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Business / Opinion

www.outlookindia.com | After Bug, Who?

MAGAZINE | FEB 24, 2014

India com es hom e Revolution on four w heels

OPINION

After Bug, Who?

Mrooti made carwallahs out of us all, introduced us to sho-sha
JUG SURAIYA

The moment we saw her, my wife Bunny and I decided to call her Bug. She was cute as any cute bug can be. She was our first Maruti (pronounced Mrooti) 800. More, she
was our very first brand-new car. It was 1987, and we had just moved to Delhi from what was then Cal
c utta. In Calcutta the preferred mode of automotive transport then was
the Ambassador, the only vehicleapart from the hand-pulled rickshawthat could navigate the citys monsoon-flooded streets.
But Delhi was Maruti country. A couple of years previou
s ly Khushwant Singh had in one of his columns composed a paean of praise for the little peoples car which he saw
as a herald of Indias coming of modern age. Andthanks to the Maruti 800all over the country, middle-class India was taking the high road. The newcomer to Indias
autoscape was affordable and mechanically reliable.
The little 800 changed the way middle-income India lived. Apart from dropping off and picking up the kids to and from school, commuting to work and back and doing the
weekend grocery shopping at the local supermarkets which were just making their tentative debut, the Maruti was useful for another thing which it seemed to have invented
for itself: the weekend getaway to a scenic spot within motorable reach.
The 800 created a new adjunct to Indias fledgling leisure industry, which so far had largely been dependent on LTA or leave travel allowance, which came with its own
government-dictated set of rules and regulations: you could take LTA only to go to your native place, you had to go for a minimum of such-and-such days, blah blah, bloo
blah. The Maruti threw the rulebook out of its roll-down window. If you had one of these zippy little thingsand who didnt?you could take a holiday break on any weekend
you wanted. To cater to Maruti tourism, hotels , motels and dhabas for the new breed of motorised pilgrims sprang up all over the country, generating revenue and
employment.
The 800 gave another stimulus to the national econ
omy: sho-sha. Bir Singh, the young guy who drove our recen
tly gotten Maruti, as neither Bunny nor I can drive, introd
u
c ed
us to it by taking us to a neighbourhood shop in the urban village of Lajpat Nagar II (lpn-ii), a border zone bet
ween the city and the rural boonies, where wed rented a barsati.
Whats sho-sha? wed asked Bir Singh.
You dont know what sho-sha is? Bir Singh had said, shaking his head at the ignorance of supposedly educated people. Come, Ill show you sho-sha. He took us in Bug
to the automobile accessories market in lpn-ii.
Id always believed that all that was required, car-wise, was four wheels, an engine and a steering wheel. But no one had told me about sho-sha, which was as integral a part
of a car as the internal combustion thingummy that powered it.
This is sho-sha, said Bir Singh. There were day-glo bumper stickers which read Im a Gujjar cowboy or Frisky after whisky or Jai mata di! There were small, plastic
mannequinslittle naked baba-logwho did fluorescent pee-pee at the push of a button and which you stuck on the rear window. There were fake tiger and leopard skins to
cover the dashboard with. This was sho-sha. But the most important part of sho-sha, Bir Singh told us, was to never, ever remove the transparent plastic seat covers that the
new car came with. Never take those off, said Bir Singh. Otherwise how will everyone know that your new car is new, no? he said.
So Bug was suitably sho-sha-ed, though I drew a line at the bumper stickers and the fluorescent pee-pee. With her shining plastic seat covers, Bug looked like a bride on her
wedding night. And thats what it turned out to be. A rumbling, lowing noise woke me in the early hours of the morning. It was the resident lpn-ii bull, a massive creature of
midnight black. The beast had snuggled up to Bug and was licking her bonnet with great slobbery slurps. Go away! Get away from her! I yelled. But it was no use. The huge

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2/16/14

www.outlookindia.com | After Bug, Who?

midnight black. The beast had snuggled up to Bug and was licking her bonnet with great slobbery slurps. Go away! Get away from her! I yelled. But it was no use. The huge
beast was in the throes of uncontrollable passion. And was it my imagination or did Bug reciprocate with a coy simper of her grille? Was I witnessing the conjoining of
primeval Bharat and modern India? As the father of the bride, I gave my blessings to the union.
Bug has been gone a long time now. But as her sister Mrutis are phased out, Id like to believe Bug left behind a legacy of that honeymoon night in LPN-II. It took over 20
years in coming, but at last it arrived. Marutis successor, Bugs baby.
Where did you think the Nano came from?
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