Distinguished - BHPian
Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bangalore
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| Re: Karnataka Vintage & Classic Car Club (KVCCC) - 40 years and counting BHPian Tonraj, who is also a senior member of KVCCC, is known for his exceptional narration skills. In our KVCCC Chat, he had posted about a weekend drive in his Morris Minor, accompanied by his son.
I enjoyed the narration so much so, that I request him to allow me to share the same here, which he happily consented. Quote: The Seventieth Birthday Drive
Real car aficionados will tell you this; if you are quiet whilst in your garage, you can have murmured conversations with your cars.
So it was this morning, when, while the rest of the family slumbered, I tiptoed into the garage and switched on the lights.
‘So, what brings the young man here, so early on a Saturday?’ whispered Maragatham, when I took the covers off her. There was more than a trace of sarcasm in her voice.
Maragatham, alias, Margaret, is our 1950 Morris Minor. She is a dignified lady, from Madras and would like to be known by her full name, Maragatham Tathachary, or Margaret Thatcher, as the fancy strikes her. You know how these Anglophile Madras types are. Margaret was apparently from a batch of Morris Minors imported as kits and assembled in Madras for a short while in the early fifties.
‘Aren’t you going out once more with the boys this morning?’ continued Maggie (though she refuses to answer to any uncouth nicknames, that what we call her, when she is not within earshot). She was referring to Swami the Austin, Dev the MG TC and Raman the Ambassador, who have been my recent choices for weekend drives into town.
‘Happy Birthday!’ I said, ignoring her jibes.
‘Oh really?’ this time there was no edge to her voice, ‘that’s very nice of you!’
‘Do you know how old I am?’ she continued.
‘Yes’, I replied, ‘It’s a special birthday. You’ve turned seventy this year, and we are going for your seventieth birthday drive’.
Maggie brightened up, then her grill hardened again. She was playing hard to get. ‘You call promenading down Church Street a drive? You cannot fool me with that.’
‘No. We are going down old Madras Road. To Mulbagal and back’. One has to be patient with these seventy year olds.
‘Madras!’ sighed Maggie wistfully. ‘I so like the old name of my home. What do they call it now?’
‘And what’s more,’ I said ‘Ghappu is coming along.’
This time Margaret brightened up considerably.
‘Aah, I like that boy! Will he be driving?’ she asked.
I recalled how Maragatham had joined our family. Back in the early nineties, we needed a cheap workhorse of a car, which could do duty not only as a lorry, but as a cradle as well. Maggie was a good choice. She was sturdy, and versatile. We removed her back seats and used her to lug wood and tiles to the home we were building in the outskirts of the city. And with no rear doors, we could safely put our son Ishaan, known as Ghappu to most, in the back seat, not worried that he would open the doors. He could stand upright in the car, and often he did that, with his arms thrown around my shoulders as I drove. Ghappu grew to love Maggie, and learnt how to drive on her. He also obtained his driving licence by taking her for his driving test.
‘You will have to check the pressure in my tyres’, said Maggie, breaking into my reverie.
I went through the usual checklist for a drive; jack, wheel spanner, jack handle, water, a set of spanners, screwdrivers and wrenches, cotton waste and a fire extinguisher. By then Ghappu had joined us, and we eased Maggie out of the garage as the cuckoos heralded another lovely Bangalore weekend.
As we drive out into the cool and cloudy dawn, Ghappu is quiet. I look at him and he is fast asleep. How often he would do that as a child; curl up in the back seat of the Morris, wrapped in a blanket and with a cushion for a pillow! I smile to myself. He is not a morning person at all!
The Morris hardly displays its seventy years of age; it is a remarkably modern car. True, the sidevalve engine is underpowered, but one should not be driving too fast anyway. The suspension is firm, the steering steady.
