Sep 10: ‘Maharashtra BJP chief Bawankule’s son’s Audi hits several vehicles in Nagpur, driver arrested’
May 27: ‘Pune Porsche crash: Grandfather of minor arrested; police say he told driver to take blame, promised him reward’
May 26: ‘Speeding Audi luxury car kills elderly man who went to buy milk in Noida, days after Pune Porsche crash’
India has the highest road accident rate in the world. Within that statistic, there’s a sub-genre: the luxury car, driven by the progeny of the rich and powerful, which swerves out of control. The situation is so cliched that when one hears of such an incident, one immediately knows it’s going to be the offspring of a politician, businessman, or builder.
What follows next is equally formulaic: the driver takes responsibility, the sahib’s son vanishes from the scene in another car, and CCTV footage goes missing. The story vanishes from front pages until a ditto crash recurs, with ditto consequence.The ‘driver excuse’ has traceable roots. In this century, it starts with Salman Khan on the intervening night of Sep 27-28 in 2002 when his Land Cruiser crashed into the American Express bakery in Bandra. On Sep 6, 2019, the headline read: ‘Twist in 2002 Hit and Run Case – I was driving the car, Salman Khan’s driver tells court’. There’s another headline from Jan 2014 about a ‘curious incident’ of a billionaire’s Aston Martin ‘in the night-time.’ Again, the proverbial driver.Much earlier in 2008, Aravind Adiga had popped the detail into his Booker winner, The White Tiger, immortalising and enshrining the excuse in literary history. The novel’s protagonist, Balram, employed as a driver for a wealthy family, is made to own up to a car accident in which his boss’ wife is involved.
These crashes are a post-liberalisation phenomena. Its timeline runs over the last 25 years. It’s not any fault of the makers of Audi that the car became a favourite of India’s super rich. If one were to make a Scotch analogy, Indians love one brand more than others: Johnny Walker Black. In socialist times, it was Vat 69. The Audi, presently, is the Johnny Walker Black of cars for crazy rich desis.
Between 2010 and 2020, one heard more about Lamborghini crashes.
August 2016: ‘₹5 crore Lamborghini crashes into an auto in Mumbai’
Feb 2012: ‘Delhi: Lamborghini driver hits cyclist, dies’. The grammatically misleading headline provides an illusion of divine justice that the driver, not the cyclist, died. But alas, it’s an illusion.
My favourite headline of this period, from July 2014 – my heart went out to the parking attendant – was: ‘Lamborghini worth ₹3 crore wrecked by hotel valet.’ He was bringing the Gallardo Spyder to the 5-star hotel’s (more Porsche-friendly?) porch, when he lost control.
Is the car at fault? Is the driver at fault? Or is the liquor to blame? Alcohol is a factor, aside from the stupidity of the person behind the wheel.
There is another reason, which was accidentally revealed by actor Imran Khan in an interview. He bought himself a Ferrari, sold it off, and bought a VW Polo. The star became the hunk who sold his Ferrari: ‘As a 28-year-old, you don’t know shit about how to drive these things. It’s a lot more power and a lot more car than you can realistically handle. And I quickly figured that this car is bigger than me. I am not getting anywhere near the capabilities of this vehicle… Between the car and me, I should not be the weak link,’ Khan explained earlier this year.
In that quote lies the answer to the question: why do rich Indian kids bang their luxury cars all the time? They don’t know how to drive. And here’s the irony: their drivers, who come from a lower sub-strata of society, can handle these supercars. No wonder it’s them who have to take the cop.
The writer is author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey Into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth
