Clutching Plates

          In spite of my driving with a valid licence for so many years, and in remote parts of India, Sri Husband still gives minute instructions when I’m at the wheel:

          “…motorbike on the left.”

“…tanker overtaking.”

“…Karnataka number plate is showing a right-indicator.”

“Watch out -- policeman.”

“You’ll hit that stray dog.”

“Let the bus go.”

“Hurry up, the signal won’t stay green forever.”

“You can change into the third gear now.”

Considering that I’ve driven through the craziness of Ghaziabadi markets, the arteries of Mumbai, the highway crossing Bareilly, the sand-tracks near Jodhpur and the very narrow ditch-bordered lanes of Goa’s villages, Sri Husband should consider it lucky that I’ve never hit or been hit by a goat/ buffalo/ fellow driver. Why give credit to luck… maybe I’m just an ‘awesum’ driver. He’s never had to repair a dent on my account.

(Ok, once I went through a wire fencing and the windscreen had to be replaced. And another time when a lamp-post suddenly knocked the bumper… rare events.)

In most places, car-servicing centres stand next to smelly urinal walls, invisible to genteel eyes. But ‘my’ centre in Goa is on a prime river-facing site. I can get my culture-dose at nearby theatres/halls whilst overalls-clad, polite mechanics grease, oil, calibrate and vacuum the bowels of my car.

The last time my eight-year-old four-wheeler was serviced, I had to change a clutch-plate. Aging process, I was told. Within a year, the new plate wore out. This time I was told ‘bad driving’.

‘No aging this time?’ I asked.

Came the reply, ‘Driving problem’.

Come on, I reasoned: same driver, same car, same conditions, same road, same routine; the previous clutch plate had lasted me eight times as long. I was shown greasy black bits around the guilty plate and further informed that this time the flywheel was also in trouble.

Articulate supervisors drew diagrams and explained to physics-challenged me why the plate had worn out in twelve months. Pedal met washer met clutch met flywheel quite often in ‘half clutch’ they said, especially if one drove through bad traffic or on slopes, and that caused the damage. Oh yeah? Why hadn’t that happened in the last so many years, I wondered.

Maybe the part was spurious, I timidly suggested. Nope, they declared, quality checks are perfect; besides, every part is numbered and traceable. Maybe the workmen had erred, I guessed, a little less diffidently. Impossible, I was assured, for if the several screws arranged in the metal circle weren’t tightened enough, the gears wouldn’t move. Not a millimetre? I queried. Not even a fraction, I was guaranteed. There was no scope at all for mistakes (ISRO should hire these guys for the Mars Mission).

The computer archives had recorded that some hardness had been experienced during the previous servicing, that was so, but since I’d not nit-picked in the interim months the fault was mine. I heard a senior person tell someone over the phone that the customer isn’t always right. New management mantra!

Never, I vowed to myself, will I postpone complaining, or suffer any malfunction by ‘adjusting’.

Back home, there were more questions from Sri Husband than answers from me. He asked me what I’d asked the supervisors and I told him what they had told me. Difference was, I had listened patiently to the former, whist Sri Husband was restlessly interrupting me every alternate quarter-second. Next time I’m going to take him along and let him loose on the company people. Let them have nervous breakdowns.

I have finally concluded, I think to the satisfaction of all concerned, there was nothing wrong with the clutch-plate. It’s my leg. My foot has a will of its own, presses the pedal when it shouldn’t or needn’t irrespective of the order given by Brain. This flaw is not just restricted to the leg. The moment I get a new spare part installed, or an electrical/ electronic gadget repaired, parts of my body conspire to make it fail. Sometimes the thumb misbehaves, or the finger pressing the switch, or the eye watching what’s happening… elbow, wrist, knee, ankle, every joint is untrustworthy when it comes to dealing with appliances designed primarily to make human life easy. Secondarily the same appliances are meant to, as depicted in films, rule your (or rather, my) life.

Some things, I figured philosophically, are (not) meant to be. Did that apply to clutching plates?

“Clutch-plates,” corrected Sri Husband. Matter over and ended.

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