| Second Time Lucky!
Hi fellow BHPians! I received the coveted membership approval mail an hour ago and let me tell you, it sure feels good! I submitted a membership request a fortnight ago and was turned down, but I got lucky the second time around and boy am I glad or what! A special thanks to the mods for approving my request, means a lot!
About me, as is the case with everyone here, I have been an automobile enthusiast for as long as I remember and when I was reading other members' intros here, and when they talked about being able to recognize the car makes from their headlights and every little angle, I was thinking to myself "hey that’s me!” That is what I love about this forum, the fact that everyone seems to be related to each other with this invisible code and you aspire to be a part of it the first time you experience the power of this community!
Sorry for getting carried away there, let me get back to MY intro!
I have always been the quiet, observant kind, used to notice everything about a car, right from their license plates to the shapes of their headlights to how fat their exhaust pipe is, which would, much later, become the final deciding factor for my first purchase!
I grew up in Delhi, and my love for cars began with my dad's sarkari cars as he was with the Government. So I understood the importance of back seat comfort when I invariably fell asleep in the oh-so-comfy back seats of his Amby and Contessa and fell in love with 4X4s when I sat in the Maruti Gypsy, with that rugged bar handle for the passenger in front and the small 4X4 lever.
Our first car was the second hand first generation Maruti 800, with that horizontal black plastic strip on the C pillar! It served us well for around 5 years and would be our ride for our regular trips to our ancestral village in Rajasthan and other outstation trips. Although it’s still a mystery to me how such a puny looking car could conquer the dusty, extremely hostile tracks in the village! But it never failed us and sadly we parted ways and it made way for a spanking new white Maruti 800 '97 model. It was our family car until I went to college in 2001 and it became MY ride and my brother got a new white Hyundai Santro (2000) for himself. I couldn’t have asked for more, my PERSONAL car! All to myself, I could take it anywhere, go anywhere I want, and understood the real meaning of freedom! It was my best friend, my Man Friday, my Warhorse! I served me extremely well and I would drive 40 KMs every day to my college and back on, wait for it..around Rs 70 per day! It would take me and friends, sometime 7-8 of them, in and around Delhi for the next 3 years! The car which was and is still known to all my friends as a four digit number (the registration no. of the car) became synonymous with our college days. Whenever we get nostalgic now and talk about the good old days, it almost always starts with, "remember, when we went to xyz in your XXXX..". I miss it, I really do!
I moved to Bangalore for my MBA and moved back to Delhi in 2007 with my first job. I was young, just out of B-school, with a job in hand and absolutely no responsibility AND I was on the lookout for my next Warhorse! After months of researching which consumed most of my 2nd year in MBA, and advices from everyone including my friends, family, classmates, neighbors, neighbors’ relatives, friends' girlfriends, my dad's driver, my dad's colleagues' drivers, the little kids around my house, and some more, and contrary to what all of them said, I went ahead and got the car that my heart desired ever since I laid my eyes on her in a mall in Bangalore, I went and bought the gleaming, amazingly stylish gorgeous looking black CHEVROLET SRV! It was, and after almost 5 years, still is the object of my desire! Not a day goes by when I don’t look at it and feel proud that I went with my heart and got it. I still see people's heads turning, I still love her! In fact my dad is using it now and even he tells me that there are people in his office who ask about the car! And as I said earlier, it was that FAT TAILPIPE that was the deal clincher for me! I have unlimited memories attached with this one and these five years with her have been amazing!
I still have the SRV at home, along with an Indica DLG 2005 and a Manza Safire Aura ABS 2010 which are used by my family since I am out of the country right now. But the pride of the garage is surely the SRV.
Apart from cars, I love sports, love playing cricket, am a movie buff, love travelling, was heavily into music, we parted ways some years back but we’re almost back together now! I love reading on the internet and have developed an interest for gadgets and probably the only guy in the world who loves gadgets but doesn’t own a single Apple product!
Well, I just realized that I have gone overboard with the length of the intro and wonder if the mods would approve it.
It’s great to be a part of this great community and I hope to contribute to this forum regularly!
Cheers!
Familyguy | 
22nd March 2012, 20:10
(1)
Thanks
passionate about cars. But later understood its not true.
