There’s been so much happening, it’s difficult to know where to start.
My parents’ visit just ended. It was nice to have them in town, and even nicer that they weren’t staying with us. That might sound ungracious, but it is only honest and largely practical: I just couldn’t have survived another round of adjusting bedroom and cupboard spaces, organizing bedsheets and blankets, juggling bathroom and breakfast timings, and all the other stuff that goes with having visitors, even one’s own family.
Thankfully, there were no major philosophical issues to deal with – not that I had expected any. My only regret is that I couldn’t do much for my parents – meals were scrappy to the extent of being non-existent, and I spent too much of my time with housework and too little with them being an entertaining and gracious host. Of course, the kids provided plenty of entertainment, but I suspect that at least my dad got bored for some or much of the time.
Meanwhile, Christina launched her first book! My mother and I attended. I totally enjoyed Christina’s reading and Peter Colaco’s talk, but didn’t think much of the other speakers. Still, it was a good evening, and more than anything else, it was just that it marked a major achievement for Chris and I’m so happy for her. Here’s to lots more of these occasions, Chris.
Last Tuesday I went for tennis in the morning and – according to me – I played extremely well, especially considering I was playing against a woman who had always seemed a somewhat formidable opponent to me, and whom I am still very much in awe of on the court. As I was driving home, I was full of good feelings about myself in particular and the world in general and I didn’t mind too much that the road I was on was more full of potholes than is common even in Bangalore.
My car, however, didn’t take too kindly to the conditions of the road and just as I entered one particular ditch, there was a loud clunk and a dragging sound, as though a part of the road had just got attached to the undercarriage of my vehicle. The car could hardly moved, but I hastily drove – or rather, dragged – it a few feet towards the “shoulder” of the road, if this road could be considered to have a shoulder. (Some might say that there is all shoulder and no road – for those who know Bangalore, I refer to the moonscape that lies just outside Home Stop on the way from Garuda Mall to Hosmat Hospital.) It was lucky that I did drag the car those few feet forward to the right, because it enabled buses to scrape by on the left, which they were compelled to do for quite a long time.
Passers by were already gesticulating wildly at me and looking rather astounded to boot, so I wasted no time in getting out of the car to find out what, exactly, had gone wrong. I was still vaguely expecting to see something big and heavy stuck to the bottom of the car, so I was totally unprepared to find that the situation was somewhat the reverse. It was the bottom of the car that was stuck in unseemly fashion to the road: the rear offside wheel had completely disappeared and the axle was resting on the road and looking terribly alarming. My heart stopped – only three wheels and a broken axle? How on earth was I going to get home by 7.45 a.m. as I had promised Amit I would???
While I phoned Amit to tell him I might be a wee bit later than expected, somebody across the road was signaling me that my wheel was to be found on the road some way back. Very funny! How, exactly, was I supposed to lug a wheel – not a tyre, mind you, an entire wheel if you please – from wherever it was to where I was?
Before I could develop any solutions to that question, a taxi pulled up in front of me and dislodged the said wheel from within, much to my relief. Now, I only had to figure out how to get the wheel back onto the axle, and I’d be on my way.
Amit immediately set about calling up Maruti’s breakdown service. They, in turn, called me, and, on hearing my problem, told me that if my tyre had come off it was only because a nut was loose and this was a minor problem and they couldn’t possibly send someone to fix it. “It’s not they tyre that’s come off, you morons, it’s the wheel,” I fumed. They didn’t quite believe me – they probably figured that a woman wouldn’t know the difference between the tyre hub and the axle anyway – but they reluctantly agreed to send someone. Only, it’d take a while – like, say, a couple of hours or so.
Thank you very much!
In the end, Amit got in touch with our service centre, and they sent someone pretty fast – I only had to wait till 9.30, instead of till 11. Once the mechanics came, they didn’t seem unduly put out by the problem and quickly did a temporary fix that would get the car to the workshop.
While I waited, a cop came to see who was causing all the disruption to the traffic. On this particular road, one broken vehicle meant a jam a mile long, even at that early hour. On finding me and my three-wheeler car, he went off to locate some strong men who were pressed into service to manually lift the car bodily and push it further to one side. During this thrilling operation, I was instructed to sit inside with the aim of steering it, which I resolutely refused to do. So I stood outside the driver’s seat and steered it while the car rocked violently with its three wheels on the uneven ground. Mission, however, was shortly accomplished and I was brusquely instructed to tip the men ten bucks each. Thankfully, I not only had my wallet with me, but also had sufficient change to do this. Even more thankfully, the cop then wandered off and didn’t as much as ask to see my papers.
Of course, I have a valid driver’s licence and carry it at all times – the only trouble was, none of the car’s papers were in the car. This minor oversight was due to the fact that the car had just gone for servicing on Saturday, which had necessitated emptying it of all its usual junk, including vital registration and insurance papers.
It was only once everything had been sorted out and I had returned home, around 10 a.m., that the whole story emerged. Apparently, during servicing, the mechanics had noticed that the axle thread had worn out. Why had the mechanics had reason to even inspect the axle thread? I don’t know – but they had, and having noticed this, they had not had time to fix it. So they had returned the car to Amit, asking him to bring it in again on Monday. This, he had not been able to do, hence here I was, the sitting duck, tooling along with three wheels (and no papers) on Tuesday morning.
Don’t you think I should sue Amit? I think I should.
