COLUMNS

Adil, Bijoy, Siddharth and Richard Meaden

THIS MONTH’S COLUMN IS PURE ALTRUISM ON my part but I felt I had to share it because all that I have done to date has been to further the cause for automotive awareness in our nation. Let’s fast forward into the past and August 26, 1977 to be precise.

I remember that day vividly as if it was just yesterday. The 1977 Singapore Airlines London-Sydney rally was to pass through Pune and so it turned into an impromptu holiday for yours truly, my brothers and friends and we rode our bikes to Katraj ghat to see and soak in the cars and the spirit of the rally. It was going to be my first glimpse of motorsport and I wanted to take in as much as I could. The tight twisty stretch of the national highway then was barely wide enough to take in two vehicles side by side and this was what I wanted to use to advantage, to capture the cars on film with my rudimentary borrowed Olympus 35mm camera.

After a two-hour wait, the first cars could be heard and then viewed making the run up from the long stretch running up the base of the hill climb and the Peugeot 504 of Aussie Ross Dunkerton with its red beacon flashing swept into view, followed at a couple of car lengths by a trio of Mercedes-Benz 280 Es and then other cars started to come up every eight to ten minutes. It was a great day and for a young exuberant lad to see some of the finest rally cars in the world zoom past just inches away from him was absolute manna from the heavens! And then to top it all, an altercation with a journo from a local newspaper saw him taunt me with a “if you know so much why don’t you write for us” riposte that I found too big a challenge to shy away from. As things unfolded I wrote a piece of about 900-1000 words and lo behold it was the major headline story on the front page of the next day’s Poona Herald newspaper (now the Sakal Times).

Elated and also humbled at the sort of response it generated in a motorsport-starved Poona (the cradle of the sport in the country from 1904 till 1965), I started contributing to The Poona Herald and later to The Maharashtra Herald (as the newspaper was renamed). I must have written about nine or ten features in the remainder of that year and from then on it just began to add up. It was great going and I wanted to do more and as it went on, there came a time when the first dedicated weekly page ever in any Indian newspaper happened with my motoring page every Thursday in The Business Herald section and this was in force from around 1984 till 1998.

Move back into the present, to the week encompassing August 26, 2017 and there surely is ample motoring stuff on hand for me: attend the launch and review of the spanking new Yamaha Fazer 25 FI in Mumbai on Monday, August 21; fly into Delhi for a bash in the mega monstrous Mercedes-Benz AMG GT R to thrash around the Buddh International Circuit on Tuesday, August 22 before popping to Mumbai on Wednesday, August 23 for meetings with Tata Motors and also take in the launch of the new fifth generation Hyundai Verna before flying down south to drive the Verna in Kochi on August 24 & 25!

Yes what a difference 40 years make in the life of an automotive journo but then there is no yardstick for me to measure because for one, I don’t like that aspect and second I am still, too much in love with my subject that has kept me motivated and young in the mind for me to keep on enjoying a small twist-and-go scooter with as much enthusiasm as I would behind the wheel of an AMG GT R!

I started out in motoring journalism not as a journalist but as an enthusiast and I remain an enthusiast first to this day, and then maybe reluctantly descend into my journalist’s role. In the past four decades many motoring magazines made their advent and while the character, ethos and content in them have stayed more or less the same, I have seen the business reality around them has changed massively and this has put the brakes on innovation and the joy of content creation. Today anyone with a laptop and a mobile camera becomes a qualified motoring journalist in the digital sense with next to no knowledge about two or four wheels, even not knowing how to drive or ride but clearly capable to comment on them! And this is a sad reflection of the times. Well as I move into my fifth decade of pushing the envelope maybe I would need to do things the only way I know how: not follow the crowd but engage enthusiasts in the most holistic way possible, similar to that first feature in The Poona Herald, August 26, 1977. ⌧