Stick it on, dude

The protagonist in the book “the white tiger” (by aravind adiga) is a driver who is driving a Honda city car. He talks about the three magnetic stickers in his Honda city with the images of the mother goddess – Kali. This made me smile a lot. I am sure that Aravind either does not drive a Honda city (and anything similar) or more likely – he does not put magnetic stickers in his car. He probably grew up with memories of his father’s fiat or ambassador car where his dad had put in the stickers or remembers the taxi drivers driving with them.
Why do I think like this?
My dad had a fiat. It was a proud purchase. I remember him buying this second hand car and selling his Bajaj chetak scooter with a side car attached. If I am not mistaken he sold his scooter for 10-15 k and he bought the car for 90k. This purchase was important as my sister was now marriageable age and my mom wanted to show that we too own a car. “hum bhi carwalle hain” or something to that effect. A sparkling white fiat. No A/c. A fiat (correctly called the premier padmini) was preferred over the popular Maruti as it was thought to sturdy and spacious. Though we kids just wanted anything with an A/c.
Dad was the religious types. We went first to siddhivinayak ganesh temple with the new car (a tradition which I too follow). He also bought a magnetic sticker of the deity and got the priest to touch it to the deity. With the magical powers thus transferred he kept the sticker in the car, proudly stuck to the dashboard. Much later we sold the car. When I bought my first car, the Indica, my mom gave the sticker to keep in my car. To my amusement, it could no longer stick. Huh? Magnets no longer sticking? Well it’s not the magnet dummy. All these new cars have dashboards completely of plastic, including my Honda City. No magnets can ever stick there. That is why the new religious stickers come with double sided tapes and also because of the depth the dashboard allows, you now have small figurines with tapes stuck to the bottom. So much for magnetic stickers.
Adiga might be around my age and his memories of drivers loving the magnetic stickers could come from the same source – fathers with metal fiats or taxis with religious drivers. I am sure if Jispa writes a book she won’t have cars with magnetic stickers. Funny no?
But wait a minute – the white tiger is a fiction novel right? And I don’t read fiction, right? Well it got gifted to me and it won some respectability by winning a booker and my wife read it in two days flat thereby stroking my ego and its read less like fiction but more like a documentary or satire?? Nice read though. And as Tarun Tejpal preaches – read at least one fiction a year. I agree, some fictions (good ones) are not a bad read.