It isn’t always healthy to be beset by old things. Though the proverb goes “Old is Gold”, as their age grows, their use decreases, until they become more of a liability, ready to break your head, poke your eye, and swallow your time and money. It was in this rare but faithful breed that my old scooter belonged to.
It was a Kinetic Honda, once India’s newest scooter, glorified by the “Honda” in the name and giving the rider the unique pride of driving an epitome of Indian excellence and Japanese ingenuity. And advertising was, fortunately, truthful in those good old days, and this scooter was as faithful as advertised. The Kinetic I had was second hand, bought from a man who had unfortunately not spent the first fifteen years of his life on this beautiful vehicle, and couldn’t understand the gleam in my eye as I took over the vehicle as its new owner. The man was happy with the eight thousand he got from me; he thought he’d got a good deal. But I was happy because I had got my Kinetic.
This was a long time ago. Or to be more exact, five years ago. Since in this age, change happens on a nanosecond scale. But today, I had a rickety old scooter, suffering from old age, and coughing and sputtering at every corner. Five years I had ridden on it like I had never ridden before, and I had beautifully responded to my every twist of the accelerator and my slam of the brakes. It was a very wonderful time. It was like being with my best pal.
But now, my scooter’s parts were falling off. The speedometer and odometer had run out of control long back and had broken their screws; they were no longer working. The horn had screamed its last and had fallen to the silence of the graves. The brakes caught on like a spoon on a slab of butter; and the tires were as smooth as the butter itself. The headlights had burnt out long ago, and now, the engine was nearing the end of its life; it often reminded me of a tuberculosis patient.
Already it had undergone a valve replacement and a bypass surgery. “Pour oil along with the petrol saar. The oil compartment is leaking and oil is not reaching the cylinder saar.” said the mechanic. So, like medication, I have been mixing oil with the petrol, and carefully administering it to my scooter. But in spite of this, there had been no improvement. On my yesterday’s trip to the mechanic, he had said, “Pour double the amount of oil Saar. If the situation does not change, it’s better if you sell it off, or scrap it. It has no more value Saar.” Thank you for your great words. Very soothing, they were.
And yesterday, all hope left. The scooter had coughed its final cough.
It was when I was completely shocked at this sudden demise that my dad struck on this idea. “Why not give your scooter a decent burial? We’ll go somewhere far away and put your scooter into some decent pit, throw in some water and pray for its soul to rest in peace. At least that will make sure we don’t have any problems later on with other bikes. And oh yes, I was eyeing a Bajaj Pulsar, the definitely male bike, and so this idea of his seemed to be perfectly reasonable.
So I set about looking for ways to move my scooter to a “far away place”. I couldn’t hire a van to transport it since this was to be done in absolute secrecy. So it was out of the question. So I set about coaxing some life out of the lifeless machine. The scooter mechanic seemed to be sympathetic. “Seems like you like your scooter verrrry much. I have done whatever I can. But don’t strain the engine, or you’ll be left in the middle of nowhere, with a vehicle which will not move to even your hardest blows.” I thanked him and left.
The next day dawned. My dad and I packed something to eat, and we left along the old Mahabalipuram Road, he on his car and I on my scooter. We trundled along the road to quite some distance until we were sure that we were far away from the city. A thicket of thorn bushes emerged along the road. My dad gesticulated towards it, but I wanted to spend more time on the last ride I was to have on my scooter. So I rode on, much to his chagrin. He was getting bored of all this delay.
Soon I realized that I was low on fuel and that it would be best to leave the vehicle in the nearest forest cover. The forest cover had been the only option since I couldn’t find a suitable ditch to keep my vehicle, seat and all, inside.
And I didn’t have the least heart to roll my vehicle into some huge hole. So I decided to park my vehicle in a forested area and leave the place as if nothing happened.
Soon enough the forest cover I was waiting for came along, as if someone had listened to my thoughts all along and had sent the forest along. I could see my dad grinning with relief as I pulled over. I couldn’t drive over the shrubs since it was thorny, so I had to roll my scooter into the wooded area. There, I parked my scooter and started walking out.
Almost immediately, the sky darkened. It was like in those movies, in an overtly sentimental scene when the film units supplement it with naturally occurring artificial rain, drenching the hero to his knickers as he cries his soul out in the memory of his lost lady love.
