Ode to the Ambassador

My memories of the Ambassador go back to the days when our train, the Mumbai-Howrah Mail, would make its final halt sluggishly at the Howrah station. After haggling over the rates with the coolie — something that would make my father very proud and leave me terribly embarrassed — my parents would take my sister and me by our hands and hustle us towards the serpentine queue at the taxi stand outside.

The taxi drivers knew from experience that the passengers weren’t in a hurry and having travelled more than 1900 kilometres by train, they were perfectly fine waiting their turn in the queue. A fleet of yellow taxis – all Ambassadors — with most of them in a state beyond repair, would slowly inch forward to pick up their passengers.

I always prayed that we had that one-in-a-million chance of a new taxi or one that at least had a Rexine seat cover because the muggy Kolkata heat made people sweat a lot and the cotton seat covers would always have a large patch of sweat on them. I don’t recall if God ever heard my prayers.

I am a probashi Bengali. While we probashis share many commonalities with the Bengalis who live in Bengal, we ‘outsiders’ often fail to understand Bengal’s love for all things antediluvian, the Ambassador car being just the most obvious point of reference today.

Our journey from Howrah station to the family house in South Kolkata would criss-cross through many streets and bylanes of the city that bore a stamp of a bygone era. The Ambassador would lethargically chug along its way, its horn making weird staccato sounds, spewing out black clouds of exhaust and interrupted by an occasional shout from the sando-ganji clad driver to anyone who stood on his way with a “ dur chaata, shor naa ” (Get out of my way!). These were the moments when I wondered how fast the Ambassador would go if the streets of Kolkata were ever cleared of its teeming masses.

In those days, like most boys my age, I would keenly observe the technological developments in cars. Mind you, I’m talking of an era when we didn’t have mobile phones or shopping malls, and pocket money consisted of a measly ₹20 which you received from relatives on Bijoya . Our ‘distractions’ were story books, classical music concerts, an occasional movie, and family get-togethers.

Small wonder then, in a world of few choices, a breakthrough was often a small thing hyped up — like the shape of the Ambassador’s indicator lamp. For several years, Ambassador car advertisements would announce a new model simply by changing the indicator lamp from round to square and the design of its front grille. Every time the car’s dickey sported a new label — Mark 4 — Bengal heralded the beginning of a new era. Around this time, came an ‘Aha’ moment in the Indian automobile engineering. This was the Ambassador with a Japanese Isuzu engine. More powerful than its earlier avatar, the 1800cc Isuzu-powered Ambassador was akin to a shot of adrenalin being administered to an asthma patient.

It was faster and gave much-needed life to a car that was by now frayed and worn-out. With the Isuzu engine, the Ambassador had a new soul mate, a new future.

Anyone who is familiar with Kolkata will agree that it is one of the friendliest Indian cities. The warmth, hospitality and gregariousness of its people is perhaps rivalled only by those in Amritsar.

The city’s spirit was also reflected in its car. The Ambassador was large and fond of company. There was space for everyone — ma , baba , uncle, aunty, Bubai the neighbourhood lad, Bruno my four-legged pal, and of course, Shonku, the driver. And with a new engine, the Isuzu-powered Ambassador attained a certain air of exclusivity and grandeur.

One of the journeys that is etched in my memory is our trip from Kolkata to Puri, a 500-km drive. I was in high school and distinctly recollect Mukherjee kaku approaching my father during a family get-together and enquiring about our impending trip. I learnt that the Mukherjees were keen to accompany us.

I was ecstatic as Mishti, their beautiful daughter, would be travelling with us in the same car. For a full 11 hours! I felt blessed. At least God hadn’t been totally deaf to some of my prayers. On the day of the journey, Mishti wanted to sit in the front seat with me, but her mother would have none of it.

Years later, I came to know the real reason — the culprit was the Ambassador’s new floor-shift gear lever that would make us teenagers sit too close to each other! To this day, I blame the Ambassador for playing spoilsport. An advancement in technology crushed my dreams.

By the early 1990s, the winds of liberalisation had crossed over to our shores. With liberalisation, came choices. With choices, loyalties changed. Loyalty is a strange thing — somehow animals are better at it than humans. We analyse, rationalise and weigh our options.

And one day, a small car started challenging this undisputed king-of-the-road. The writing was on the wall. The fall from grace was rapid and unforgiving for a car that had once carried foreign dignitaries and politicians in faraway Delhi and was considered the official car of the nation.

Today, life hasn’t changed much for Shonku. Although he is old, he continues to drive, but now he does it for Uber. He reminisces about the Ambassador — they are stories that none of his customers want to hear.

They pretend to listen to him while they ‘like’ vacation pictures on Facebook. As he drops them off, he asks with a tinge of hope and nostalgia in his voice “Sir, will Pujo (Peugeot) bring back the Ambassador?”

The writer is Senior Vice-President of Brand and Corporate Communications at RPG Enterprises

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