Music, my car and me.

I rounded off my intermittent attendance of this music season with my final concert for the year, yesterday, that of Sri. Abhishek Raghuram at the Music Academy. Driving in at about 6.10 pm for the 6.45 pm concert, I approached the valets. They told me unequivocally that there was no parking either at the Academy or at the nearby school where they normally park. Therefore, they would just park it wherever they felt like and it was entirely at my own risk. “Madam, the car could be damaged and could possibly be towed as well,” a stern looking gentleman said. I calmly got off the vehicle, handed over the keys and told him nicely that I trusted him to not deliberately damage the car. He was dumbfounded. The previous several drivers had left the premises without a murmur! Spending over a decade in Chennai, and being treated in highly indifferent ways whilst driving, has definitely made me more thick skinned than I inherently am – had these caveats been said in 2007, I would have scampered like a rabbit. Now I was only mildly concerned – less about the damage than the towing…. for, at that hour, it would be a nuisance to figure out where and how to recover the vehicle.

Further, the poor valet had no way of knowing that it takes a lot of intricate maneuvering, and great effort, for me to attend any concert – if I have actually shown up, I expect to be there for every minute of it – and disclaimers from a valet were probably not going to drive me away.

As I stepped out, another valet obligingly informed me that I had been driving with my hand brake on. I smiled and told him that no, it was actually off, but in this now defunct vehicle, it appeared that way. A third valet jumped into the conversation saying, “Madam, you drive this vehicle despite being a woman. That is remarkable. Wonderful car.” It was not the first time and I was definitely not the first. Many women in my family drove Ambassadors, and decades ago too – Meera Sivaramakrishnan and Varalakshmi Anandkumar amongst them.

As one who leads a generally routine and rather hum-drum life, my car spices up things for me at unexpected times and in random intervals. Yesterday was one such day.

The Hindustan Motors Ambassador car is now no longer manufactured and is, therefore, a quaint piece. Unlike most of the passenger sedans out there now, this car has a LOT of metal in its construction and is thus solid and very heavy. It has a high wheel base, most helpful not just to negotiate the wonderful pot holes and speed breakers everywhere, but also in water logged conditions. During the Chennai floods, I had to ferry my then highschooler son to all his classes since taxis and autos just could not ply and he, obviously, could not bicycle as he normally did. Driving in the Vani Mahal area (known for setting boats out even for normal rains), not a drop of water got in. The diesel engine makes it even more robust in such conditions. Besides all this, the car is big and has bench seats in both the front and back (this was standard in this car decades earlier, but in our case, it was custom ordered), thus accommodating a large number of people – I have myself driven 12 children and an adult (besides myself) – everyone actually found it fun. I was reminded of an anecdote my late father used to narrate – of an uncle who was the first in the family to own a car – probably some 70 years ago – it was the cynosure of all attention in the Mylapore neighbourhood – this gentleman would pick up everybody he could on the way since he felt value for the ride only with large numbers of people occupying the vehicle! The more teeming the car, the more beaming the uncle.

We all strive to be noticed in some way – whether we admit it or not. It could be via skills and talent, professional accolades, validating comments, dressing style, whatever. The fact is we want attention – how this attention seeking manifests itself is different. There is the Uriah Heep type of false humility – many fall into this category. Then there are others who cavort it openly – as one who likes it straight, I prefer the inherent honesty of these limelight hoggers to the Dickensian version. It is a VERY small minority who genuinely don’t care for any recognition – somewhere I aspire to be personally but am nowhere close.

The attention one gets might not be of the kind one wants, though. When I drive this vehicle and stop at intersections, fellow drivers literally crane their necks to take a look – not at the car but at me. On the first few occasions, I looked at myself to see if I had made any clothing faux pas’ – rather uncharacteristic, but the stares warranted a second look. Nothing. My kids began feeling very uncomfortable. I reassured them that the windows were shut and the doors locked so there was nothing to worry about. Soon it became funny and they would merely report it. “Amma, those two bikers are looking at you. Amma, those folks in the truck are pointing at you and staring”. etc. etc. It became routine.

As a female driving a car normally considered the bastion of males, one gets a LOT of unsolicited advice – how to clean the vehicle, how to maintain it, what polish to use, and of course, the hand brake comment. Irritating, though, is the assumption that one is a bad driver just because of one’s gender. For example, I continue to abide by red lights even when the intersection is completely empty. (Kalpana Mohan will remember my doing this whilst driving us to the Music Academy a few years back, for a heritage walk by Sri. Sriram Venkatakrishnan.) When this occurs, the few vehicles behind me will honk until kingdom come AND show a finger at me AND yell “stupid female driver” whilst driving past. My being female, AND driving, automatically makes me a bad operator of a vehicle for some.

Well, the 2.5 hours at Sri. Abhishek’s concert was worth the constant nagging doubt as to the car’s well being. It was an excellent program, no surprise there. Prodigious and prolific, Sri. Abhishek constantly stuns by his combination of musical skill, prowess in laya, childlike enthusiasm, obvious enjoyment, remarkable appreciation of his co-artistes (Sri. HN Bhaskar on violin, Sri. NC Bharadwaj on mridangam and Vazhapally Sri. Krishnakumar on ghatam) and his total obliviousness to anything but the music being produced. I think a record of some kind was set yesterday – the thani aavarthanam ended at 9.16 and Sri. Abhishek asked Sri. Murali, the President of the Academy, if he should conclude. While I did not notice the response, the concert, in fact, ended at 9.27 pm – despite the well-known “sacrosanct” completion time of 9.15 pm.

As for my car? It was just fine. Parked facing frontwards within the Academy itself. The valets probably reparked it once patrons of the previous concert exited. I WAS rear-ended within the building as I exited though….

Photo courtesy – Mala Iyer (thank you). I happened to see her at a concert of Sri. Sanjay Subrahmanyan‘s and she wanted to click this picture. She is a remarkably skilled photographer and took this excellent one (with a clear view of the offending hand brake) in poor light with just her cell phone.