Book Review: Two Gritty Little Drives
Two cute little Indian cars, a crazy drive and an amazing
journey
The Nanologues:
10,000 km across India in the world’s cheapest car, Vanessa Able, Hachette
India, pp 323, Rs. 399
Reva EV: India’s
Green Gift to the World, Dr S.K.Maini, Random House India, pp 192, Rs. 299
Imagine a person driving around the Indian peninsula – from Mumbai
to Mumbai, via Kanyakumari, Kolkata and Nainital. The trip takes 90 days.
Now imagine that the person is a woman. Alone. In a Tata Nano.
Is it possible? Answer is, yes. The woman in question is Vanessa
Able, an English journalist. Her gritty tale is documented in her monologue,
titled The Nanologues.
So, such a thing is not only possible, but you -- and your Nano
- can emerge practically unscathed from such an experience. Ergo, it is not
just doable, it is within anyone’s reach.
Well, only almost. You have to have the gumption to
undertake such an expedition. Everything that you expect will happen does
happen, but thanks presumably to Ganesha on the dashboard, ways and means
spring out of complete adversity, nothing extreme does happen and the author
thrives to tell the tale, having mainly suffered only extreme pangs of
indignation. Her tale does include roads
suddenly ending on the edge of a cliff, and wheels screeching to a halt in
front of unexpected police barriers and trucks making a U-turn in the middle of
the road, apart from cornea-searing headlamps and bottom-scraping potholes. The
story has two morals – one being that the Nano is a gritty little car, whose misdemeanours
through the 11,000 km ride total to one misaligned steering wheel. The second
moral is that an Englishwoman will have to do a little bit of un-learning and
re-learning in order to drive around on South Asian highways, a point that Able
graciously concedes.
Able’s writing is fluent and laced with, well, Brit-style
humour. She dispenses with political correctness and is blunt about horns, headlights,
hierarchies, stares, cops and toilets. There are also moments of awakening,
such as: “The most important
preconception to tackle was that horns always imply hostility”. She learns and
acknowledges the complex language of highway honking – something most car-driving Indians cannot
claim to have done! Her story is smartly interjected with information about
places, people, things.
Who should read the book? Able’s target audience is mainly
foreigners, especially who want to drive in India. I would add to that, people
who have some lazy afternoons to spend, Tata Motors people and their
competitors, PR people and those concerned with transport or tourism or travel
blogs. I promise entertainment, except for those now-and-then moments when
Vanessa Able may get under your skin with her way of shrugging away the ‘Indian
way’.
If the Nanologues are written with half an eye on celebrity,
then Reva EV: India’s Green Gift to the World is written with both eyes bent on
gaining acknowledgement. Reva EV is a chronicle, in which the senior Maini recounts
the long and difficult journey that led a precocious youngster toying with
model airplanes to launch an Indian electric car on the world stage -- among
the first such cars.
The Reva was not an accident. Unlike the Nano it was not an
after-thought, nor was it a child of impulse. The genesis of the Reva was slow
but sure, a seed germinating on the shopfloor of Reva Precision Products, and
taking initially the form of a custom-built electric forklift, in 1984.
Combined with the early germination of genius talent in the youngest Maini –
Chetan – the idea of building an electric vehicle in and for India started
taking shape in the mind of the Maini patriarch. The story of the Reva is as
much a story about the Maini family, of
a dream nurtured and brought to life by Sudarshan Maini, in which each of his
family members would have an acknowledged if unequal role.
It is easy to recount a journey after it has happened,
especially if you live to tell the tale.
However, the journey before it has been made is a plunge into risky
darkness, and that is true of both the journeys - the stories of which we are
here reviewing. The journey of the Reva
electric car was undertaken with a sense of destiny. The project was financed
and supported by the Maini Group, allowing Chetan Maini to focus upon and
pursue the dream of a compact zero-emission city car - made in India. This tale
is without a doubt a memorable one in the history of Indian enterprise.
Told in a quietly assertive
tone, for which the credit must also go to the co-author Sandhya Mendonca, Reva
EV is, title onwards, a simple and uncomplicated 3-hour read. The story is
sprinkled with best practices in Indian innovation and sustainability. Modular
design, frugal innovation, partnership, persuation, technology, design, PR,
public sentiment, values – are all covered in the narrative. This little book is
case study material for B-schools, but should also be read in every Indian high
school.
Shailaja D Sharma
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