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So, one late night in February 2000, I found myself walking home from my workplace...those days I was collaborating with an MIT Prof who was a lark while I was an owl. So the 10.5 hours lag in our local times suited both of us.
As I was half way down Road # 5 at IIT KGP, it started drizzling and then pouring as it does in KGP without any warning and I was stuck beneath a tree which didn't much help.
It was then that it struck me like a thunderbolt that life without a car wasn't worth living. And I recalled a similar moment under a similar tree a couple of decades back then when a similar thunderbolt hit me saying life without a wife wasn't worth living at age 36...and I had taken urgent steps.
So I called my friend N who knows all about gadgets and gizmos and asked him to please get me a new cheap car available in the market. And he said what suits me to a tee was a Maruti 800 (by then he himself had graduated from a second hand Fiat to a second hand Maruti to a brand new Hyundai Santro and was on the verge of going in for the latest Accent).
Then he contacted the biggest showroom in Calcutta and downloaded all the colors of Maruti 800 on their menu with fancy names like Caribbean Blue, Icy Blue, Silky Silver and a dozen others. We sat together for a couple of hours and decided that we better see them in the showroom before we select...for by then we were old enough not to trust the advertized color of a car or a bride.
When we were nearing the showroom a week later, I was dreaming that the vast showroom at the biggest outlet in Calcutta would be stacked with all sorts of Maruti 800s for us to go, touch, feel and then buy...like in a Matrimela.
But alas it turned out to be like all my dreams of brides and cars...the bewitching sales girl there was all hooha welcoming two greying professors of the only IIT in Bengal. But said there was only one piece of Maruti 800 available at the moment (whatever that moment was) and asked us to take it before it flies off the shelf. And I shyly asked her what she calls its color and she said:
"Why! It is Cypress Blue Metallic, you know...the hottest and sweetest"
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So, one late night in February 2000, I found myself walking home from my workplace...those days I was collaborating with an MIT Prof who was a lark while I was an owl. So the 10.5 hours lag in our local times suited both of us.
As I was half way down Road # 5 at IIT KGP, it started drizzling and then pouring as it does in KGP without any warning and I was stuck beneath a tree which didn't much help.
It was then that it struck me like a thunderbolt that life without a car wasn't worth living. And I recalled a similar moment under a similar tree a couple of decades back then when a similar thunderbolt hit me saying life without a wife wasn't worth living at age 36...and I had taken urgent steps.
So I called my friend N who knows all about gadgets and gizmos and asked him to please get me a new cheap car available in the market. And he said what suits me to a tee was a Maruti 800 (by then he himself had graduated from a second hand Fiat to a second hand Maruti to a brand new Hyundai Santro and was on the verge of going in for the latest Accent).
Then he contacted the biggest showroom in Calcutta and downloaded all the colors of Maruti 800 on their menu with fancy names like Caribbean Blue, Icy Blue, Silky Silver and a dozen others. We sat together for a couple of hours and decided that we better see them in the showroom before we select...for by then we were old enough not to trust the advertized color of a car or a bride.
When we were nearing the showroom a week later, I was dreaming that the vast showroom at the biggest outlet in Calcutta would be stacked with all sorts of Maruti 800s for us to go, touch, feel and then buy...like in a Matrimela.
But alas it turned out to be like all my dreams of brides and cars...the bewitching sales girl there was all hooha welcoming two greying professors of the only IIT in Bengal. But said there was only one piece of Maruti 800 available at the moment (whatever that moment was) and asked us to take it before it flies off the shelf. And I shyly asked her what she calls its color and she said:
"Why! It is Cypress Blue Metallic, you know...the hottest and sweetest"
The name sounded so exotic that we decided to buy it on the spot, paying Rs 5000 extra for the Metallic part of the name, whatever it was....apart from that it was a Hobson's Choice.
When Amal saw it parked beneath the banyan tree at the back of the Physics Department and came to know that I was the latest Cypress Blue Goat in the Campus, the earlier ones being Timir and Satish, he asked me how many months I waited for this model to arrive in Calcutta. And I said:
"2 minutes"
He then told me he had booked his Maruti 800 from the same Calcutta outlet 6 months back and was waiting for his choice of color to arrive. I asked him what was that dream-color and he replied:
"California Gold"
And when pressed why, he replied that it was all about astrology...his model arrived 6 months later in the campus.
When one of those days I ventured driving to the KGP railway station to pick up a friend from Calcutta, I found a lady colleague from Humanities stranded in the station since it was raining hard and she didn't like to get wet in a semi-open rickshaw in the blowing wind. And she asked me if I could please take her in my new Maruti and drop her at her Qrs. And being an old and chivalrous soul I welcomed her and I was praising her daughter who was our student a few years back and was now in the US; and that pleased her immensely.
After she got down and was thanking me for the ride, I asked her how the ride was...
And she said:
"The drive was good but the color of the car is gaudy"
That was that...it says all about Humanities Professors who are obliged to criticize to earn a decent living...
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