Sweet Car O' Mine

In Memory of 'Boo'

She wasn’t called ‘Boo’ when she began her journey just six short years ago in 2019. She was christened ‘Car-unyaa’ and she belonged to Eleonora, a Ukrainian lady who was a former resident of the Gulf city I currently inhabit. Car-unyaa was a small white sedan with a thick butt (seriously, there cannot be a roomier trunk on a coupé). Eleonora loved her Car-unyaa and they spent a happy three years together. But then, Eleonora’s ageing mother somehow managed to escape the Russia-Ukraine war zone and apply for asylum abroad. Eleonora decided she needed to leave her life in the Gulf behind and accompany her mom. So she began to look for a new home for her precious Car-unyaa.

Enter yours truly, a new driver with a freshly minted licence, looking for her first car. I had been on the hunt for a secondhand car for a few weeks when I came across the advertisement Eleonora had put up on a local website. Until that point, my search had led me to several shady car dealers who were out looking for their next victim. My hopes were flagging, it was starting to look like all the advertisements online were scams, but I still needed a car. So, I crossed my fingers, muttered a little prayer to whichever gods were watching my struggles while munching divine popcorn, and sent a meeting request to Eleonora.

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The Gulf is a place with a large fluid population of expats. Since there is no pathway to citizenship, people come and go from the country in droves. That makes the secondhand goods market here a vibrant, thriving place. But like every large market, it has a seedy underbelly: The Gulf imports a lot of cars, some of them flood-damaged or accident-salvaged vehicles from the US and its neighbouring countries. Expert local dealers in the secondhand car market then skilfully patch these vehicles up, give them a facelift (car-botox?), and sell them to unsuspecting buyers looking for steal deals. Unless one really knows their way around car engines, it is extremely risky to even consider buying from the secondhand market here.

Yet, clueless as I was, I was determined that my first car would not be a new one. I was a fresh driver and needed to learn to relax behind the steering wheel; that seemed like an impossible feat while my brain was running financial loss calculations alongside grotesque limb-loss scenarios every time a vehicle swerved into my lane at silly-high speeds. Since I could only cope with one of those fears at a time, I chose to eliminate the financial one: I’d go for a cheap car so dents and scratches wouldn’t feel like the end of the world. And the second, more morbid fear…? Oh well, I’d que sera sera through it until I became thoroughly desensitized. Isn’t that what adulting is all about?

This wonderful logic train was what culminated in my partner Aditya and I standing outside Eleonora’s apartment block on a muggy July evening in 2022. She took one look at us and smiled in relief, “You’re not shady dealers posing as buyers! I’m so glad!” That broke the ice between us. Apparently, the Gulf market is as brutal to sellers as it is to buyers. Eleonora regaled us with her experiences as she took us for a short test drive around the block. Then she showed us all of Car-unyaa’s service history at the official brand dealership and gave us phone numbers that would let us verify all the records. Her honesty was refreshing after all the seediness we’d been subject to. After carrying out verifications and inspections, we finally struck a deal. We were going to give her beloved Car-unyaa a new home.

When the day of the ownership transfer rolled around, Eleonora was emotional. “I wish I could take Car-unyaa with me, but it would be too expensive to export her. I hope you let me come see her when I’m in town someday,” she patted her trusty ride one last time.

“Please drop in any time you feel the need to see her. I’ll take good care of her,” I promised, hugging Eleonora goodbye before getting behind Car-unyaa’s wheel and driving off confidently. But as Eleonora’s image became smaller in the rearview mirror, I felt my confidence wilt like a biscuit dunked too long in a teacup. I was ALONE, in control of a WHOLE vehicle, that belonged to ME.

‘What the heck were you thinking, you noob? You’ll be the death of all us organs! We demand freedom from your idiotic regime! NOW!’ my brain yelled at me as my palms began anointing the steering wheel with my sweat.

…That was when the GPS turned me on to the freeway.

Suddenly, the lights became too bright, the speeds became too fast, and the loud hammering of my heart drowned out even the screaming of my brain. It was my first time alone behind the wheel on a Gulf freeway where the top speeds were 130-140 kmph. I almost passed out from the panic of it all. Oh yeah, I was an idiot, I agreed with my gibbering brain. But I was an idiot determined to survive.

I gathered my scattered wits, gripped the steering wheel even harder, and somehow managed to bring our first ever car home safe and sound. Of course, a new set of nightmares was born in the process. Those… I left with my brain to deal with as ‘reward’ for trying to incite sedition among my organs.

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Soon after that crazy night, I rechristened the car ‘Boo’. It was not out of need to make her belong to me more than she already did. In fact, I often argue that renaming her ‘Boo’ wasn’t an act of love at all, but of fear.

You see, Boo (formerly Car-unyaa) was a sedate sort of sedan, I’d soon discovered. She liked to take her own sweet time accelerating to the speeds I needed her to be at. At points where I needed to overtake other cars or merge into faster lanes, her reluctant pickup often had me twitching in my seat in abject fear. She was a champ at spooking me, and that’s what earned her her new moniker.

