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Thursday 11 September 2014

Chapter 9 - Herby in Hyderabad ....and a Indigo joins in

So here we are.. Herby in Hyderabad , the city of the famous Hyderabad biriyani and lots more. Hyderabad is not a new city for me , spent a few years of schooling in my endless house hopping journeys. Our new home was being built and our temporary accommodation was dads office guest house which doubled up as the company's training centre . A training centre where fresh graduates come in and go through a training , induction process to formally get into the company main stream of activities.The new training centre being built was 90 kilometres away on the other side of the city and Herby had a real good run clocking up kilometres day in day out with dad at the wheel.

Soon age seem to have caught up with both dad and herby , at 12 years Herby's suspension wasn't any softer and passed on the jerks to dad's spinal cord which was equally old at 48 . And dad from the company he worked for was entitled for a chauffeur driver and car.Thus began the hunt for a newer car , a car which could be fuel efficient considering the distance covered and offer luxury at a value price. Well before you think luxury means Bms or audis or mercs , hang on .... the car we bought was a Tata Indigo , well for those who want to know about tata , Tata now owns Jaguar and Land rover and makes Trucks , Buses all sort of things. Well as far as the Indigo was concerned , an Australian equivalent would be a top end variant of the Nissan Tilda. From a performance perspective , the Indigo was truly outclassing our herby , had a 1.6 Turbo Diesel and of course manual transmission , leather seats and a audio with aux were already ready. I must admit that during the initial days , my attention was diverted to our newer car ignoring Herby. The Indigo was faster and going at 100 was a breeze , and the turbo was comedy by itself . The turbo would only kick in at a certain rev and when it did , I found myself in a situation trying to control a raging bull unable to get the right driving characteristic.

But the arrival of Indigo had a silver lining , now it meant that after 100000 km on the clock , a worn suspension , No frilled Herby's keys were finally handed over to me. Herby was now mine ! Truly mine. And I was simply overjoyed , ok maybe a corner of me wished for the new car but nevertheless getting a car is good enough. Herby now in my hands of course , but not without a few last moment customisations . I ensured Dad changed the ageing seat upholstery and put in a audio with Aux. The budget was stringent but this is the least i expected , considering i always loved my music and the seats should be a little worthy of ferrying a few girl friends around town , so u see see am in my college days.

Soon I wasn't too fussed about the Indigo being used by my dad and would stand by my Herby challenging him that Id beat him any day in a race knowing very well I would definitely lose. Though I did have a few motivational factors to think that I could , I had a small car with a petrol engine and dint really have to be too bothered about how i drive Herby , no matter what maintenance is low. while the Indigo was pretty new , the car is hug and cant move around in traffic as easy as mine.
So much for personal ego , to date the cars never raced , they were good in their respective places. But I did have a few antics on my belt with Herby , most notably doing a turn on 3 wheels at 70 kph and a sharp one at that. It happened when I  was at the wheel with my dad and a friend of his. I was in the right lane going at around 70 when dad was cross at me for missing an exit and the next option to turn back was to cross a bridge do a U turn and come back. My local knowledge of the suburb by now meant that I knew the roads well and that I dint have to cross the bridge and have one last option to go under the bridge and flip around through a series of inner roads. The only trouble is I am on the right lane doing 70 and that turn was smack left in front of me , in a split second I swerved the steering cutting across 3 lanes moving the car in 3 wheels and then doing a hard left and a hard right and to get the car back on 4 wheels slowing down slamming on my brakes. To this day dads friend will never forget this ride and he calls it his near death experience.

To me it was a near youth fun experience , I dint get away easy and was banned from driving until I showed signs of not showing road rage which meant a good month of sitting in the passenger seat rather than the driver seat. Nothing goes in vain , because i learnt driving watching dad drive and driving is a learning process right from darting in darting out , changing gears at the right time and knowing where your car will fit into.