automobiles in India as Padmini. I was a child of 6 years old, But I still remember the day when I first saw it at our Burdwan house. I was at the golbaranda on the first floor and rushed to the ground floor door. It was just ecstatic. It felt like we were the king of the neighbourhood, as no one in that neighbourhood had a car. But he was too socialistically conservative to use that car extensively, the farthest we travelled in the fiat was to Andal, 200-250km one way. Next he bought a Maruti Suzuki alto in 2004. True to his nature of Conservative frugality he didn't buy the alto with a factory fitted Air conditioner. In India it is absolutely necessary to have a car with an AC. But his opinion was AC cars were not for people like us. They were for black marketeers and the sort. As obvious with anyone who gets to ride a car from 6 years of age, I had developed an immense love for cars quite early. I made it my religion to keep the cars clean. I still remember I used to shampoo the fiat infront our Rishra house, and a few times my grandfather would visit us from Burdwan and would lend a hand at cleaning the fiat. Now when I think of that, what a beautiful thing that was to get your car cleaned by your son and your father. My grandfather also made me aware of the working of the internal combustion engine, clutch mechanism, the all important differential, the driving mechanism and all such things. 

Our travels during summer in the Alto when my brother was a teenager and I had just passed my teenage, the mood inside the car wasn't very pleasant. Mostly my father and I would shout and try to dominate each other over things like driving, overtaking and such little inconsequential matters, sometimes I would hit my brother and not very often he protested. I attributed all this to the heat and the lack of an Air conditioner in the Alto. I am not saying we are the most cool headed folks the human species had ever known but my hypothesis is the heat and lack of AC triggered the best in us.

In February 2014 when I had that dreadful finger injury in my Yamaha Fzs, my father used to take me to the hospital at Uttarpara merely 10 kms away, every other day (this continued for 3 months) for dressing the cut thumb in the Alto. By the middle of March the heat was unbearable. And there was the General Election of 2014 for which the roads were mostly filled with long armada of political bigwigs, from Bappi Lahiri dangling his oversized posterior to Kalyan giving his lip muscles some exercise atop open hooded jeeps. For all this after the 10 km journey from home to hospital which took 1 hour minimum, We used to be almost dead. And so I decided I would spend my own money and get an AC for the Alto. As I was working since 2010, mostly saving 70% of salary every month, I had by then saved 6 Lakhs Rupees. So by April 2014 when my finger was back in proper shape I fought a serious battle with my father over the issue of installing an AC in the Alto (my disgruntled neighbours would testify for that), mind you it was my own money of  45000 Rs that I wanted to spend, but the battle was mainly over ethical ramification of travelling in an AC car. Still today my father gets extremely fidgety the moment we start rolling up the windows before switching on the AC. He would better sweat to death with socialistic pride than travel comfortably in AC in materialistic shame. In November 2014 I decided to spend another 40000 Rs to give the Alto a new paint and accessorize it with stickers.

(Above) My grandmother can be seen in the Buick. In August or September 1947.

(Above) My brother and I can be seen inside the Fiat in front of our Rishra Home. In April 1996

And thats me driving the Alto in September 2014.