Car Seva

Exactly a year ago, I took my seven-year old car for its annual service.  I look forward to this day about as much as you would look forward to a new virus taking Corona maami’s place. 

The service technician walked around the car like a frowning radiologist and was the most demotivating guy I have seen in 2020 (and that year has had no shortage of such folks, so he dominates a highly competitive field). 

“Sir,” he said, “there’s a dent here,” This was so small that it took an electron microscope inside a binocular to view it.  “Leave it alone,” I weakly suggested, feeling that sinking feeling you get when you are feeling that feeling, if you see what I mean.

He then told me that it will rust in the rain, and the door will be eaten from within and will fall off when I am on a highway at top speed and that I will then be on an Instagram video the next day with the caption, ‘…and CAN YOU GUESS what happened next to the car behind this hideous monster’.
Actually, he didn’t say all of that, but you get the picture. 

Then, the headlights had a side scratch of 2 mm that could diminish lumens sufficiently to distract oncoming aircraft, and the top red light at the rear (I did not even know there was a top red light at the rear) was not working which was a threat to no one in particular (for a change) and the sunglass compartment – which I have never used other than to once hide dog food from Oscar (who is the greediest Labrador in the world, and let this be the last word on that issue) – was unhinged and the press-button to open the back door caused a slight noise that is only heard with sound recording equipment used by AR Rahman and the back window wouldn’t roll up right into its terminal socket which could, if the car was next to a Nasa rocket launcher, generate a wind tunnel effect and one back tyre had a width that was 1 mm below recommended operating standards on German Autobahns in winter.  He also noted that my rear-view mirror had insulation tape on it, which, in levels of sheer depravity on the Crime Index, ranks next to assault.

I took a break, announced bankruptcy-in-advance on WhatsApp and asked Anil Ambani to join me for a Buddies-who-are-bust beer. 

Then he saw the big scratch on the side door at the back and the eyes rolled upwards unbelievingly.  I told him to not do this job till I got a housing loan sanctioned (the Finance Minister had just announced her twenty-second economy-revival package in which cars are classified as movable houses).

“Are you sure?” he asked, with a look of Don’t Blame Me If You Are Fined For Driving An Ugly Car Near Cubbon Park and turned away in sheer disgust at the sort of customers who infest Bangalore these days.

The only good news is that the housing loan has been approved, so I can first fund that dinner with Anil bhai, who is the only chap more bust than I am at the moment.

post script: Every story should have a post script, so here it is: whatever be the quality of work done on your car, never (repeat, never.  Just in case you missed this, NEVER) rate it anything less than five-star (repeat, 5*.  Let me get this right: star+star+star+star+star) .

If you do not follow my priceless advice, you will receive the following (free of charges):
a) about 27 phone calls from customer service, of which twelve will be in the final over of the finest T-20 that you have ever seen.
b) each such call will begin with an apology that sounds as fake as Trump's hair colour.
c) one call from Head Office - Customer Service, Gurgaon, asking you politely for your address, so that you can be kidnapped. 

Roles Re-verse(d)

 A snake and a purple heron in plume

Engaged in an argument (they weren't on Zoom)

The twist and the thrust

Was the question of, first

Who should do what and to whom !

Dhan

 Above everything else, it is helplessness that gets you angry. 

At a nearby Reading Room, I browse through the Business Standard and stop at a page that should not merit a second glance.  The next page looks exactly the same.  Turn over.  The same.  And a half-page more.  On these three-and-a-half pages are thousands of account numbers in tiny print, so small that they seem like lines of badly sewn stitches.  
It is a gold auction notice.  

This we – you and I - know: there is an alternate universe where men and, more significantly, women pledge their gold for small loans to address a medical issue or perhaps admission fees for a child in a private school or, unhappily, the costs of adhering to social mores for an unaffordable wedding.  Often, one loan repays another, one crisis ends, another begins, but they soldier on, sometimes lurching and stumbling their way through the maze of crippling interest rates, processing charges, late fees that choke and unforgiving penalties. They never forget that the gold loan needs to be repaid, for gold is never sold, only pledged.  Gold – though I am no fan of it – is social acceptance, comfort, protection, insurance, even identity.  There is a hidden language in that metal in this alternate universe. 

In this auction notice, read the signs of a crisis in that universe. 

That universe isn’t far away: our domestic help’s family could be living there, as could a family in interior Karnataka struck by Covid or a welder in Pudukottai whose machine shop shut for good after two waves of perdition.  It is their gold that will be sold to feed the collection-and-recovery frenzy reported with diligence to anxious collection managers.  In the old days, these gold hand-loan sort of guys were called ‘blade companies’ in God’s own country, but one can buy respectability:  get the  Kaun Banega Crorepati mascot to endorse you (he was once bust too, but has misplaced the experience).  Or, better still, IPL.   

To take my mind of this, I pick the Business Line up.  Lost reprieve, for it comes right back, this time through an ad.  The same lender has, on this same day, yet in another newspaper, announced its financial results: record profits and collections are the highlights.  As I read this, I wonder if that distressed family in interior Karnataka made this financial performance happen.  I know the answer.
And that makes me angry, in a feeble, helpless way. 

But in the universe I inhabit, the stock markets are booming, Dhanteras rocked while the crackers wouldn’t cease and economic news is about the recovery that the experts did not expect.  The chimera is real here and only a party-pooper would think otherwise, for the collateral damage is below the bonnet.  Only the paint matters. 

Yes, those three-and-a-half pages of badly sewn stitches in the Business Standard tell a story.  We need to listen. 
And help in every way we can.