Never Mind the Bullocks Read Online Free PDF Page A

into the practice of anthropomorphizing inanimate objects. Yet since he had offered up the token with such sincere poignancy, I felt compelled to bring it along. A bit of my past mixed in with my present; something old to mix in with this something new.
    Despite this epiphany, that night I lay in bed under the flickering ceiling fan while images from the day’s traffic returned in post-traumatic flashback sequence. My brain was trying to process the abundance of incomprehensible and counter-intuitive events I had witnessed from behind the wheel. The worst, and most embarrassing of all, had been my attempt at a parallel park. Stopping outside a street stall to buy a bottle of water, I figured I’d give the manoeuvre a whirl, just to see how I could handle it with my pint-sized steering wheel and no passenger-side window. The results had not been encouraging.
    The space that had opened itself to me was bookended by a grey Maruti and a bullock cart carrying a menacing-looking gas tank. The spot was Nano-sized, which is to say it was tight. Unfamiliar with the dimensions of my new car and somewhat inhibited by the explosive potential of the nearby gas tank and the judgemental gaze of its guardian bullock, the operation took me several attempts to execute, though my efforts did provide an amusing diversion for a group of taxi drivers on their tea break. Finally a couple of the guys for whom the pain of the tragi-comedy was too much to bear broke off from their mates and came to help me wiggle my way in. There was a flurry of raised hands, beckoning me in every direction, thensporadically making me slam down the brakes with horrified expressions on their faces and urgent beats on the Nano’s posterior as I came close to blemishing her perfect yellow paint-work. Cars were passing at very close quarters, honking their horns in outraged protest at my blocking the road, and I broke out in a sweat as I heaved the wheel from one side back to the other.
    The whole dire episode almost ended in another disaster as a passing teenage boy came so close to the side of the car that I actually clipped his elbow with the wing mirror. Mortified at having caused my first human casualty, I rolled down the window in haste, ready with heartfelt apologies. The lad was frozen to the spot, fixing me fearfully before embarking on a soliloquy of regret. I tried to reassure him it had been my mistake, but he wasn’t having any of it. We parted, awkwardly.

    So, back in Naresh Fernandes’ office, I was being served my backside.
    â€˜The last thing India needs is another 100,000 cars on the road,’ he said, continuing his tirade against the automobile industry, the private sector and scum like me that were needlessly polluting and congesting his country for nothing short of apparent larks. He was currently referring to the Nano’s famous pre-order list and gesturing at the jammed-up Keshav Rao Khadye Marg four storeys below, whose upwardly wafting cacophony of klaxons and horns provided a grumbling backdrop to our conversation.
    I started to flush: in my eagerness to take my new Nano on the journey of a lifetime, I had turned a blind eye to the opinions of the car’s detractors. There was, of course, a whole counter-Nano community whose slant on the car ranged fromits being a bit shabbily made to its being an unmitigated disaster for Indian society.
    The first peeps of dissent I uncovered came, unsurprisingly, from the e-pages of Topgear.com. Its review of the car ran under the headline ‘Cheap Trick’ and could be summed up in the quote: ‘What can you get for the price of a sofa? Not a lot, in all honesty.’ The article drew particular attention to what
Top Gear
perceived to be the car’s cloudy safety aspects, concluding, ‘Exactly what those [safety] requirements are remain unclear, but at least the Nano should be safer than a scooter. Or, say, hopping.’ 5
    The eco-activists were also pitching