By: Ganesh Saili
Believe you me, oftener than not self-driving cars make it to the headlines for all the wrong reasons, like ‘Self-driving car crashes’ or ‘Google to sue Uber for stealing self-driving technology.’ Deeper lie tales of betrayal, high-tech espionage, cheating or tales of plain old greed.
Of course, fifty years ago this station had driverless cars. Forget that in those days we barely totalled three cars, one scooter and the odd bicycle, the last owned by Pattram Das, a contractor who lived right behind the Landour Mandir.
Lakhpa, my college classmate, pointed towards an old Ambassador wheezing past saying: ‘Look! A driverless car!’ At first glance you would believe the car was indeed moving on its own. Of course, in our one-horse town, everybody knew it belonged to Shorty. You are right, he was not tall – even when he reared himself on his toes he would not be more than four-foot-nothing. He put a plump cushion on the driver’s seat so that when he sat on it he could peer beyond the bonnet and onto the road.
Then there were the other two. Portly Mr Puri managed Kwality restaurant and his cattle-trap was handy in fetching his wife home from work. But only on days when he was not otherwise occupied – with adjusting his bow tie or tweaking his moustache, of course. And the third and last car was a powder blue Fiat owned by Mr D.P. Singh, owner of Whispering Windows restaurant. Trouble was that even in those early days there was no space for parking and he had to leave it along the roadside where it was vulnerable to vandals, who seemed to take perverse pleasure in sticking matchsticks into its wheel valves, deflating the tyres.
I remember the day Landour bazaar awakened to a general commotion. An earth-shattering event was upon us as the first scooter puttered into town. At that day’s end you could have cleaved the populace in two: those who had seen the new contraption and those who had not. And woe betide those in the last group.
‘Lambretta!’ gushed Om Prakash, the hardware merchant of Sitaram & Sons, to all and sundry: ‘It’s named after the Italian engineer who used the old wheels of an aircraft to get from hangar to airstrip.’
Who knew fifty years ago that a plague of two wheelers would hit us so badly that the sound of a thundering motor-cycle or the putter of a scooter would make you feel like a rider in Gemini Circus’ Well of Death. Every weekend in the early hours, bikers from Dehradun descend like locusts to devour a wholesome spread of over-priced waffles, pancakes or cheese omelets at Char Dukan.
‘Bikes? Those are not bikes!’ the high priest of the Royal Enfield group says, looking down his nose at a fancy motor-cycle parked nearby. ‘Their accessories, including jackets, gloves, boots, helmets cost more than the bike.’
We have come a long way from the days when the first motorized two-wheeler bumped up the Cart Road with Colonel Frederick Kearsey atop his Triumph 550cc Model H. He was having a cup of tea at sprawling Fairlawn Palace, the largest residence in its heydays, with the exiled Ranas of Nepal.
The other day I found myself in a bit of a jam. It was not of my own making. And it was not gooseberry, strawberry, blackberry or any of the preserves that Anil Prakash sells at his store in Sister’s Bazaar. This perverse traffic snarl caught me around Redburn Bend, a few minutes away from our home. Sticking my neck out of the driver’s window I could see our home, so tantalizingly close, yet it would be hours before I got there.
Today’s ‘weekenders’ are best spent at home. One must learn to make peace. Why worry if squatters take over our pavements? Or why fret about someone parked in the middle of the road? Time to ignore that two wheeler barrelling down at you.
I must learn to celebrate the absence of road sense or governance. In the age of self-driving cars, I too must appreciate ‘Being positive! Being patient!’
Ganesh Saili born and home-grown in the hills belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their own pictures. Author of two dozen books; some translated into twenty languages, his work has found recognition world-wide.
