Car Air-conditioning. Maruti 800 AC
The AC made a difference.
Yup it depleted the bank account,
It killed the car engine before its time, cost of running the car increased, the car was sluggish and the car failed to accelerate even if you stepped on the gas and drove the car all the way in the 3rd gear. It was like in today's times, turning off the blue AC switch worked as pressing the NOS button to overtake a truck. There was no option but to kill the air con to BOOST the Maruti 800.
There was no fifth gear.
Yes the historian will tell you that there was a limited period edition of the Maruti 800 AC with the unmagical 5th gear but that came much later and was soon discontinued for reasonable reasons unknown to me, for the simple reason it never came to my head to find out why.
Was there another option in small cars ? The sunshine tall boy Shah Rukh Khan Santro has made its entry. But Maruti which meant the "Wind" made in Japan sounded cooler, more trust worthy and road worthy with a good network of service centres. Oh yeah and my dad was mighty impressed with one small little fact : Just 3 cylinders to the engine and a carburettor which you could tweak further to make the car more frugal in its fuel intake and make it go further per litre of petrol. Some did claim that their 800 returned 21 km to a litre though ours never did better than 19 on the highway and 17 in the city, but that's cos we lived out of the city.
It's unthinkable today.
14 years and 70000 km only In a small radius city like Lucknow, the car was good for probably another 10 years without a heart transplant.
For personal information and no meaningful knowledge's sake, I did find out the car which was purchased for Rs 2 lakhs only was still sold by Maruti even after 14 years for just a shade over 2 lakhs except that it could be sold only in semi urban cities as the company did not find it worth investing in to improve it to meet the emission norms set by the Indian Govt and finally phased it out completely in favour of the Alto.
For first memories of the Maruti, the Maruti 800 Dx, the Dx badge meant that the car had air conditioning in it, costed all of Rs 40000/- inclusive of taxes and was a marvel of engineering in fit and finish and the shape and the gentle purring of a cat of an engine compared to the sore throated premier Padmini and deep throated rattling Ambassador.
It was like a small mouse without a boot amongst the big cats, but it served the purpose of commuting in the city in comfort. In the war of multiplication and breeding between the mouse and the cat, we all know who will win by the power of sheer numbers. And there was no Pied Piper to lead Maruti away from taking over the country. All other makes of cars died their natural death for lack of evolution.
Back to air-conditioning, a car without it was a simple give in. And in a small town it did not matter much. On a hot summer day by the time the first whiff of cool air came out of the vent, you had arrived at your destination. So much for wasting fuel. Keeping the windows open was the more efficient way in comparison.
So the years passed by and the industrial revolution and the liberalisation brought with it better creature comforts but the car AC was still on the back burner in the mind.
I Got married to a girl from the big city where distances were measured in hours and not kilometres or minutes and for whom the air con was part of the standard equipment of the car. The car was about travelling in comfort and not just going from point A to point B.
Not that she ever complained.
It's like someone who has always ridden a cycle with shock absorbers is given to ride the regular cycle where the only spring is the one that keeps the stand in place.
But then like I said the radius of the city decided the fate of that mindset. The world changed and the global warming took its toll on the small town distances as well. Retail finance boomed and the streets overflowed with vehicles. Everything became an emi Including the refrigerator. With Global warming also came global slowdown and the great Indian population became the growth engine of the world. Every car company worth its name and salt came to India with better products, with more creature comforts like power windows on the front windows and side view mirrors on both sides which we called wing view mirrors in style. Yes side view mirrors did not exist on both sides in India and power windows did not come in all windows as standard equipment.
Don't laugh.
And yes the air conditioning improved. The 1800 Isuzu engine powered a battle tank Contessa and also the box air conditioner which did not Cool. It chilled. Thats when we learnt about grill temperature.
The small car air conditioner and the sedan air conditioner cooling was simply not comparable. On a hot humid day. You could have beads of sweat trickling down your temples steadily even with the air-conditioner at full blast. You could only cool your finger tips and touch your forehead as you fought traffic and struggled with the flimsy gear shift lever.
It's only if you have seen and experienced this can you actually appreciate the true comfort of sitting in the new age sedans where the blower actually blew out cold air and the rear seat passenger could actually feel the Change in temperature in 5 minutes. The front seat passenger could actually close his eyes and feel the drying of the beads of sweat on the face and imagine the transportation from hot to heaven.
