written sometime back… forgot to post... now i can't remember it well enough to think of a good title... sorry for the period post…

(awesome... probably the first time anybody puts a disclaimer in the title)

For those who dinno yet – santro it is… the sunshine car reflecting pure white light…

Somewhere I read that a transaction happens when the buyer and seller feel that they got the best deal… to me it happened sometime in December, in the heart of the recession when heads of auto companies were trying to offload their stock and quickly bundle the cash into a clean white dhoti and run away to some obscure place before their line employees come back after their sudden pay-now-claim-later vacation that their usually tyrant boss had so benevolently insisted on them recharging their batteries…

Ok to cut a long story short… Hyundai offered a price cut and the government offered to reduce some of the tax burden… overall it seemed like a good deal to me… and for the dealer it seemed like a good deal too as apparently the discount was borne by the manufacturer (at least the papers said so) and he thanked god for sending in a dumb customer who was not bargaining for discounted accessories – not even the free ganesha idol he normally gave away in happier innocent times… the customer in turn thanked god for granting him the power to resist swiping the evil plastic to revel in some cheap thrills of pirated music and button press power windows…

So there it was, occupying the unused space I had being paying the rent and the maintenance for over 6 months… thanks to spiderman and yuppie-da for getting it home safely… yes I didn’t drive it home… in fact for the next few days I would be re-living those pre licecnse driving class days with a guy sitting to my left shouting instructions aloud to hide his panic, while I through clenched teeth and sweaty palms drove to office in the slowest speeds possible that tested the patience of my followers…

But yes… here I am… come a long way from that scared L-boarder to a scary L-boarder (yes I still retain the big red L – my dad, an ex law student, advised me against removing it so that I could have an upper hand in a situation if required) – 3123 kms to be exact… that too with a trip to Chennai (350kms one way) and one to Sivasamudram (about 150 kms from Bangalore) about which I hope to write some day too…

But, the new arrival in the family has not been accepted without friction. In fact barely had the one month deadline arrived for the first servicing, that I felt like a guy with two wives… after a month of aggressive driving around Bangalore and nearby, I just managed to cross the required run-in kilometers… a satisfied owner, I took it to the nearby service center for the regular servicing, again resisting offers of extended warranty which did not include parts I did not even know existed, got the “free service only” words out of my mouth and came back home to go to the office on my trusty bike…

Only he was not any more… yeah – the definitely male “HE”… but he did not hide his jealousy at being neglected all this while… refused to start till I kicked the s*** out of me… then within a few meters I felt a loss in the rear wheel stability… puncture… with that I felt my cheerfulness draining out with the air… had to please him with some new pretty expensive accessories to get him to behave…

But yeah… back to focus on the star of this post… after the first service, she was much more smoother… that is when we took her to Chennai… I was a bit apprehensive – all those nasty trucks and mean speeding vehicles on those highways… how would I cope with it all… in fact it was such an overwhelming fear, that I took a detour in between to visit a temple… haha gotcha… I did not go to the temple out of fear… I just wanted to soothe my nerves fill my tummy – heard their puliyogare and curd rice were very good… after this and a couple of drive arounds in chennai’s jammed roads (after which I patted myself on the back for living in the outskirts in Bangalore), I realized that I actually enjoyed the freedom of the wonderful highway from Chennai to Bangalore… so much so that I actually drove back in 4hrs straight… all those nfs trainings during the mba seems to have helped…

After this, there was no going back… huh… I mean… I love biking, but then I have to spend some time with the car too… a good amount of money has been invested… what is the point if I don’t use it… (s*** I have to now worry about diplomacy with my bike !!!)

Anyways, there are some side-effects of getting the car… the rain god thinks I played spoil sport… so he has roped in his friend the sun god to cook me inside the glorified solar cooker… But yeah… another way to show the finger to the autowallas in bangalore…