JOIN USFast cars and fidgety feet
Rishad Saam Mehta
Tranquebar 2016, pp 183, Rs 212
Most travellers like to choose travel destinations that have been tried and tested. So, if you’re are looking for descriptions of scenic views or architectural marvels or a sculptors’s outstanding creations, this is not the book to read.
On the other hand, if you want the writer to transport you to a relatively unknown destination by a slightly risky method — just enough to create a frisson of excitement — then this is it.
In a way, the author is blessed, for he can get his adrenaline rush and still put his thoughts and “emotions recollected in tranquillity” into book form! And, of course, there are lots of fringe benefits apart from the adventures themselves; the encounters with interesting people, which may turn out to be wonderful connections, which in turn form the springboard for further adventures to see Bing Crosbie’s “far away places with strange-sounding names — Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Kibber, Komia, Lucca”; the development of feeling easy in any place or a situation, adapting to diverse conditions, and taking delight in every new vehicle he is given to use.
The author is an electronic engineer who is in his heart a happy wanderer. And this is where I feel that if the passion is strong enough, the universal forces of nature will provide, however strangely, the opportunity. In his case the newspaper in which his sandwich was wrapped up had a classified inviting applications for a new automobile magazine, which in turn promised opportunity to travel and drive cars. He combines his love of bikes, cars and snowmobiles with daredevil actions such as jumping out of a moving plane, bungee hurtling (I can call it only that), scuba diving, driving a vehicle over crazy winding roads, walking on a glacier, skydiving — in short, movements all fraught with danger.
In the process he meets equally driven people and strikes up meaningful relationships. His vehicles are much beloved: a Harley Davidson Road King Classic BMW in India for a media drive across Kerala, the new Skoda to be test-driven in Prague, a bicycle trip in Italy. And when he is not careening at breakneck speed around corners on one wheel or whatever, he treks across the Himalayas at sense-defying heights to watch the sunrise over the mountains. Included in his repertoire are a trip to the Arctic Circle or the Finnish Lapland, with his own skimobile.
He waxes eloquent over his machines: the Citroen C6 is “a beauty with a generous helping of brains — like a good-looking schoolteacher.” He drools over thingamajigs such as Tom Tom Sat Nav gears, front and rear suspensions etc. Man and machine form one smooth extension of each other. As he himself describes it, the “taming of the rebellious rear end is what translates into pure and undiluted at the steering wheel.” The descriptions leave me cold, but passion oozes from every word. And in the process he makes extraordinary connections, strengthened no doubt by relaxing over a good drink and delicious food. (One evening’s menu listed pasta with wild boar sauce, gnocchi with fresh cherry tomatoes and basil). Also some hair-raising episodes that in the solving test his ingenuity such as when everything froze over in Himachal — diesel in the fuel tank, the engine oil, the transmission oil, the engine coolant, the power steering fluid — in fact anything that flowed. How they solved that problem is a lesson in ingenuity and brilliance.
One comes across some colourful characters: the typical Punjabi guy called Teddy. The story that goes with it is delicious. An English governess came to this family with four rambunctious boys with equally rambunctious names such as Daljinder, Prabhijindar, Harjinder and Narjinder. Not able to wrap her crisp English tongue around these jawbreakers, she devised her own names for them: Charlie, Dicky, Teddy and Tony! Teddy was a colourful character with tremendous enthusiasm and stamina; one who takes on his long treks across the Kashmir terrain when leading a group, 20 mules — 19 to carry everybody’s stuff and one solely to carry his two casks of rum, one on either side of the mule.
And there is serendipity. How else can one explain the author arriving at Ballynahinch Castle in Ireland and finding out the connection between that and Ranjitsinghji of cricketing fame?
One can quarrel with the editing — could have been more concise and tight. But what comes across is the enthusiasm and the willingness to tramp across planet earth so that travel, writing and photography combine to fulfil his passion, and now a deeply fulfilling profession. One is blessed to have one’s passion as a profession. It is the author’s desire — a yearning — to participate in rich experiences that either vicariously translate for us, armchair travellers, or serve as a role model for others. And for that alone he deserves a read.