Xinging All The Way

Yesterday, I passed yet another milestone in this journey called life. I turned 31. I had been looking forward to reaching 31 eagerly. It was around 8-10 years back while traveling in a bus when a co-passenger stuck up a conversation with me and proceeded to ask how my wife and kids were. I said I myself was a kid and told him my age. He told me then that I looked 31 - not 30, not 35, not even 32, but 31!!! From that day on, I have been wondering what was it that was so special about 31. Well, I found out yesterday that 31 did have its own nice surprises.

As the scarce followers of my blog would know, I and Ranji had been planning on buying a car for quite some time. In fact, if not for the prudence of her, we would have bought a car much before we bought our house. Anyway, after a long wait, we finally decided to take the plunge. Taking into consideration our nothing-to-talk-about bank balance, we decided to go for a Maruti Alto. We didn't want to go for a Maruti 800 because that would kind of reiterate the truth that we were really down in the dumps as far as our finances are concerned. That was when Wales happened which made us start looking for a slightly better option.

It was around the same time that Wagon R Duo was launched. Taking into consideration the LPG factor, not for the environmental aspect - though that would have been great - but for the economy, we thought it would be great. I got a decent review about it from a person in our office who had bought it. He said that even though the boot space has been reduced to an extent, they have got a single long seat at the back which makes seating 5 a touch tough, but much more manageable than earlier.

Keeping all this in mind, we presented to Bimal Auto Agency in Indira Nagar one fine Sunday. We both liked the new Wagon R immediately - I because I always liked Wagon R (surprising, eh???) and my wife because she had no difficulty seeing in front of her. After examining the car, we got to the negotiation table, and that is when the problem started. The agent said that it cost around Rs. 4.34 lacs and that there would be no freebies with it. Now, we Indians wouldn't mind being fleeced as long as something free is thrown in with it. So, we were rather taken aback that nothing would be offered. All of a sudden, our eyes started searching for an Alto. We left the showroom feeling rather unhappy.

We thought we should be checking out some of the other cars also, but we encountered a problem there. I didn't like Santro very much for the looks and Ranji didn't like Indica because all her colleagues kept bitching about it. It was a question of who would bat their eyelid first, and as always, it was me. So, we went to the Trident showroom in Indira Nagar. They were very welcoming, understood very quickly the kind of customers we were, and told us that all the basic accessories would come free of cost. They offered us free music system with speakers and central locking apart from the usual floor mats, boot mat, Ganesha idol, etc.

With more arguing power, we were back at Bimal, but the story remained the same. The agent there said that the maximum he could provide would be the floor mats. I felt like saying he could keep his mats for himself, but didn't. But what it did was it increased my interest levels for Santro Xing considerably. We told him that we would inform him of our decision later and went over to Trident.

Once in Trident, we encountered a slight problem in that the person who assisted us the first time wasn't to be seen around, but we met a pleasant lady who was more than helpful. She answered all of our questions to our satisfaction, and we signed up the papers for purchase of a Santro Xing. We wanted a dark maroon color, but since that wasn't available, we settled for black. We always loved black, but have heard some frightening stories about the maintenance of a black car in Bangalore. Since we didn't want all those lifeless grey, we thought we would settle for black. The delivery date was fixed for, you guessed it, October 22nd.

So yesterday morning, in true Indian middle class style, I herded my wife and 2 cousins who had come over to the showroom along with my friend. My friend was going to lead us since both myself and Ranji weren't yet confident behind the steering wheel. We reached the showroom about half an hour before the delivery time, killed our time glancing at the car every 30 seconds or so, and finally when the clock ticked over to the "mahurat," we were promptly out of the showroom and into the car.

Ranji started off driving since my friend insisted that it was our car and we had to have the first drive. After driving rather well for around 300 mts, he took over. We quenched its thirst, went to a temple and did the pooja, and came back to our apartment, where the car is currently languishing. We did distribute sweets around and invited both the interested and uninterested to have a peek at it. For once, even a perceptive guy like me was blind towards the blatant lack of interest shown by some because of my own excitement.

As the euphoria slowly lifts, reality is going to set in. Scratches are going to be there, especially while parking in our building or driving through Bangalore roads. Driving is going to be hell amidst this maddening traffic. But for the moment, we aren't ready to think of all that, blissfully looking at the car with a rather stupid-looking smile on our face.