Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
companies long dubious about investing anything in India now
virtually
fighting
to get into what was touted as the largest middle-
class consumer market outside Europe. Rahul, of course, was a
writer, and writers never see much change in business - until they
find themselves shipped off to a gulag, or chained naked in some
cellar with their tongue on the floor. But writers do usually like to
talk about business, or any number of other subjects they know
nothing about, because they'll talk about anything to avoid talking
about the writing they aren't doing.
Gurcharan Das, however, knew an awful lot about business, more
even than he
needed
to know. At least this reassured me I wasn't just
being romantic about believing India's economic future was going
to surprise the world. At one point I asked him if he thought dropping
the legislation protecting the Indian automobile industry -
permitting the Japanese, for example, to establish plants there -
would destroy it. Given the choice, it seemed unlikely that anyone
but people who could afford to make symbolic gestures would ever
buy an Indian car again.
I had a reason for asking. I recalled watching the windscreen
wipers on an Ambassador that had been purchased an hour before
make fifteen feeble sweeps at a monsoon downpour before simply
dropping straight off the hood in unison. Not ten miles on the
clock, and a window in this same car, when wound up to keep out
rain, flopped free of its doorframe, shattering somewhere back along
the road. Within twenty-four hours, both of the little yellow flippers
set between the doors on both sides as indicators dangled uselessly
from mysterious threads of wire; the handbrake now rested beneath
a seat; the left front wheel had nearly detached itself entirely from
the axle, lacking bolts to secure it there; the speedometer needle,
having been lodged at fifteen miles per hour for as long as anyone
recalled, was next seen lying horizontally beneath zero; the battery,
which proved to be ten years older than the car, died amid a toxic
froth; and the fan belt melted just before the entire engine burst into
flames.
No, buying an Ambassador
was
an act of faith. But when you'd
fixed all the problems that it shouldn't have had in the first place,
and found a mechanic who wouldn't replace your new parts with his
