(4th Jul 2020)
Look at what I just found in my brother’s drawer.
I didn’t even know that we had a picture of this beauty with us until I discovered this old photo album of his.
One of my bucket list items is to be able to buy back the beloved ‘पच्चीस ninety nine’
Paachu chettan would teach a 11 year old me, sitting by his side on the edge of the driving seat, holding (hanging) on to the steering wheel, the initial lessons of driving on this one. I would control the steering wheel and shift gears while he controlled clutch, break, and accelerator and this practice would go on for nearly two years until I grew a couple of centimetres longer and was finally tall enough to reach the controls and be able to see the road at the same time.
The lessons were simple. He would teach me about things like acknowledgment ’honking’ – a way of expressing your gratitude to the truck/bus driver who made way for you to pass him on an upward climb. He promised me that I would get a honk back if I gave one and I still get a teeny tiny smile on my lips upon hearing such a honking sound even today.
I can barely remember him teaching any technical stuff (other than about checking radiator water level and engine oil level every morning. Yeah you had to check those and the battery ampere level every single day on a Jeep, before driving off, during those days. Managing to unlock and lock the bonnet clips with my tiny hands used to be a personal achievement back then). He somehow knew that the rest was bound to happen on its own eventually. He always had this laid back attitude around him and tons of stories to tell during the drives. He would lean back on the driving seat stretching his left arm behind my head over the front seats while puffing the cigarette in his right hand blowing the smoke out over his right shoulder with absolutely no trust issues about the ability of a 11 year old in keeping the steering wheel steady.
My mom would eventually fire him after she found out that he had scammed my family, colluding with the workshop guy, for more than 50k. That was almost 14 years ago. A part of our life’s history that should have ended on a bitter note didn’t really end on one.
I never heard anyone in my family Ever talk ill of him for what he did to us. Whenever his name popped up in our conversations occasionally, those conversations would only end with tears in our eyes from laughing so hard. Because this man had a never ending stock of funny stories and my family had way too many trips to make on a a Mahindra CL 500 MDI to listen to as many such stories as possible.
We would do Kannur – Idukki – Kannur trip twice or thrice a year. We would drive to Chennai from Kannur to visit my brother, who was doing his under-graduation. All those trips on this machine and even during all those times it never bothered us that we used to have only two to three cassettes in the Jeep because the stories of Paachu chettan and the embarrassing songs of my father for us to listen to were many indeed.
This unconventional piece of joy ride had rolled its wheels through a significant part of my life digging a deep and long trail of sweet memories to look back and chuckle at. While I might have missed out on the stories that will have whiskey glasses along with roasted beef or pork on its bonnet during a chilly night on one of the lovely Idukki hilltops overlooking the enticing valleys, the rest of them are fondly mine to cherish.
To “KL 13 D 2599“
To Paachu chettan
To memories that never die
PS: I will have to say that I might have cooked up some parts of this story (for legal reasons)
PS: पच्चीस ninety nine was the tag line of a Maruti 800 advertisement in 2002 or 2003. They were selling it at an EMI of 2599 per month and our Jeep’s Registration was also same number. So I used to call it that.