Still… to be fair, being spooky-slow was Boo’s biggest quirk. As a first car, she was hardy, reliable, and took a crazy amount of abuse. She never broke down on me, never left me stranded in the worst patches of terrain, and gamely started up every time I turned the key in her ignition. Best of all, she had a big trunk that I could hide a large-ish corpse in if I ever needed to (I never needed to. I swear. Just trust me.).

Boo’s driving seat belonged solely to me for 12 whole months during which I drove over 15,000 kilometres across the country! Oh yeah, I went from being a quaking mess behind the wheel to someone who really enjoyed driving — I suspect Boo took her new name seriously and managed to scare my fears away.

After that golden first year, my partner Aditya got his driver’s licence and Boo became a learning car for yet another new driver — she was a saint. She helped Aditya chase away his fresh-driver fears too. That brought us to the point where there were two eager drivers and one car. We began bickering over who would get to drive Boo every time we left the house. I bet she often rolled her headlights at the (lack of) maturity levels of her current owners and farted a little ‘I-miss-you’ exhaust in Eleonora’s general direction on the globe. I couldn’t hold it against her, not when she faithfully got us wherever we needed to go.

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Fast-forward to Valentine’s Day this year. Aditya picked me up after work for a coffee date. We spent a lovely evening out and were headed home when we ran into a patch of heavy traffic. Aditya slowed down to let a car ahead of us change lanes. That’s when we heard a loud crash and found ourselves jerked ahead violently.

It took a few dazed minutes for the fact to sink in that we had been in an accident. The car behind us, a monster-sized SUV, had rammed into Boo. Fortunately, Boo’s thick butt had absorbed a lot of the impact and saved us. Unfortunately, her taillights were shattered and her trunk now refused to close. The driver of the mega-SUV, a kindly old gentleman, was profoundly apologetic when he stepped out to check if we were okay. He confessed being distracted by his cell phone and not hitting the brakes in time. His apologies were all well and good, but the damage was done.

The next day, we drove Boo, rattling trunk and all, to the garage recommended by the motor insurance company. The technician there took one look at the damaged rear end and said, “I must warn you, this might turn into a total loss case. You’ll get monetary compensation, but you might not get your car back.”

I almost broke down right then. The shock of being in a road accident followed by the prospect of losing my trooper of a car was too much for me. The technician, who somehow hadn’t lost his sense of empathy despite handling several accident cases a day, offered me a tissue, “You know, it’s just a car, a material object. And it did its job — it protected you on the road. You’re lucky you’re safe, your partner is safe. Cherish that. You can always buy a new car, because you’re okay enough to drive.”

I thanked him for his kind words and we left Boo among the many four-wheeled patients awaiting their fate in the garage’s cavernous depths. Unfortunately, the technician’s predictions turned out to be true. Boo’s rear chassis was damaged enough that the insurance company chose to pay us instead of fixing her. The process of getting the payout took months.

A few days ago, I was finally asked to collect Boo’s number plates from the insurance’s ‘car graveyard’ and surrender them back to the local transport authority. There, I saw Boo for the last time, surrounded by other damaged, deformed cars and I was hit anew by the unfairness of it all: Why did I have to lose a small slice of my history? Why did I have to break my promise to Eleonora just because of someone else’s carelessness? Aditya and I had always been careful drivers. We followed all the rules, so why was our car sitting in this graveyard?

…Since the universe gave me no answers, I wrote this long-winded piece as my way of finding closure. If you’ve stuck around so far, I would like to ask you for some small favours, dear reader of mine…

If you are someone who drives, please, please always be extra-attentive when you’re behind the steering wheel. And if you’re someone who drives a monster-sized SUV, then please remember that famous line from Spiderman — ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ — every time you hit the road. The larger your car engine, the more damage it can do: It’s simple science. Boo might have survived impact from another sedan, but being hit by a bigger, heavier vehicle turned her into a heap of scrap.

Another point this incident drives home is that using a mobile phone, or trying to multitask while driving can have catastrophic consequences. It doesn’t matter what an expert driver you are, everybody’s luck runs out sometime. You could end up getting hurt, you could also seriously endanger the lives of other people. The gentleman who caused the accident had his young grandchildren in the backseat of his car. It didn’t make sense to me that he had such little regard for their safety that he was using his cell phone behind the wheel. Please, don’t be that person.

The more accountable we are as drivers, the safer our roads will become for pedestrians, for cyclists, for smaller cars, and for the silly drivers who get too attached to their rides and pen emotional farewell odes to them...

I sit by the road
As you disappear
Around a bend
In a burst of speed,
On wheels too fast
Leaving a cloud of dust
Behind you.

And I just wait here…
Hoping you’ll circle back
And take me away
On another adventure,
Just you and I
And the music we play
While the wind sings along
With you.

But you are gone
And I just have memories
Of metal, of leather,
Of the roads
We travelled together.
You were more than a ride
My home on the road
Were you.

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