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The Ambassador

T. SHER SINGH

It is the ultimate icon of modern India, capturing all that the country has been about in its almost 68 years of existence. 

In a single, split-second vision of it, one is flooded with a world of images uniquely associated with India … its land, its people, its values, its dreams …

It represents the country like nothing else does. Nothing captures it better. Nothing describes it more succinctly. Nothing reveals it more honestly.

Appropriately, it's called the ‘Ambassador‘.

It’s only a car, you may be tempted to retort; a reincarnation of the Morris Oxford design discarded and left behind by the fleeing Brits and, with Hindustani aplomb, appropriated by the Hindustanis and made their own under the proud moniker of … yes, ‘Hindustan’.

So, it was the Hindustan automobile for a short while. It became the Ambassador a few years later.

But unlike the cars that have taken over the public personas of other nations and communities -- the Mustang or the MG, the Corvette or the Jaguar, the Mercedes or the Fiat -- the Ambassador has never been accorded the honour of ever being referred to as a ’he’ or a ‘she’.

It’s always been ’it’. It’s just too ugly to arouse any affection.

And though it has totally subsumed both the self- and the public image of Indians, it has never been linked with a logo which identifies it in the public eye. No Mercedes-like star, or the British pouncing jaguar.

Why?

Simply because its very shape and form, frozen in time like the autos that crawl around the streets in embargoed Havana, is it! How do you reduce such a strong image to a mere symbol?

There are more myths and legends around this automobile than any other car in history.

They say you can stuff and cram more Indians into an Ambassador than you can in three telephone booths in a row.

Would you believe it if I told you that I’ve seen it? Cross my heart …

On the road between Patna and Bihar Sharif, you could do a 40-mile journey faster and cheaper than any bus-service. For a few annas, in fact, as long as you were willing to sit on the floor, between the driver and his door, and squeeze out of his way in time every time he wanted to use the brake-pedal. Or perch on the luggage carrier on the top, or share the open trunk with a dozen other souls.

They say, when such an Ambassador ’taxi’ did roll over -- and it did with some frequency -- only a few deaths and injuries resulted each time. [That’s a big plus in India, believe it or not!] Because the occupants were so tightly stacked that they not only cushioned each other but also countered the very might of centrifugal forces.

Stories of how only a few Ambassadors could transport an entire baraat -- marriage party -- from one village to another, are part of the folk-lore whether you go to Bihar in the east or Gujarat in the west.

Election time is another optimal time for plying the Ambassador.

You could carry a busload of campaigners -- including the Minister hoping to be re-elected -- have the added décor of four full-size loud-speakers blaring from the top, all from a single Ambassador careening through a town from street to crowded street.

Once elected or re-elected, the Ministers then take immense pride in parading themselves from home to work and back everyday in shiny white Ambassadors, marked VIP in large letters -- to throw off any potential terrorists from their scent, I suppose -- and bright red, revolving and flashing emergency lights stuck on their roofs, screaming like bansheees. The sirens, I mean, not the politicians.

It makes them feel so self-important, someone told me once, because the Ambassador is sized and shaped like an armoured car, and perched in it, you can look down condescendingly on the Fiats and the bicycles and scooters and rickshaws and cows as you flash by.  

Guess what! India’s new prime minister, Mr Modi, has inherited a whole fleet of the jalopies. Complete with dancing red lights, screaming sirens … and VIP proclamations.  

There are other stories.

Cuba has nothing over the desi mechanic who has kept the Ambassador running non-stop since the 1950s. Because he has the added advantage in that he is not require to beautify or paint, even clean the vehicle. As long as it is spluttering along, nothing else matters.

Every Ambassador owner will brag that in his car, “every little component makes a sound … except the horn!”

