Ed Templeton

[Part One in a practical “How to..” series covering the basics of vehicle purchase, maintenance and registration.]

1. Look in the classified section in the local newspapers… for weeks and see nothing.
2. Persuade a local friend to take you to the three 2nd hand car dealers within 1.5 hrs… All that’s on offer are crappy, tiny Maruti hairdryers at ridiculous prices.
3. Pay your rickshaw driver friend to drive around all the nearby towns asking if anyone has a Jeep for sale within your budget.
4. Ask your taxi driver friend if he knows of any jeeps for sale nearby. Plan a day with him to be taken to see lots of jeeps within budget. Waste a day getting shown all manner of vehicles, except jeeps, at double your budget.
5. Have everybody tell you that it is impossible to buy a decent jeep within your budget.
6. Have everybody tell you that what you should really buy is vehicle xyz, but that a good one is twice your budget.
7. Meet a range of car ‘agents’ who take you to see a small handful of overpriced, battered old jeeps in neighbouring towns. Pay their days salary for this non-service.
8. Search online, India-wide, for second-hand jeeps. Find only a few adverts, all at least 6 months old and none available within 500 miles. But at least get an idea of the going price for vehicles (notably much cheaper than the agents prices)
9. Hear from your rikshaw driver friend of a nice old lawyer who’s brother has a jeep for sale, just over budget but in great condition… 5 hours away in Changanacherry.
10.  Ask for photos to check condition, but get told that’s impossible. Write it off as too much of a gamble to travel 5 hours to check it’s condition.
11.  Have everybody tell you that it is impossible to buy a jeep within your budget.
12.  Have everybody tell you that what you should really buy is vehicle xyz, but that is not available within your budget
13.  Repeat steps 1 to 10.
14.  Have everybody tell you that it is impossible to buy a jeep within your budget.
15.  Have everybody tell you that what you should really buy is vehicle xyz, but that is not available within your budget.
16.  Hear from your rikshaw driver friend of a nice old lawyer who’s brother has a jeep for sale, just over budget but in great condition… 5 hours away in Changanacherry.
17.  Ask the lawyer a detailed list of questions about the condition of the vehicle.
18.  Repeat steps 1 to 12.
19.  After a month of almost full time work trying to find a Mahindra Commander the 5hr trip to Changanacherry begins to seem attractive.
20.  Take your rikshaw driver friend, his friend the mechanic and jeep expert to meet the lawyer at Varkala train station one Saturday morning.
21.  Meet the lawyer and be amazed at the tenacity of his toupe, clinging for dear-life to his sweaty forehead, perched just above his brow. A jet black, wiry toupe, in stark contrast to his thinning grey hair at the back and sides.
22.  Spend a sweltering morning on a heaving train to Changanacherry with the likely lads.
23.  Arrive at the hot, dusty, dirty station and emerge from the platform through the ticket office into the barren carpark with high hopes, waiting under a banyan tree as the lawyer calls his brother to send his driver with the vehicle to meet us.
24.  See a very different vehicle from the one that has been described pull into the car park. The reputedly ‘new’ paint job has been botched with a decorators brush except for the rusty bits which they left. The ‘new’ upholstery probably was in 1994 when it was manufactured. The ‘new’ bucket seats are not much more than actual buckets, and are not in the least bit new… it’s old, tired, and a bit creaky… but the engine is sound the rust is patchable, a re-spray, re-upholstery, a new radiator and battery and you know it might just work. But 2.6Lakh is much too much.
25.  Point out the difference in quality between what the lawyer promised and the stark reality. My ‘mechanic’ estimates there is 30,000Rs of work to be done to get it up to the promised standard. I offer the toupéd-lawyer 2 Lakh maximum which he flatly rejects on his brothers behalf. It’s 2.6Lakh or nothing.
26.  Walk back to the platform and prepare for the arrival of the return train in 30mins. Wait,  wait and wait some more to then find the train has been delayed… by 2 hours. Wait some more.
27.  Try to appease the, now angry, lawyer who has come all this way out of the goodness of his heart on his brother’s behalf only for me to not buy the jeep. Watch as he shuffles a way up the platform and sits away from us.
28.  Your rikshaw driver friend receives a call. From the jeep owner, the lawyer’s brother. Why don’t we want the vehicle? What’s the problem?
29.  Sneak a peek down the platform as the lawyer catches wind of the call and begins to look agitated.
30.  Overhear the lawyer’s brother (the jeep owner) asking why we won’t pay 1.6Lakh for such a sturdy vehicle.
31.  Hear the penny drop. The lawyer didn’t come all the way here with us out of the goodness of his sweet heart. He was hoping to make a cool Lakh for a morning’s work, but our ‘mechanic’ friend had smelled a rat and had slipped the lawyer’s brother’s driver our rikshaw driver’s telephone number earlier on in the car park.
32.  The lawyer’s brother is still keen to make the sale and says if we come to him directly and make a deposit we can buy the jeep, but don’t tell the lawyer.
33.  Play a ridiculous Benny Hill-esque game of hide-and-seek around the station’s concourse and ticket hall, running this way and that to avoid the lawyer whilst trying to sneak out of the station and into a waiting taxi.
34.  Go, finally, for the direct route and confront the lawyer to tell him I know what his game is and that I intend to speak with his brother directly.
35.  Watch the lawyer shake with rage, almost losing his toupé in the process, as he warns me not to speak with his brother directly. “You will not buy this jeep” he growls, his hair-piece sliding down his sweaty brow.
36.  Leap into the taxi and make for a convent where the jeep and the lawyer’s brother’s driver await us.
37.  Arrive and almost immediately have to leap into a rikshaw and speed away because the lawyer is on his way over to disrupt the sale.
38.  Hide in a tea-shop before being lured into a neighbouring man’s house before realising he’s as drunk as three Lords and somehow has caught wind of the proceedings and bizarrely is trying to muscle in on the deal himself and threatening me whilst trying to gain some un-earned commission from the impending sale.
39.  Wait until darkness falls and the lawyer has been mollified and returned to Varkala, so that we can finally return to the convent to the jeep.
40.  Wait for a further 3 hours whilst some transfer papers are hastily cobbled together.
41.  At 9.30pm get the green light to go to the lawyers brother’s house to make the purchase.
42.  Do an ATM crawl on the way using 3 different cards in order to amass the balance on top of the anticipated deposit amount.
43.  Arrive at the lawyers brother’s house, drink coffee and make small talk only to discover that the jeep owner is not the lawyer’s brother. The owner doesn’t even know the lawyer.
44.  Spend an hour and a half signing all the relevant papers, making small talk, being polite and stifling yawns.
45.  Drive home at 11pm in the new vehicle, exhausted, confused and bemused. What on earth just happened there?
46.  Arrive home at 4am, Zzzzzzzz
47.  Receive a call at 11am from your rikshaw driver friend who has just received a call from the lawyer. He’s very angry about the whole episode and is about to wreak his terrible revenge by stealing your friend’s rikshaw and then come for my jeep, which he somehow counts as his.
48.  Call the lawyer up and threaten to go to the police and make a complaint about his harassment.
49.  Have your wife call a wrong number, the lawyer’s, and book a table for 7 people the following evening.
50.  Have all of your previous ‘advisers’ come round and kick the tyres, look the vehicle up and down, suck their teeth, shake their heads and tell you ‘it’s very expensive for what it is’  whilst conveniently forgetting that only a few days previously they had all been adamant that a jeep like this couldn’t be purchased for anything less than 3Lakh.

[Look out for Part Two which looks at the remaining simple steps required to register and repair your new vehicle. Coming Soon...]