The car was starting to make that noise again, only problem was, it was worse, much more worse than it had been the week before… this time, besides the slight sound that was emanating from the engine (or at least what I thought was coming out of the engine) now seemed to have shifted to the silencer/the tail pipe, and it felt like the thing had broken, or was going to by the sounds of it… and from a previous horrible experience which was caused due to my negligence of the cars absolute requirements, like the need for there to be “coolant” in the engine at all times, instead of thinking that it wouldn’t mind that much if you didn’t fill it; after all, it wasn’t like it was the fuel or anything, just some green coloured liquid.(((Yeah, well, I only found out the importance of that little green coloured liquid when the car had died on me and had to be towed to the service station, and I had to end up paying a bill of 20,000 rupees for rebuilding the entire cylinder block that I had just destroyed as a result of doing what I had done)… so the result of all of this was my mechanic telling me, “the next time you notice something funny with your car, no matter how inconsequential it might seem to you, stop—just take the car over to the side of the road and stop, or better yet, bring it into your mechanic and get it checked out—not tomorrow, or the day after, but right then and there.”
Which is why I was begging my dad to let me take it in yesterday, because I’d already delayed it for the past week, and I was afraid this was going to be something serious when the car started making those funny noises whenever we had to go somewhere, which was almost daily last week, finalizing the deal with a guy on the new place that we plan to move into ((and I knew the sooner we got it into a sound body shop, and had someone who was qualified to give it a once over, the better it would be)) but dad being dad, of course didn’t agree with me, and told me to just keep driving on—it’s vital that we go today of all days and get this done (((and it was))).
But why was it at the price of the car again… that machine has given me so much, been with me for 12 years now, all throughout my teens and beyond—and this is how I repay it, by tearing out her heart, and now, what I’d later find out—was that I’d just blown out its Gasket, which would put it out of commission for another day or two… what is wrong with me and Cars. Why am I hell bent on massacring them like this… ??? Well, that’s where we ended up going today, just before we had to go to the place where we had to finalize the deal… I’d told my dad that we’d get the car checked first before we went anywhere, but he said we couldn’t afford the time, but then we were free to choose the time of arrival, so we picked 12 o’clock, and went to get the car looked at first.
Well, the going was pretty bad as usual, the same sound reverberating in the car again, but at least we had a very short amount of distance to cover… and besides the ominous vibrations I had to deal with, the car was not moving at-all like it used to, no power what-so-ever in its pickup, which was a shame, because that car could RUN… we’d just got it overhauled a year or two ago, and it was now in mint condition, just like the day we bought it.
So my dad and I reach the place and take the car in, and the guy who we were looking for was right there, and I tell him what’s up with the car—that it’s making this, brrrrrrrr sound, and he laughs and says let’s take a look—so he starts up the car, or at least tries to, but he can’t even get it to. So he switches it off, and says, okay, let’s just take a look and see what the problem is… and he pops the hood and peers over the engine and can’t really see anything, so he says, we’ll wait for the staff to come in and he’ll ask them to have a look (doesn’t want to dirty his hands early in the morning).
So when his boys show up for work and open the bonnet again, they find that the spark plugs have become all wet, and so they go and show it to him, and he says, yeah, well, these need to be replaced—check the coolant too, if the oil’s mixed in with that—and it had, so he looked at me and said, well, looks like you’re going to have to leave it here till tomorrow, and then he walked over to my father and he told him that it’s a good thing that you brought it in when you did, or it would’ve died on you and we would’ve had to push it all the way here.
So after leaving the car there, we walked over to the auto stand, where we boarded a Bombay-to-Goa auto not full of people that are dressed as the Monkey God Hanuman, like these guys here, but one which has a fixed distance to cover (((a few kilometers/miles))) going back and forth, and they charge about a fixed amount for this, which is like a third of what you’d have to pay a regular auto.
But I like these guys; you always get to see all the different types of people, of different shapes, sizes and colour, getting into this small space and being driven to where-ever they want to go on the route… this service is actually right outside my house (among other places), right in front of the Bakery that I like to go and sit in, and see everything that’s happening around me, and this by far is the most enjoyable… unless of course a fight brakes out, which it rarely does, but if it does—then it’s game on, dude—for the two guys getting into it at least, lol. (((fight club anyone: caution, not for the faint of heart—hey, he almost ends up losing his face, okay)))
So, anyway, we’re the first two to get into the first one we see, and after waiting there for a few moments ((in which the guy was actually decent enough to tell the girls standing in the middle of the intersection, thumbing a lift at whichever bike was passing them, to go and stand away from all the traffic (they must’ve been 7/8 year olds, no more), but then girls here (((people in general I guess))) have seen more life than I or you have in our entire lives… I’m just glad to have escaped the EMERALD CITY and discovered what Life’s really like sometimes, if not most of the times.
So when he wasn’t getting any more people to board his auto, the guy was about to start when a very nice girl started to walk towards us… at first, she was going to get in from my father’s side ((which I thought was so sweet of her to be doing)) and sit next to him, but there’s a railing like thing that some auto’s have (for safety) that don’t allow you to get in, so she came around to my side and got in… I moved in as much as I could, without making it look too obvious that this was something new for me (to actually be sitting next to a woman, and having her touch me; last time I remember that happening was when I was in my Ninth class, when I first came here, and all of the girls ended up tying this piece of string to my hand that was called a rakhi that you tie on a specific day called raksha bandhan—when you become the protector of the girl who’s tying it to you—ummm, just one question that I had when all of this was going on… but who’s going to be protecting me if I’m protecting all of you :)
So anyway, the girl got in, sat next to me, and probably didn’t think that I was too much of a weirdo cos she didn’t flinch or anything, surprisingly… and made herself as comfortable as she could, to the extent that she didn’t even seem to mind when our bodies touched—my arm against hers—skin to skin, and you know something, I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m making it out to be vulgar in anyway, but I really liked that, I really liked the fact that I was making contact with another human being, especially one of the opposite sex… I have no idea how she looked of course, since she was wearing what most girls over here usually wear, most of them do, if not all, or they wear the burqa if they’re muslim, but women—Hindu, Muslim or Christian—they’re all wearing this veil kind of a thing on their heads these days, which covers their faces, and their torsos, and I would always wonder why, and someone was finally able to answer it for me when she said… “they do it because of the pollution Daanish” and all this time I was thinking it had some kind of a religious connotation to it… lol.
Anyway, a couple of meters ahead and the guy stopped and asked me something, but I’m on the phone with mom so I tell her to hold on and ask him what, and he says, “Come in front, Laides ko bethna hain (the lady has to sit)” and there’s another pretty woman walking towards us, with her hijab like veil on, and you know what my favourite part is… when the guys living in the 19th century would remove their formal Jackets, and put it over a puddle of water, so that the lady could go across it with ease… and this would always, always kinda remind me of that. So chivalrous, no? And even though she was wearing a head scarf as well—I knew I was riding with two beautiful women in the back of that auto—why, because they didn’t seem to mind riding with me, and that made me feel nice… :)
