|
I met Abhimanyu around 4 years ago on Orkut. Just a couple of threads & posts later I KNEW here's a guy who is way above the rest of us in terms of content knowledge (and humulity). He was nearing his final year in engineering (pune) then and i was about to pass out of college. We started discussing on various technical forums more often thereonwards. I got to meet him when he dropped down to delhi from his hometown-Jaipur. I had never met a more composed, calm, knowledgeable and learned guy in my life. we roamed around cannaught place for some time and went to NSIT, Dwarka for the college's annual cultural fest. I was blabbering all the while about cars, racing, F1 etc.. He spoke little, spoke sense and usually kept to himself.. but never letting me feel alone. He used to have his hands clasped backwards (morpheus-style). This was my first meeting with him and it was hard already to bid a goodbye. I felt so good with him. I felt i finally met a guy who shared my enthusiasm for everything motive and who is nothing less than a spectacled walking encyclopaedia who could quench my never-ending questions about cars.
I joined TML and moved to pune. More than joining the company, I was looking forward to meeting him again there. He had gotten his golden-MM540 from Jaipur and I was just too excited to see both of them. He obliged me on on my birthday day and brought the jeep to the Tata Motors colony in Pimpri. The place had deserted areas (behind New hostel area) and probable nice OTR patches. The next half an hour was my first such experience. It was so new and so exciting: axle articulations, banked climbs et al. We didn't drive around much, but approached the same patch from different angles. I thoroughly enjoyed the day. I noticed that all during the drive ups and drive downs, AK was as composed as anyone could be. Probably mentally calculating the right approaches, factoring in for all the boulders etc... the guy became more than a friend to me then : I started looking up to him. He made my day.. the most amazing birthday i had had till date. (He also burned me a DVD of Auto-vids as a gift).
Some months down the line, he joined TML as a GET directly from college. I was elated. After some time, he was rightly assigned to the R&D group @ TML. Thereby,we had several self-initiated car-assessment sessions wherein we used to visually disssect vehicles after office hours (indian and foreign make cars/trucks)..getting under them, attempting to understand the chassis design and suspension characteristics.. etc.
There are countless such sessions - prolonged talks - about some feature of car X v/s the indian counterparts ... and how could a certain feature of a vehicle be improved upon..
Don't you just love the talks which makes one forget the flow of time..
At this time, most of our talks used to be about Tatra and how immensely capable and rugged the vehicles are...
He used to drop by my place once in a while.. we watched numerous you tube videos .. off roading expeditions (majorly tatra competitions)... here was where i was introduced to the agile halflingers... we both drooled over the capability of the vehicle... always wondering how it would be to drive through such terrains in such vehicles!!
in due course of time, i realized both of us had a weakness for slush and mud..
AK was also an authority on warfare technology, arms and ammunition with specialization in air-weapons : he had wished to have done an MS in aeronautical engineering mastering in avionics..
His room was adorned with posters of many aircrafts, choppers et al.
In him, i could find a person what I had wished to become..
Towards the latter half of my stay in pune, I moved in with him and we three (including 'IIT' aka Abhinav Kar - AK's roomie) had loads of fun playing CS, going on unplanned mid-night drives (which i mostly missed out on), the mesmerizing OTRs.. and not to forget the funny wild-goose chases we went after.. like an instance when we were returnign from office (he was pillion on my vespa) and we glanced at a well-built-up jeep : fully adorned with snorket intake, 4X4, and a decent winch... We just had to go after it.. and so i took a U-turn at the nearest gap-in-median and drove after it ... we spent close to thirty minutes going to and fro on the highway, into and out of by-lanes in search of the jeep.. never could find it.. But such was the fun we had... imagine him shouting from behind, i racing my "lal ghoda plus" (that's what i termed my vespa) after a ghost-jeep... such a thing again happened when the three of us were headed to Alibaug/Murud .. where by we chased a vintage RR.
Just a few months later, i moved to Gurgaon to join Maruti Suzuki. And he left TML to start his venture of Jeeps restoration. I remember the night-out talks we had about how we could go around with setting up a business around where our passion lies. He always inspired me to NOT discontinue my passion for anything else in life..
AK dropped down from Jaipur to delhi a couple of times to purchase his MM550XD and the spares, seats, tools etc.. we watched the Camel Trophy videos (Madagascar round and a ten-year review) all through a night .. The fun of the sludge-fest was accentuated watching AK's happiness..
I can go on almost endlessly about the guy.
AK was a friend, a mentor, an ideal.
And will always be.
RIP friend. You're in a better place. | 
4th August 2009, 15:43