Once beyond the Hoskote toll gate, we made steady progress, clocking between 35 and 45 miles per hour. Mulbagal, or Moodalabagilu, has always been a strategically important town from the Middle ages onward. The Deccan plateau gently descends from there onward, to the hot plains closer to the east coast. Many kings and sultans, prominent amongst them being Tipu, maintained garrisons at Mulbagal; it was the gateway to the territory of Mysore, from the east. We made good time along the gentle ascents and descents as the road wound its way down from Bangalore. As the mist cleared and the sun’s warmth reflected off Margaret’s steady bonnet, we were at the Andhra Pradesh border, to be welcomed by our friend, Bhakta Reddy. We had clocked 62 miles, in a shade under 2 ½ hours. That included a stop for fuel and a couple more, to just soak up the scenery.
A hearty breakfast later, we turned back for Bangalore, with a detour through Avani, Honnashettihalli and Devarayasamudra. I will take the wheel now, says Ghappu. I can sense that Maggie is happy. She is like a Grandmother to Ghappu.
Mulbagal has several prominent and important historical sites. We passed the Virupakshi temple, which traces its origins back to Vijayanagara times in the sixteenth century. The temple is within an imposing fort wall, breached now by several roads. One can marvel at the precision with which the huge stones that comprise the wall have been fitted; one cannot slip a penknife between them.
From Mulbagal, we proceeded to Avani, and the spectacular hill of Seethammanakonda. There are several legends associated with the Ramayana, but a little known one is that of Avani, and Seethammanakonda. ‘Avani’ is a local version of ‘Avantikapura’, the paternal home of Seetha, It is there she is said to have moved, when Rama banished her after their return to Ayodhya. The Seethammanakonda hill has a temple devoted to Seetha alone. There is no Rama, or Lakshmana, in the Sanctum Sanctorum; the Garbagriha. Just a faithful Hanuman, as always, outside.
On a patch of land below Seethammanakonda, Maragatham, Ghappu and I paused for a trek through a patch of land that we had worked on to green, over several years. The rains have been good this year; water brims in the tanks. The ragi is heavy for the harvest, and baya birds have woven their nests on neem branches that hang over the water.
While the rest of the world groans under the pandemic, Mulbagal seems to have been blessed by the rains this year. Every tank is full, every field is green. The leopard that predated on unfortunate dogs on our land has not come around for its lethal inspections; probably, there are enough deer and wild boar to satiate its hunger, in the scrub forests around Avani. But the boar do come down from the hills, to destroys the ripening ragi.
As I looked at Maggie, enjoying herself, basking in the mild sunshine camouflaged in the grass, I wondered what a boar might think of her; would he consider her a kindred soul? Something told me she might not be amused by my quip.
We drove past Honnashettihalli tank, restored through community action catalysed by Grama Vikasa, an NGO run by my good friend M.V.N. Rao. He is a delightful man, his practical instincts overrun by a whimsical compassion. His home swarms with Rhesus macaques, which he often traps to relocate, but invariably releases immediately, because he has not the heart to take them away from their home. So now, the monkeys consider the baited cages to be an elaborate game organised by him for their benefit; they often enter the cages and demand that they be offered the bananas as bait, before they leave without saying ‘thank you’. Rao does not mind at all, and we all laugh at these foibles.
Onward to Devarayasamudra, a sleepy village with some delightful old homes. I stop before an old gate and a curious young lady steps out when I photograph Margaret against that worn backdrop.
‘Nimma maney thumba chennagide; your house is very beautiful’, I say to the girl. Her face breaks into a smile, ‘Nimma gadeenu thumba chennagide; your car is also very nice!’ she replies. Turns out that her house is more than a century old. Between the house and Maggie, we have a history of 170 years.
We make good time back to Bangalore. The traffic lights are kind to us; Returning by 2.13 PM we have run 136 miles today. Maggie is the only car in our family with a working odometer.
Again, in the silence of the garage, we share a moment together. ‘So, did you like your birthday drive?’ I ask Maragatham. ‘It was lovely!’ she says. She is warm and friendly now. After a moment’s reflection, she continues, ‘We should have run onward to my home, Madras’.
I laugh. We will do that, Maggie. That and more. |
Hope you enjoyed reading this, as much as all of us at KVCCC
Thank you Tonrag for the beautiful narration and we look forward for more such stories. I am hopeful to join you at least once a month, when the Daimler comes home.
Cheers
KPS |