Latest victim This incident happened to me on Dec 08, 2008 at around 8.30 pm on the flyover road between Lower Parel and Curry Road station. As soon as I turned left from Lower Parel, a man came running and thumped on my bonnet, saying “Aapke engine mein sparking ho raha hai”. Another man on a bike on my left also said the same thing. I got panicky and stopped the car.
At this point, a passerby stopped and offered to help. I assumed him to be the ‘Good Samaritan’ and opened the bonnet hood. He asked me to start the car and come out. Though I could not see any sparks, I did hear crackling sounds from the engine bay.
He then said that I am lucky as there is a garage nearby and he’ll get a mechanic to check it. I did get a bit suspicious at this point and tried to start the car. But the car stuttered and the red battery light came on.
Since I was already facing ‘alternator whine’ problem due to my car stereo so I assumed that the sparking could have been caused by that. Now came a shabbily dressed mechanic, reeking of alcohol, to take a look. He immediately suggested that he will do some ‘jugaad’ and make a direct connection to start the car. This would enable me to drive till the next available service station to get the fault rectified. I asked him the charges and he said ‘not more than Rs 50-100 of labour charge’. I agreed and he started tweaking with some wires.
After a while he tells me that my ignition coil and starter motor is gone, along with the alternator and that he would need to replace it. Out of nowhere, the other bystander fishes out a Lucas branded equipment (it was not an alternator). He says that he will test this and if the car starts then I can choose to pay and take it. Fair enough.
20 more minutes pass by and another guy (claiming to be the ‘Seth’ or the owner of the garage) joins us. He re-emphasizes the point that I am very lucky that his guys noticed my engine sparking, on their way back home, else the car could have caught fire. He pretended to carry out some repairs after which my car started.
Now comes the weird part. Upon asking the price for the job, he said ‘Sir, aap Rs 7,000 de dijiye’. I was shell shocked and asked him why he did not tell the price before carrying out the repairs. The mechanic completely turned in front of his (assumed) boss. He said ‘Maine to aapko pehle hi bola tha ki bahut kharcha hoga’. So I asked him to return my old, defective part.
Now this guy started to act funny and says I have kept it back in the engine bay when I put in the new part. Yeah, right, as if the engine bay of cars have storage compartments for defective items!.
By now, I had fully realized this was a con job. So I was in no mood to pay any money to these thieves. However, the three guys started getting restless and abusive. The mechanic in fact turned a fanatic, uttering things such as ‘I am a Muslim and will never cheat. You Hindus never believe Muslims na?’.
My wife had arrived at the scene by then (her office is nearby) and I wanted to avoid any sort of untoward incident. So I asked him to reverse whatever he has done and take back his new part. After much argument and haggling, I asked him to put back the old part. He did that and asked me for Rs 250 for labour charges.
As luck would have it, I had run out of cash and had just Rs 100 in my wallet, which I offered to him. He started abusing and mumbling insane words. I gave him Rs 130 in all and left the place. I could not call the Police, since the great Vodafone network of Mumbai was perenially jammed when I was facing this incident.
I drove without the AC and stereo yesterday on the way back, from Parel to Andheri. In fact, I tried not to use any electrical equipment (restricted usage of horn also!), hoping to reduce the load on the alternator as much as possible. I did not drive my car to office today, fearing that something might have actually gone wrong. Or probably, out of anger, the rogues might have caused some real problems in the car.
Would like to seek advise of gurus here. What damage could they have done out of anger? I will take my car to my trusted garage tomorrow, but will it be safe to drive around 25 kms in the morning, assuming worst case scenario that something might have actually gone wrong? |