Brute on the road

“Hey bud, nice six-pack!” I turned around: The hunky silver SUV in the showroom flashed its Xenon projector lights at me and growled appreciatively.

“Excellent choice, sir,” the salesman said smiling at 1,000 watts. “That’s the new BRUTE S.Ex.I…300bhp, V8, eight gears and automatic self-drive.” He winked, “we call it the SexI Brute!”

I didn’t have a six pack — I had a revolting beer belly, so I bought it.

“Just key in your address and it’ll drive you home,” the salesman smirked, “And you’ll never get a traffic challan… money back guarantee… All you have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride.”

I climbed in behind the wheel. The engine growled deeply and satisfyingly. From my driving position I would tower above all the pipsqueak tin-pots on the road.

“Hah! Come on, let’s kick some ass!” I said, punching my address into the QWERTY keyboard in the steering wheel’s hub. I could feel the car’s great muscles flex as we drove slowly out of the showroom. On the road ahead, the traffic flowed past. BRUTE stopped, the great engine idling.

“Come on, let’s go…”

“We will have to wait till the traffic flow eases…”

“Man just shove your face into it — it will give way.”

BRUTE bridled. “We wait. Better late than never…”

At last we were on the road. Up ahead there were traffic lights approaching. The green light was ticking down… 15 seconds…14…13…

“Go man, go!” I exhorted BRUTE fully expecting him to kick-down, wind up the revs to the red line and send us racing to the lights.

The stupid hulk began coasting and came to a gentle halt just as the lights turned red. Behind us, a pip-squeak in an Alto was rightfully apoplectic.

“What the… we could have gotten through with the afternoon to spare!” I said. “Now we’ll have to spend the rest of the afternoon here!” BRUTE shuddered.

“And if there had been an idiot trying to jump the light from the other side?” he inquired. “Did you think of that? We would have broad-sided him — or he us!”

We came to a pedestrian crossing and BRUTE stopped dead as the people wanting to cross looked at us as if we were lunatics.

“You know, there are 1.2 billion people in India,” I said acidly, “are you waiting for all of them to get across?” Thankfully a bus bulldozed its way through and BRUTE slipped behind in its slipstream.

A little later we got stuck behind one of those three-wheeler goods carriages, trundling along at about 25kmph.

“Come on, what are you waiting for? You’ve got a 300bhp V8 remember. That fellow has a half horsepower and 100cc.”

“We’ll have to cross the yellow line,” BRUTE replied. “I can’t do that.”

“Well, take him from the other side then…”

“From the left? What are you crazy?”

“Blow your horn then. Make him move aside.”

“This is a ‘No Honking’ zone.”

“Jesus!”

Everyone who passed us — and that was nearly everyone on the road, including cyclists and even a handcart, was giving us funny looks, or glaring. Then at last, we hit the Ring Road bypass. “Okay, now open up and let those 300 thoroughbreds out. Let’s see what they can do.”

What they did was 65kmph. I mashed the accelerator to the metal, but the speedometer did not flicker over 65.

“What’s with you? Will you get a move on?”

“Seventy is the limit so I’m sticking to 65. Sometimes, the speed cameras read a higher than actual speed. Besides, it’s such a lovely drive — you have fields and the river and open sky above…what’s the hurry? Enjoy nature! And at 65, I emit the least amount of exhaust gases.” It emitted a smug little toot of its horn. “Actually I’ll have you know that at the moment my exhaust gas is cleaner than the air outside… you’re better off breathing straight from my tailpipe!”

“Ah, I see — you’re an environmentalist now, are you? By the way even that moped is going faster and that girl is grinning and waving at us.”

“Oh my god! Did you see that fellow changing lanes! And I don’t believe it: Is that a tractor trailer coming down the wrong way!” BRUTE slowed down to 40.

And then we entered one of those zany zones where all sorts of traffic bear down towards you from all different directions all at the same time: Cycles, two-wheelers, cows, goats, handcarts, a Bentley even, Omnis stuffed with school kids… rickshaws, a caravan of donkeys… you know typical traffic.

“Come on, let’s hustle ’em,” I said ghoulishly. “They’re all smaller than we are, just shove ’em aside and bash through. It’ll be fun! Step on it man!”

Bloody hell. My hunky BRUTE S.Ex.I just crept to the side of the road cut his engine with a terrible shudder and had a nervous breakdown.

“I can’t do this! I’m not made for this sort of madness. Take me back! I’ve been programmed in Singapore…”

Ah…

“You need to be retuned and re-programmed,” I said. “And I know just the place for the job…”

A week later I collected him from the workshop.

“Vary good, Sirji!” the workshop owner said. “No problem now!”

Only there was a problem. At the first traffic light BRUTE S.Ex.I flashed its lights at the sexy red coupe just ahead of us and nudged her bumper. She took off like a scalded cat with a wiggle of her bottom, with BRUTE in hot pursuit. Then as we approached a roundabout at about 80kmph, she dumped a gleaming dollop of oil straight in our path....

The mocking shriek from her horn is still ringing in my ears.

(Ranjit Lal writes for children and adults, and likes nature and cars.)

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