The high level of ineptitude applied to the manufacture and assembly of each and every Ambassador, in typical Indian fashion, did not deter the population from buying the thing. Demand far outstripped supply. So much so, that once you registered yourself as a purchaser and put down a handsome advance, you then had to wait approx ten years (I kid you not!) before you got a call from the local dealership (the Jhunjhunwalas, in our case, in Patna) giving you the tidings that your new vehicle had arrived.

If you were able to drive it off the lot, it was yours, and you were on your own from that point on.

No one complained. Why? Because no matter how much the price was jacked up each year -- with the permission of the government, of course -- the value in the ’black’ market was twice as much. Which has been the bane of the country ever since its birth -- there’s never been any need to focus on quality, because of the short supply of everything.

Simply put, everything sold!

I could go on and on, but I’m sure you have a treasure-lode of your own, if you had the extraordinary experience of being born and brought up in India or having spent some quality time there.                 

So, I suppose you feel the same way I do, hearing the news this week that no more Ambassadors will be made. That the plant has been shut down. That’s it.

Did I hear you right?

That’s exactly what I said:

“About time! And not soon enough!”

Sure, it’s part of history and a lot of (mostly bad) memories are attached to it.

But one needn’t worry. Given the talent of the desi mistry -- mechanic -- these contraptions will be on the road long after Hindutva has become a distant memory and has been relegated to the dustbin of history. Long after the Castros are gone, and Cuba has embraced American enterprise and all the island’s cars have ended up in private and museum collections.

Which is a perfect segue to my own little pet project.

When our family and I left our town -- Patna, then still a town! -- on a white-hot May morning, 43 years ago to the day, it was in an Ambassador. The seven of us, surrounded by all our worldly possessions, thought nothing of the 50 degrees + (Centigrade!) every day, all day, as we took a circuitous route to New Delhi, almost a thousand kilometres away.

It must’ve taken us twice as much because we wanted to visit our friends and relatives who lived in in a zig-zag pattern along the way, to say our good-byes.

Our Ambassador was a relatively new one. That did not discourage it a bit from breaking down every few dozen miles. Blame it on the summer heat if you will … but remember, these vehicles were made for India, not Mount Forest in Canada.

Suffice it to say, it was an adventure, those few days it took us to traverse the distance to New Delhi.

Once we got to the city, we took it to a reputable garage -- the city’s largest and most prestigious one, I recall distinctly -- to have it serviced and prepped for sale. Oil changes, tune-ups, washing and polishing, etc.

The next day, when my Dad and I turned up to pick up the car, we were told we had a problem.

We, that is, not they.

They said they had found the cylinder-block was cracked …

We drove the thing here, we argued; so, it must’ve happened after we dropped it off. They shrugged their shoulders.

Given that we had our flights already booked for later that week, we paid a handsome sum to have the engine removed and opened and ‘fixed‘, all overnight.

The next day, within an hour after the car was ready, the garage owner bought the Ambassador from us. After billing us for all the engine work.

Not a problem, said my Dad.

The car had fetched twice the amount he had paid for it barely 12 months earlier!

So, here’s my project. I’d love to track down that Ambassador, purchase it, ship it to Canada, and then put it on display in the hallowed ground -- the Church -- that I now live in.

It is the very thing that so valiantly transported us from a miserable land to a civilized one.

And, of course, because it’s an Ambassador, now a dying breed. A monument to human ingenuity -- man’s ability to adapt himself to the lowest common denominator, and then keep on lowering it even further to test the limits of human endurance and incompetence.

Once I’ve got the car and it’s safely ensconced in my personal museum, you can then go ahead and destroy all the other Ambassadors in the world … or should I say, India? Well, they’re all in India, aren’t they? No one else in the world was willing to buy the ugly thing.

I wonder why.  

Yeah, you can then remove all traces of it, and make the world a slightly more beautiful and safer place to live.

But before you do, Mr Modi. You’ll agree, it too needs to be hailed -- like Indira Gandhi and the BJP -- as the Mother. Mata -- India’s Mother.

There can be no greater tribute to this great icon of Hindustan.


May 27, 2014

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