A whiff from the past

Vintage pride

One can travel to a different world if they begin talking to Retired Air Commodore, M K Chandrasekhar. A walking encyclopedia who is now settled in Indiranagar, he gurgles like a stream that can seldom be stopped when he opens a window to the past. He is full of interesting, rich stories right from the Airfield Station in Jorhat to his life in Jubilee Hills. And just like him are his vintage cars that he calls his family. If one opens the car door, the Volkswagen rings of nostalgic anecdotes, waiting to be heard. 

Chandrasekhar’s desire to own vehicles started in the 1940s, at a time when he could not afford a car. He fondly recalls that those were the days when owning a scooter was a prize and more prestigious and ‘masculine’ than that was owning a motorcycle.

He says, “The first car a person could own was a Fiat 500. More dignified than that was what Hitler promised the Germans – the Volkswagen. Hitler promised all the Germans a car and asked Volkswagen to create an affordable, easy-to-own vehicle. It was the only good thing that he did. Soon, the car became an idol and a mass-hero, at the same time. It was a common man’s car and people started calling it the ‘Folkswagen’.”

As a young Airforce officer, he was appointed to work in Egypt by the Government of India. He wanted to import a car but it was very difficult as he recalls that an Egyptian pound was worth Rs 7.

“I asked the Egyptian Government for an advance and received 500 pounds. The only cars I could afford within 500 pounds were a Volkswagen and a Ford Cortina. In 1964, a budding baby boy joined the IAF family and 1965 saw a Fontana Grey Beetle 1200 joining us in Cairo, directly from the Frankfurt Volkswagen factory. We made a small basket which hung between 2 coat-hanger hooks and called it baby basket. As the caretaker, she (the Beetle) readily accepted the baby basket and travelled all across the United Arab Republic. She touched places like El-Alemein, Gardaka, Luxor , Alexandria and the pyramids.”

Twenty five years later, when he came back to India in a ship, the Volkswagen gloriously positioned herself on the foredeck of SS Asia from Port Said, across the Red Sea, to Mumbai.

“In Pune, a pretty baby girl joined to form the composite Beetle family. The Fontana grey family travelled from Pune to Ahmedabad, Kerala and back to Pune in the car. She travelled alone by train to Tinsukia, where I picked her up. At Mohanbari in Dibrugarh, she travelled to the Burma border and all across Assam and Pasighat, crossing Brahmaputra River. In Kohima, she visited the Commonwealth War Graves. From Mohanbari, she travelled all the way to Cochin by train.” No one was allowed to “touch his third baby.”

The car was with him though he kept travelling across India. “I remember an incident in Jorhat. On a Sunday morning, someone rang the doorbell and asked me to look inside the car. I saw 2 small children in the backseat. The man said that the children had followed my car. I thought they wanted a ride so I took them for a round in the airfield. However, they refused to get out of the car later.

So, at around 20 years of age in 1985, she was married away to a younger family, along with a pack of spare parts for 1 lakh kms as dowry.”

It did pain him to live without “his baby girl” for a while but when he had settled down in Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad, he got a nice surprise.

“A bright orange yellow Beetle 1300 of 1973 joined the family to fill the big void in 1993. It was a birthday gift from my son. I don’t remember spending much on maintenance
and not once have our Beetles given up on us in the last 51 years. Proudly owned by my son, the family member continues to make the elderly family members smile.”
And behind this smile. lies the enjoyment he receives everytime he shares his little Beetle story. 

(The author can be contacted on [e-mail])