Padmini

I remember dad making paper chits and asking us to pick one sometime back in 1993. Vinay and I were excited about the whole thing. While the chit Vinay picked said it would be blue , mine claimed it would be an elegant black. We just could not wait to see what its real colour was.

This was back then when buying a car did not mean banks calling you more often than your girlfriend did to ask you if you wanted a loan , neither was it a time when you had to go to the internet to check out the different types of cars before deciding on the one you wanted to take home.

As far as I can recollect you had 3 choices- Ambassador , Fiat or Maruti 800 .

Mom was all for Ambassador given the propensity our family members had for fat rich edible items. Dad was all for Premiere Padmini as it did not have a swollen face. I was fine with anything as long as they would still travel by scooter ( I was pretty sure that travel by car would not be half as much fun as good old Hamara Bajaj) and Vinay who was always ahead of his times wanted the car to have the same features that his GI-JOE truck boasted of.

After minimal discussions and a lot of blind faith in god we decided on Padmini.
She was a beauty and we were extremely proud of her .In sharp contrast to what our respective chits proclaimed , she was steel gray .

5 year old Vinay went through a re-prioritizing experience wherein the car came before all immortal and mortal things he had known. Dad was ecstatic to have finally bought a car .Mom and I did our general girl thing by being generally happy and content with the men in the house being super excited.

The travel bug is deeply implanted in the Ramani family . All major or minor discussions have always ended in " Hey we should go there sometime".Obviously , Padmini had little choice than to adjust her gears to this travel happy family.

Within a year of her arrival , she took us to Goa, Pune ,some known and unknown cities , a couple of nearby picnic spots , a couple of far off picnic spots , a few areas by the hill , some more by the sea....Needless to say , she looked like she had lost some weight by the time we celebrated her first anniversary with us.

I dont recollect the exact time when this started but the outsiders we share this episode with might . We had just finished enjoying a party at Dad's course mate's house . It was late in the night and we were all set to leave. As it is customary in the armed services , the hosts had come to see us off . Our brush with elegance was short lived . Padmini refused to move. Dad tried moving the key , the gear and all that can be moved to get the car to start, but she simply would not. The gracious host and a series of helpers took it upon themselves to get the car started. Half opened tool boxes cluttered the site . Mom and the hostess used this opportunity to discuss their favorite soap "Swabhimaan". After spending a lot of time with the heated engine someone said " Lets push the car".

And that is how it began....

Padmini entered the next phase of her life where she needed to be pushed to get started. Multiple visits to the mechanic shop made Padmini temporarily respond to the key and permanently make the mechanic rich. As travel lovers we decided to adapt ourselves to the mysterious ways in which Padmini had now started behaving.

Every morning , Vinay and I sang the Hanuman Chalisa while pushing her. It motivated us a great deal . A few meters later she would become the car that she was supposed to be and we would be extremely proud of our ability to cause that.It no longer bothered us that she would choose to embarrass us by not budging from her place at a relative's house or a colleague's party. Sometimes it helped that she stopped at public places. We had more people to push her .

Next the radiator gave in . So we carried a leather bag full of water that hung on to the rear view mirror. We called it the Potli-Baba bag . It looked a great deal like it. With the passing days , Padmini introduced us to the various things that could possibly go wrong with a car . We made a list of them and tackled them as a team. Fernandes the mechanic now started visting us so often that sometimes we got confused if he were a relative or a mechanic. Anyway , his visits always meant that Padmini would behave herself a little for the next few days and that meant we could take her on a trip again.


Slowly ,all her parts came to a state wherein they started behaving like musical instruments. every time the car crossed the speed of 30 Kmph , there would be a lot of instrumental noise that would act as a background score to whatever one said. Initially we tackled it by singing out things but the pitch rarely matched. We adviced relatives and friends alike to sing out things in the car but they weren't as much into music as we were . Too add to the misery the door knobs gave away very often . So we had one broken door handle that we called " The Lever". We passed it on to each other to lock and unlock our doors. As the sole surviving door handle , it was as important as the engine itself.

Friends and well-wishers began it with subtle remarks and then moved on to giving clear cut opinions . They all wanted us to sell our car and buy a new one. We could have done it had it not been for the love each of us had for Padmini. She was our first car and we loved her despite her many shortcomings. The thought of replacing her was simply treacherous.

Fernandes was on a holiday. His cousin , Joseph was in charge of the mechanic shop in his absence. Padmini was suffering from some complex issues again , so we called him as usual. Joseph was a happy go lucky chap from Goa. He gave our car one look and declared that he would bring her back to her original form in 7 straight days. It would require some extra cash but the results would be worth the money.

The prospect of having a trouble free car was certainly inviting . We gave Padmini to Joseph , asked him to do all that he wanted to to make her work better. He left us with the assurance that we would be stunned to see a brand new car shortly.



We were stunned.

She was not Padmini at all . She could probably be called Rukmini. In his desire to please us , the moron of a mechanic had decided to repaint her .If Mona Lisa was repainted with white hair , will she still be called Mona Lisa ? We did not think so...

Joseph the great , for lack of the original steel gray colour had applied a dark shade of grey colour on the car . Good old Fenny had numbed his ability to distinguish the two colours apparently. The steel gray mixed with dark gray now looked like a colour that would suit only mortuary vans. Thank god he refrained from writing something on it with white.

The car seemed to function normally . Dad the optimist brushed aside the fact that it now was the only Premier Padmini in the world to have such a colour. "We will repaint it again if required" he argued. In a strange way , it had become somewhat black , the colour the chit promised it would be .

Vinay went through a re-prioritizing exercise once again. With his advanced knowledge about the new types of cars available , Mortuary Padmini did not even make it to the waitlist. Mom was tired of the regular expenses that came along with owning Padmini . She gave a strict no no to repainting . I did not know how to react to Mortuary Padmini , she did not look like family anymore. Dad however , continued to support her .

A few months passed . We became famous for owning one of the strangest looking cars this side of the Suez Canal. Vinay had started marketing the idea of buying a new car. Mom and I were ambivalent . Dad the lone supporter of Padmini , found himself inclining towards buying a new car. No one suggested selling as yet .

And then it happened , Vinay's immense potential to market any idea won over all other ideas that the Ramani family came up with . We bought a new car.

Padmini accomodated the newcomer into the garage with grace. Initially we used both of them and slowly Padmini started staying home a lot as we left for outside in our new car. This happened for a year or so after which we admitted to each other that Padmini was just occupying space.

We did not want Padmini to end up as scrap .She was a happy car and deserved more. After a lot of research , a couple of phone calls and random discussions we realized what would be best for her .

On a fine Sunday afternoon , we gave her away to be a part of joyous occasions for the rest of her life. Padmini would be a marriage procession car and would bring happy souls together amidst excited friends and relatives.


The ten years that we spent with Padmini are ensconced with events that we will remember and cherish for a lifetime. We hope she is having a nice time carrying the bride and groom around and becoming a part of their marriage albums.

As for us , we cant thank her enough for making our lives so interesting !