Free Type-II: Memories Of My First House by Abhilash Gaur Page A

summer
afternoon it seriously let us down. We had to go somewhere and papa
spent half an hour trying to coax it to life. He was sweating, the
scooter was hot, he got his hands dirty, we all stood waiting under
the afternoon sun, yet it didn’t start. Finally, we parked it in
disgust and took a CTU bus from the stop outside the CBI office in
Sector 30. My chief grouse was that we had to walk the extra
distance to that stop (there was another one at the government
school gate but the bus we needed didn’t have a stop there). But
then, when papa took the scooter out the following Sunday, it
started easily. I am sure a spirit resided in it.
    There were good
things too about the Vijai. It was very stable, for one, as its
engine was mounted in the middle, motorcycle-style. We were
returning from Mohali one night and the road was not clearly
visible in its dim, 6-Volt headlight (I don’t know the wattage but
the electricals were 6-Volt). The link road was being widened and
there was a heap of pebbles on the roadside. Papa misjudged the
braking distance and the Vijai went straight into the heap, dug in
and stopped. It didn’t fall and we were unhurt, unscathed, not even
slightly ruffled. I said WE: there were four of us and that was the
scooter’s second virtue. It was long and spacious, and the spare
wheel was mounted horizontally, so it could be used as a third
seat. We had inserted an old, small oil-stained pillow under the
black wheel cover to turn it into a comfortable seat, and for a
long time my sister rode on it. When I grew taller, she had to
surrender that place to me and start sitting between papa and
mummy. More than her height, it was about her age and appearing
decorous, I think.
    That scooter was
the first vehicle my sister and I learned to operate. Father gave
us our first lessons on the road behind Sukhna Lake near the golf
course. It used to be a very quiet road then, and remained so for
years after. There were long and wide parking bays at regular
intervals, and we learned to engage first gear in their secluded
safety. Since papa wasn’t tall it was difficult for him to guide us
from the rear seat, and inevitably, we made the scooter rear up the
first few times we engaged gear. But we came out of those attempts
unscathed. Later, I honed my riding skills in a ground near the
Traffic Police Lines in Sector 29.
    I was not allowed
to take the scooter outside the campus because I didn’t have a
licence but by the time I was in class 8 I started sneaking it out
for a ride inside the campus. On one occasion, its weak brakes let
me down and I hit a family riding a moped. That day, the Vijai’s
sure-footed nature saved me. It stayed upright without much effort
on my part, but the moped fell and the elderly couple riding it and
their grandchild had bruises. I foolishly blamed them, but the old
man knew papa and told me calmly to leave. I still didn’t see the
gravity of the situation and came home boasting that I had just
been in the first motoring accident of my life. In about an hour,
papa came to know the details of the case from neighbours and went
to see the family and apologize.
    Such then was our
first scooter. When papa bought his new Bajaj Chetak in 1992, the
old scooter had to vacate the garage, and I was upset about this.
My loyalty made me regard it as almost a part of the family, and
when after a few months papa decided to sell it, I was all grief.
The buyer came on the weekend. He was from Kerala and took it away
because spares were easy to find in his hometown. I heard the
scooter start but didn’t go downstairs to see it off. It would have
been too painful.
    ***

Last Word
    I now live in a
place called Indirapuram just outside Delhi. My house is on the
eighth floor. It isn’t sunlit, but there’s no seepage and we get
water round the clock. There’s room enough for my family of three,
but there’s nothing else to recommend living in it. The air is
sooty, there is no space for children to play