01 November 2012, 02:37 PM IST
Shortly after coming to Delhi 25 years ago, Bunny and I bought a Maruti 800. The little 'people's car' was much more than an automobile; it was a symbolic icon for the city, much as the hand-pulled rickshaw was for Calcutta in its avatar as Dominique Lapierre's City of Joy. Bunny had named our car Bug, because with its wide-eyed headlights and its Smiley-faced grille, it looked like a cute bug. And that's how Bug became a member of the Suraiya's household.
But before we could take Bug home, a mandatory ceremony had to be performed: it was called sho-sha.
"What's sho-sha?" we asked Bir Singh. As neither Bunny nor I could drive - still can't - we'd signed on Bir Singh, a local lad, to do the necessary on our behalf.
"You don't know what sho-sha is?" said Bir Singh shaking his head at the ignorance of supposedly educated people. "Come, I'll show you sho-sha," he said and took us in Bug to the big automobile accessories market in LPN II, which was just around the corner from our rented second-floor barsati.
Though the auto mart was literally next door to us, I'd never paid it much attention. I'd never thought that automobiles required so many accessories. I'd always believed - mistakenly as it turned out - that all that was required, car-wise, was four wheels, an engine and a steering wheel. But no one had told me about the sho-sha, which was as important an integral part of a car as the internal combustion thingummy which powered it.
"This is sho-sha", said Bir Singh, with a sweep of his arm. I looked at the sho-sha. There were day-glo stickers which you stuck on your rear bumper which read 'I'm a Gujjar cowboy', or 'Frisky after whisky', or 'Jai Mata Di!' There were small, plastic mannequins - little naked baba log - who did fluorescent pee-pee at the push of a button and which you stuck on the rear window. There were fake tiger and leopard skin furs 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 that's 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 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 M'rutis are phased out, I'd like to believe Bug left behind a legacy of that honeymoon night in LPN II. It took over 20 years in coming, but it's here at last. M'ruti's successor, Bug's baby.
Where did you think the Nano came from?
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