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Ravi Shankar

FRIDAY FUNDAS
On the Road
Whenever my grandfather would talk about the time my great-grandmother was frightened by his automobile, she would look sheepish and ask him to shut up. As children, we would prod her to tell us the story of the 'motor' which chased her down the Tenkurissi road which, according to my grandfather, was no road at all, then.

"Just a red mud-strip between green paddy fields," he would say, lighting up a Passing Show, "and there I was driving at 20 miles, and Valiyamma was in the distance, walking along the paddy ridge towards the road."

"It was the first time I saw a motorcar," she confessed. "It made such a loud noise and spat smoke from behind."

According to family legend --- which she hotly denied till the day she died --- my great-grandmother was supposed to have leaped into the emerald carpet of fully grown paddy and hidden from the monster which had suddenly appeared on her Malabar sunset horizon: a strange black contraption which moved faster than any bullock cart she had ever seen. This was sometime in the 1930s. Until as late as the 1960s, our family, landowners in the feudal times of medieval Kerala, travelled by bullock cart. Anyone with any social standing used these beasts as their favourite mode of transport, except the odd chevalier who preferred his horse.

These bullocks, different from those which were yoked to the plough or pulled ordinary oxcarts, were specially bred for private use, and had to be exceptionally tall and strong. They were fed diets of hay, bran and freshly cut grass to increase their musculature. The bulls were big on bells---their horns were painted and decorated with silver chimes and their foreheads had little decorations stitched from coloured cloth and canvas, fringed with small circular tocsins. Around their necks, on beaded ropes, were suspended copper bells. The effect of their whole movement was that of a glockenspiel of sound and enough to alert wayfarers from afar of the approach of a private bullock cart. These carts were called villuvandis, which literally meant 'bow-like vehicles'. They had an arched canopy of quilted palmleaves, reinforced with curved bamboo supports. The wheels were gaily painted and mounted with carvings of copper and iron.

For the ordinary man, the bullock cart symbolised transport, and the whole tempo of the journey was defined by its swaying pace. There were few roads, then, except the rough paths hewn through the countrysides, made travel-friendly through sheer use. It took Tipu Sultan to build good roads in Kerala, and the Mughals and the British elsewhere.

India was never a land of speed, and the clockhands moved leisurely through the days like the afternoon punkahs of Colonial siestas. Travel was punctuated by periods of rest. The roads of Malabar are still full of dolmens on which wayfarers could unload their luggage and rest in the shade.

As India built its cars to suit its motorable byways, the motor-cart Ambassador came to be regarded as the automobile ideally suited for Indian roads. The car defined the speed of the nation for nearly half a century, and the outdated engine that was hostile to airconditioning would overheat if driven nonstop for more than a few hours. In Ray's Feluda strories, Lalmohanbabu's green Ambassador always drove at a top speed of 80 kmh, when the highway was clear.

That was the crux---the road had to be clear.

And reasonably wide. And free of the meandering buffalo, or the belching tractor, or a bicyclist who decided suddenly to slowly cross a busy highway. Or else, you exerted all your strength to step on the Ambassador's brake, straining your thigh muscles, hoping that the car would come to a shuddering, screeching halt by skidding to one side, if it did not topple over. That is, if you were able to stay on the road by using all your power to turn the steering wheel, for which you needed the pneumatic muscles of a wrestler. The car's suspension was noisier than a tinpot band, and its passage was cacophony. And it guzzled gas.

It was free India's eternal pushpak, the timekeeper of its journeys, the definer of its roads.

Then something suddenly burst on the roads of the 1980s---a small, purring four-seater which lived up to its fast-as-the-wind namesake: the Maruti 800. The surprised Indian discovered that with Japanese technology he could reach 60 kmph in six seconds without flooring the accelerator, and airconditoning was possible without the engine even feeling it. The ride was silent and smooth, the suspension was scornful of the bad roads. "It can't do the mountains," some sceptics said---and there were Marutis racing up the Rohtang Pass or the Kargil road to Leh.

The car was as manoueverable as a bicycle and nearly as economical. The first Marutis, which were sold at Rs 48,000 or so -- being India's logswagen---sold at premiums of over a lakh. Indian motoring was suddenly coming of age.

The Maruti 800 redefined travel in India, and recalibrated journeying time. It gave the itinerant Indian a new concept of speed, and forced incredible change in driving conditions, starting with better roads. By the mid-1990s, the Indian motorman was travelling more, and the shape of India's cars was changing irrevocably. And now, as the Maruti 800 is being phased out for newer, updated models---unlike the antediluvian Ambassador---its tyre treads have run a long way, leaving a changed landscape behind.

But bullock carts still meander along Indian asphalt, as they have for centuries, and will do so for many more. India's motorways run through overlapping times, as always.

(Ravi Shankar is Senior Editor, INDIA TODAY and author of The Scream of the Dragonflies. Write to Ravi Shankar)

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