For a moment, it almost seemed to me that Nature itself was weeping at our parting. I looked at my scooter. No way, I was becoming too sentimental. The scooter is a scooter. What’s happening to you, man? I turned and left.
I really don’t know what has happened of the scooter now. I had got my gleaming new bike the very next day and I had, for a week, forgotten all about my old scooter. But now, I am much reminded of it.
Maybe it has found a new friend in a mechanic who has taken it to repair it. May be it has fallen into the hands vandals who might have sold off the parts separately; though I suspect if any one would do that since the parts of the scooter are of no value at all. Or may be, it has been found by some aboriginal people and is worshipped as a relic.
But wherever be it, my scooter, I’m sure, will not forget its one true master, and I, for one, will never forget my true, beloved scooter.
***
It wasn’t such a big article in the newspaper. It was no larger than a passport size photograph, and was jostling for attention with the nearby quarter-page BSNL advertisement. If I had not been so exceptionally bored that day, I wouldn’t have really bothered to go through the newspaper with such painstaking effort. It was by chance that I came across the article, and I decided to read it just for the heck of it. Even a few seconds reading a newspaper article was time well spent.
The article did not carry much information. It just said that an unidentified vehicle was found by the Police on the outskirts of Mahabalipuram. It also added that the Police were conducting inquiries into the matter and were trying to find out the owner of the vehicle. I didn’t obtain much amusement from the article. I left the newspaper flying in the fan’s breeze and went out for yet another round on my Pulsar.
It wasn’t much time before I came across another article regarding the case of the unidentified scooter. To be more exact, it was two days after the first article. This one was fairly decent, with a big caption and some story. Obviously the reporter had collected more information, and that the editor had been happy about it.
The story reported that the vehicle was in fact a scooter, and that its origins were being traced with its number plate being used as prime evidence. I was pleasantly amused. Whew! So much coverage for something trivial! However I didn’t really expect the matter to grow any larger.
The next day morning, I woke up to the newspaper. Or the newspaper woke me up, to be more exact. The newspaper boy had flung the paper through the window and it had landed smack on my face. I walked to the kitchen in my hazy state where my mother greeted me with the aroma of coffee. To my surprise, my return greeting only generated a horrific howl and a round of scolding for my guts to ask for coffee without first brushing my teeth. I grunted, and left to brush.
At the dining table, I sat down, coffee in one hand, and the rolled newspaper on the other. Thoroughly irritated by the spat with my mom, I had brushed enough to make my gums bleed and my teeth shine to the dentures. And then, contented and relaxed, I had taken my place at the table, to read the newspaper and spend the morning “as a gentleman should.”
I unfurled the newspaper. It had all the required articles in it –one of extreme politics, espoused by Advani and Co., one on the funnier side, excellently performed by the likes of Shri Laloo Yadav, one road/train/plane crash or equivalent, and finally, one huge advertisement for whose purpose the front page existed. After enjoying reading the antics of the buffoons whom we have unanimously voted to the two large circular buildings, I came across this story regarding the unknown vehicle.
The report said that the police had traced the owner of the vehicle after all. He had gone to lengths in explaining how the police had formed a “Special Task force” to track down the owner, and how it had taken them a huge effort to pore through the documents regarding the ownership of the vehicle. The Commissioner of Police had commended the team for their exceptional loyalty to duty and had announced promotions to all those who had been in that team. It also said that the news of the identification of the vehicle’s owner had reached the Chief Minister’s ears and that she had ordered for a function to honor all those who had been a part of the mission.
And, as do all front page news articles, this one had its own picture. One look at this picture gave me a shock that sent me reeling backwards, almost pushing me off the chair and spilling the coffee all over my lap.
For, sitting beatifically in the photograph, was my old scooter. It had lost lots of its parts, especially the handlebars and the seat, but, the whole outer shell was too familiar to me to be forgotten in a passing glance. It was very obvious that people had been so desperate that they had stripped even things of absolutely no monetary value from the scooter.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I surely wouldn’t have cried, of course, we men folk from Mars cannot do that. But still, something actually stifled my laughter. Unable to overcome the guilt, I diverted my attention to the news article instead.
Immediately, questions began to pop up in my mind. Why had there been so much of coverage on the newspaper about my old scooter? It was an old scooter after all, none different from any other scooter left in a scrap heap. But why was it getting coverage? My scooter must have been lucky, to be a celebrity. Maybe this would be talked about in scooter-tales for generations together, about the “Scooter Who Had Lost His Master But Found Press”. What a thought!
