Dressed to kill!

I was privy to a decking up ceremony. Before you get ideas, it happened to be a truck. A goods carrier. I have never seen a new truck, a brand new one, not even in pictures. All this while I was exploring a sprawling vineyard in a town called Narayangaon (Taluka: Junnar) about 75 km from Pune on the Pune-Nashik Highway, NH-50.

For me trucks have always been pesky, irritating occupiers of road space without whom travel would have been so much smoother. They are dirty, spew a lot of smoke, and are all noise and no speed and perpetually breakdown and cause traffic snarls.

Finding a new truck was special. I’ve never stared long enough at the front face of a truck. You don’t want to see the face of most things you don’t like, right? Truck posteriors with "Horn OK Please" messages have inundated my vision, more by default because one is usually tailing a truck that refuses to give right of way. Coming back to how the ‘new’ truck looked. At the forehead, was a salutation to a certain Goddess, written in bright saffron. Right below, the forehead, much like a human face, was a wide eyed windscreen which gives the driver a large view of the smaller pieces of transport whose life he’s about to screw. On the bonnet, which is shaped like a nose, you had the abused but ubiquitous "शुभ लाभ " written on either side, with some decoration that made me think of the nose ring that brides wear. There also was, right below the bonnet a salutation to another god, something to the effect of "वीरभद्र प्रसन्न". I guessed that in the trucker community, there might be different gods to be propitiated for different parts of the truck - one for the bonnet, the engine, the windscreen. The fender, had another message written, something about someone’s parents blessings being with the truck. This was one blessed vehicle!

Now, the driver was playing self designated priest/pujari. He looked dishevelled, but then what did the truck know. He broke a coconut on the side of the truck and spilled coconut water on the bonnet, on the road and on his trousers. Both man and machine were purified now. He then broke the coconut up into four pieces and inserted them below all four tyres. It was critical that a poor fruit be subject to four tyres so that the supreme gods that govern the roads be happy. 

Having moved into the cockpit, he prayed to the steering, lit some incense sticks and waved them around. Now the speed dial, the brakes, the accelerator and the ignition key were all under divine intervention. The ignition turned and the truck roared, spewing forth its first installment of carbon monoxide and dust. The driver put on a squeaky tape that was high on treble and low on melody. He arbitrarily cut in into nearby traffic, as two autos scurried to take cover. A cyclist was ignored and a couple of passenger cars suitably cornered. It laboured to reach top speed of 35 kmph while taking the rightmost lane. The mammoth was well and truly on its way.