Abhilasha -- the 'little car with big balls' that has already taken the author a crazy 10,000 kms across India.
200km from the outskirts of Mumbai, the effects of too much Red Bull on an empty stomach after 11 solid hours of driving began to kick in. At a neon-green garage, abandoned all but for a couple of attendants sitting expectantly by the pump on plastic chairs, I fell victim to the knock-on effects of excess caffeine and sugar. Tunnel vision, accelerated heart rate, difficulty breathing; I parked Abhilasha in the far corner of the plaza by the toilet block and sat with the A/C on full blast in my face as I struggled to breathe easy and calm the electric buzz in my arms and legs. Absolutely terrifying. Like a marathon runner just minutes from the finish line, or a mountaineer within a few metres of the summit, I was so close. But this final push was proving to be the end of me. 10pm and only another 3 or so hours to go, but I felt beaten. Around me was pitch black, a void of unknown nothing punctuated by the searing lights of driving insanity. Disoriented, panicked, knackered, I was ready to throw in the towel.
I had been driving all day, since Udaipur; a 750km journey that I was planning on doing over two days, but decided to take advice from the black devil somewhere around Vadadora and go for the whole thing in one shot. What the hell, I thought? It’s the last leg. Let’s make it glorious, triumphant! Let’s march in Mumbai for the final hurrah, our heads held high after a real challenge. After all, what’s the worst can happen?
Excerpted from 'Fear and loathing for the final push', The Nano Diaries
I had been driving all day, since Udaipur; a 750km journey that I was planning on doing over two days, but decided to take advice from the black devil somewhere around Vadadora and go for the whole thing in one shot. What the hell, I thought? It’s the last leg. Let’s make it glorious, triumphant! Let’s march in Mumbai for the final hurrah, our heads held high after a real challenge. After all, what’s the worst can happen?
Excerpted from 'Fear and loathing for the final push', The Nano Diaries
Abhilasha the Tata Nano, 'a little car with big balls'
While the boxy, no-frills frame of Tata's famed Rs 1-lakh Nano car (around $2,140) has been in the cynosure of the international press and auto enthusiasts, a little yellow car called Abhilasha ('A little car with big balls'), has been quietly familiarizing itself with the various nooks, crannies, potholes, little gullis and major highways in India -- the country she -- well, perhaps he -- was built for.
The anti-hero of road trips -- the people's car made especially for in-city running and small distances with a maximum speed of 65kmph -- the Nano's thinly encased interiors do absolutely nothing to make you feel safe against the rouges India's highways are infamous for and the pockmarked highways with upturned trucks that are even scarier.
Because there was that element of impending doom built into the trip and because the Nano is a symbol of an issue fraught with controversy -- social, economic and environmental -- all these would make for more humorous writing at the end of the day when she put this celebrity car and herself through "the trial of a lifetime" as she describes it. And because, any half-wit journo knows jumping into the deep end of the pool sans a lifejacket is the only way to get a good story.
How to be stupid and brave
In their three month trip around India, Able and Abhilasha negotiated "batty city traffic, hours sitting in gridlocks, mountains, forests, plains.""We have laughed, cried, honked our horn and sworn at negligent truckies; we have gotten lost, found the dead ends of motorways, been attacked (i.e. drooled on) by an elephant and on several occasions very nearly run out of petrol; we have seen farmers, road workers, naked guys, jetset tourists, soldiers, spiritual leaders and literally hundreds of pump attendants quizzical at the car’s secret front-mounted petrol cap; been sworn at, gestured at, stared at, gawped at, pointed at and smiled at," Able recounts.
Phew!
Turning India's coveted little new car into a hero-slash-almost celebrity wasn’t an easy task. Neither was, as she says, the task of emerging unscathed.
Back in England, Able has managed to collect about 3,000 pounds from her once skeptical family and friends, 75 per cent of which she plans to donate to Women's World Banking, a micro-finance organization for low-income women in developing countries.
While her horizon includes seeing more of India and fleshing out a book inspired by her road trip, for now, the online Nano Diaries serve as an adequate resting place for her journals. In the end, two disparate worlds of a British girl and India’s cheapest car become irrevocably tied together.
And as the rest of us scratch our heads over what the Nano will mean for us, the traffic boom, increased mobility, petrol prices -- sitting in its driver's seat Able learned Hindi via audio CD, met the Dalai Lama, made 3,000 bucks traversing one of the most complex countries in the world and arrived back to a cramped Mumbai parking spot three months later -- in one piece. The End.
For more, see The Nano Diaries Facebook page and Tata Nano website.
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