Nevertheless, the issue began to interest me. I went to the article again with renewed interest and read through it again. The entire affair began to appear funny to me, better than anything I had seen before. I began to wait eagerly for the next related news item.
The next report was from the centre. The ‘Bapoos’ sitting in their cozy offices at the Capital had somehow come to know about the goings-on here in Tamil Nadu. A team had been sent to analyze the reason for the scooter being there, and whether it filled any purpose other than just being a jarring deviation in otherwise harmonious natural setting. The team had found “insurmountable evidence” that the scooter was, in fact a transit for illegal goods and explosives for their easiest scapegoat, the ISI.
I was completely taken aback at the allegation. Surely, things cannot be this serious! But in the third page, things had a different connotation. The “Special Task Force” which had been specifically created for this purpose had conducted its own investigations and concluded that it was the handiwork of the LTTE.
This was completely new to me. Two departments of the government, conducting investigations in the same case, and ending up with different verdicts! Either the editor had missed the gaffe, or both the teams were wrong, which obviously they were, since I am not even remotely connected with anything going by the systematic name of Panthera Tigris, except may be in my geography textbook.
To think that my scooter was getting so much attention made me slightly jealous and I also wanted some of the limelight. But I was completely aware of the way the police department will go if I announce the ownership of my scooter. So I decided to remain calm and of course, to follow the news more closely.
Things began happening quickly after that. The Chief Minister, in a press conference, said she suspected the opposition leader to be leading the clandestine operation, of which the scooter was a part. This literally blew the roof of the Parliament House. The Opposition staged a walk out, demanding the Chief Minister to retract her statement, and on the sideline, approve of some other bills for their own sake.
The Chief Minister was too smart for that, of course. The CM ordered the arrest of the senior most opposition leader – a man who was sledging in the dirty pool of politics when he must be playing with his grand children – and the arrest was carried out in full media glare, with the pro- opposition TV channel showing moving scenes of the brutal treatment meted out to an old person, and the pro –Ruling TV channel showing how arrogant the leader was and how the arrest had been conducted in the most dignified manner.
Two days after this there was a huge demonstration on one of the city’s arterial road – The Mount Road. A few buses were blazed; some others had their windshield glasses broken, and a few shops devastated. But it was very amusing to see people go out with their business as if nothing had ever happened. It seemed to me that they had gotten so used to it that they had come to consider it as a part of their everyday life. Not that the party camaraderie cared about the people’s indifference. For them, it was a time to have fun, and fun they had.
There were huge meeting all around; and in the meetings men and women waxed eloquent, either lauding the CM for bringing “culprits” into justice, or lauding the opposition leader for his “sacrifice”.
The scooter for the time being had been eminently forgotten. Apparently, the people in power had taken yet another chance to have a go at each other and at the same time pursue their own ends, without even a thought about the source of the entire furore. But one thing nagged me was, how come there was absolutely no relation to the activities going on and me?
It was I who had kept my scooter in the wilderness, and it seemed very odd that not so much of an enquiry or summon had reached my residence. In fact, there was absolutely no news about the scooter anymore. I felt relieved.
The great excitement quickly died down after the demonstration. Apparently, the parties had decided that they’d got enough media attention to keep them going for another month. The news about the scooter and investigations into its origins and purpose of existence had slowly been pushed back into first the third page, then to the fifth and finally was lost somewhere in between.
Once in a while, a bit of news popped up regarding the LTTE leader claiming that the scooter was no way related to them (Here’s at least one guy who’s speaking the truth) or the centre concluding its investigation for lack of evidence. And after that, in the ensuing weeks, the affair became forgotten history.
It must have been two weeks since the last article on the scooter had appeared on the newspaper. I was discussing animatedly about problems I had in registering my vehicle, and how I had to spend some amount to get the job done.
At that point, my dad told me a revealing fact: my dad had avoided registering the Kinetic in his name. It was then that I realized why no questions were raised about us: there was no documentation of our ownership of the vehicle and the man who sold it to us had, in all probability, forgotten our names and faces.
I reflected wryly on the fortune that we’d had. We had not been made a victim of politics and TRP’s thanks to our negligence on that day.
I silently thanked the guy who had been traced as the owner and so unjustly treated.
And my scooter, for not taking its final revenge on me.
Moral: Never register your second hand vehicle purchased in your name!
Stop. Unregister. Proceed.