It's one thing to read it and it's another to truly experience it.
What was not an everyday experience became a look forward to experience.
You could sit all day in the car.
"People and cars can be easily turned around." It's an old country song.
All of a sudden all things true about the air conditioner in the car changed except that it drank fuel. Big deal about it. It was better to burn fuel than to burn in an inferno. Creature comfort was important to living life all of a sudden.
For us the world remained the same in our Maruti 800 and in true blue style the car kept purring along without even the obligatory minimal fuss. We ferried a lot of expecting mothers to the hospital and then brought them back with their new born babies to their respective homes like the proverbial stork, midnight medical emergencies kept happening in the neighbourhood and the subsequent ferrying to the doctor. A knock at the gate in the middle of the night and we knew it was not for fun. Good times Ferrying folks for weddings of friends and relative and being at their disposal for their touristy inclinations. Last minute attendances to lend a shoulder to the family of the dead, for folks who missed the "laash ke vaste" bus. Have even brought a cousin back home from the hospital in the back seat, when there was no ambulance driver available to carry a dead body. In hind sight I really don't know how we did it. We just did it.
From birth to death the Maruti 800 and all the In-betweenness in the circle of life. The air conditioner was never missed. No one complained Ki car mein AC nahi hai. AC wali gaadi nahi bheji.
All of sudden the car air-conditioner became important. Well actually it was not all of a sudden. My wife had simply stated it. "When you arrive in Delhi. The first thing we will need is a new car. A new air conditioned car." The wife has a strange way of being right and foreseeing the future.
Wives are kind of soothsayers who live with you.
The big metropolis became home and the Maruti 800 kept purring along and the daily routine drive was 80 km plus and the state of pollution being such that my crisp white shirt became a sweat soggy grey shirt mess even in winters. The white shirt remained white only where the seat belt covered the shirt. In a few months time - by the time the winters ended the seat belt was nothing but a black band of soot and I dared not wear a white shirt to line it with a black band across the chest. That's how the house hold economy of the white shirt crumpled.
Braved the summers of Delhi in the hot oven cum cocoon of isolation with beads of sweat trickle permanent feeling, bordering on dehydration and the glare of the sun. The good fun was that you don't miss what you don't know.
The feeling of an Air conditioned car was unknown. So much so for progress made in life.
I still recall the moment I decided to buy a new car. Sorry read it as an air conditioned new car.
Driving back to work from Malviya nagar
at 6 pm from a vendor visit. The drive was a hour long simple routine drive back which probably took 4 hours on the outer ring road via the domestic airport loop into the choked cantonment roads into west Delhi. 4 hours in isolation in an oven, with no water, sweat which flowed from the pores like water drops from a leaking tap also dried up. Dehydration set in, for all I know salt imbalance in the blood stream ensured that I was on the verge of losing my mind driving in 1st and 2 gear, even the sun went down and the sodium vapour street lights refracted into my eyes and the red back lights of the cars up ahead kind of actually blinded me. Somewhere in those few minutes before reaching the point of delirium I decided The Air conditioner has to come in the car. No not a mere add on AC fitted in the car. In those days an AC could be fitted in like a music system was added on. NOT FOR ME, It has to be a real air conditioner. Or maybe I was delirious cos there was only one car which was the best. The Merc. The Merc sold only one model in the country in those days. It was out of question. It was beyond the wildest of wild dreams. Now I knew what they meant in the English movies by isolation and confinement in a tin room in the hot sun in which you could not stand or sit completely. Not many men survive it. From the POWs in the war movies to the jail inmates. Only "The Heros" did not break down. They could physically break you but not your mind. Now I knew what they went through and felt like. So much for thoughts of your entire life gone by and the future to create only to you company.
You could change the world only if you could think. Reaching the point of no thought without any attempt at meditation. The only crystal clear idea in the mind embedded that day was the car air-conditioner. I had everything in life that I cared about but for a car air conditioner.
The wife was RIGHT but it took from Nov 2005 to May 2006 for that seed to germinate completely in my mind. After that it was only a matter of time.
The Baleno came home in June. It was a rolling steel cage with a monster air conditioner, which cooled to the point of having to clench your jaws to stop your teeth from chattering but there was no way you could stop the headache which came with sitting in the cold for too long.
Yes it was no Merc but it had the air conditioning that was better than that of the E class.
Time to laugh.
This note was penned while I was waiting for the cooling coil of the Baleno in June 2016.
