Lucky's Maruti: A short story by Sujit Saraf

This is a story about a Maruti that became a bicycle, but because all good stories are about people, not things, I will say this is a story about my grandmother.

After Mummy died, Nani continued to live with us. It was not in Papa’s nature to suggest that she find another house on her side of the family. He was the silent type who occasionally clucked his tongue when correcting an egregious term paper but did not otherwise say much around the house. He had been at JNU for decades, first as a doctoral student—which is how he met Mummy—and then as faculty. Lucky’s mother called him “JNU Professor Sahib”, with a touch of respect. Lucky preferred “Professor Sahib,” with a touch of contempt. For us—Didi was fourteen and I eleven—he was simply Papa, and there was never a question of where Nani might go. She had always lived with us, from “the day Nirmala got married,” as she often said. Every few days, when the jhadu vali or someone from Lucky’s house dropped a hint, she’d say, “Where shall I go? I had one daughter and now she is gone. Her children are my family now.”

Our house had been allotted to Papa by JNU—not a bungalow, because he was not a full professor, but a sort of duplex where we shared a wall, front yard and gate with Lucky Dhamija’s family. Every morning, Lucky would stride out in bell bottoms and shiny shirt—chest exposed, gold chain nestling among manly hairs—to take an auto to his shop. He was only seven years older than me but had already taken over his father’s furniture store in Munirka. He professed much amusement at my school-going habits and assured me that “all of professor sahib’s books” were not as valuable as the almirahs they sat inside. He could speak eloquently of beds and footstools and tables, add up the cost of wood and carpentry and compare that against sales—less for varnished furniture, more for a bed with a headboard—and I would give him my undivided attention. Next to the adventures inside his furniture shop my physics and biology lessons seemed tame. So, whenever Lucky sallied forth while I was finishing homework to rush to school, I looked wistfully at his receding back and wished I could go with him.

Something went well in the store because within a year of taking over, Lucky acquired a Maruti 800. No one in our colony had one—we took rickshaws and buses, and autos when in a hurry—but there it was one day, a shiny red Maruti parked right outside Lucky’s gate, which was our gate too, with Lucky in the driver’s seat blowing the horn again and again.

“What is that racket?” Nani asked irritably in the middle of her Hanuman Chalisa.

“Lucky Bhaiya in his new car,” said Didi, breathless with wonder.

“Too loud,” Nani said, and went back to her Chalisa while we ran outside and clamoured for a chance to sit in the back seat. We could not, of course, climb the front seat because that was reserved for adults.

Lucky left the car parked outside the gate. He did not know how to drive, so a driver was hired to take him on excursions. The car never went to his store because, he said, parking was expensive in Munirka.

“I see thousands of cars parked by the road,” I said. “Why can’t you do the same?”

He looked at me with the tolerance that comes to long suffering adults. “Every patch of dirt in Delhi is controlled by someone. A road, a tree, a ditch—wherever you park in Munirka you must pay a boy three rupees. In CP it is five rupees, in GK seven.”

I swore never to buy a car that would commit me to such extravagance. Nevertheless, one last clarification was called for.

“What if you don’t pay the boy? He can’t very well drive the car away without your keys.”

“Ah, but he could scratch or dent it. Even worse, he could double-park a car to block yours, and to get it released you must pay three rupees. Plus a fine.” Then he twisted the knife. “This is not written in your books anywhere.”

I returned to our side of the house in thrall to Lucky’s superior wisdom.

*****

In its first week, the Maruti was a matter of pride. From the way it was parked outside the gate, no one could tell it was not ours. Didi said that it made the house look better “if someone should take a photo”. By the second week, however, we realised that the car was a hindrance. It was too close to the gate because the road was narrow and Lucky did not want autos and cycles to scratch it when passing by. We had to squeeze into the narrow space between car and gate, flick open the latch, push the gate open with a foot, hop into the yard and only then let our bodies relax because we knew Lucky was watching from his window. When he left for Munirka, Shanti Aunty watched and was sure to report any infraction to her son, as happened with the jhadu vali, whose broom brushed the car. When Lucky returned, he stormed into our house and demanded that we ask her to use the back door, as all jhadu valis of her caste did. But the use of the front door was a perquisite Papa had extended to her after attending a seminar at JNU. He did not argue with Lucky but Nani did.

“She will enter my house how I want. Are you the one who pays her?”

That sent him packing. He did not want to pick a fight with Nani, but glared at the jhadu vali every time she now came. She was careful to hold the broom over her head and stiffen her body like a bamboo pole when passing the car, staying as far as she could, offering Lucky no provocation. Even so, we began to enter the house from the back when returning from the market with bags of potatoes and radish, or from the flour mill with a sack of flour. It was simpler to do that than risk the horror of spilling flour on Lucky’s Maruti.

That was when Lucky developed a new habit. He would climb into the driver’s seat and blow the horn for 15 minutes at a time. He might fancy a session at any hour—in the morning before going to his store, on returning home, or all day on Tuesday when the markets along Ring Road, including Munirka, were closed. Once he was struck by the passion late at night, jolting Nani out of bed and causing the whole house to come running into the yard, with Papa yelling “air raid!”, though he had never lived through an air raid and had no idea what the siren sounded like.

Nani had disliked Lucky even before the car came into our house. His shirt collars were too prominent, his bell bottoms too wide, and his chest hair too exposed. There was something improper about the boy, she always said—he does not go to school and is nearly 20. She did not want him standing around in our half of the garden, gawking at Didi, fingering the gold chain at his chest.

She developed an antipathy to the car, especially the horn. On her daily visit to the temple— when she’d be in a more tolerant mood—she dutifully squeezed past it and sometimes painted a swastika on the bonnet, a violation that Lucky begrudgingly permitted perhaps because Shanti Aunty told him to, but at other times the car began to grate on her. On hearing the horn, she would hurl a curse and go to her shrine in the kitchen which, being closer to the back, was furthest removed from the car. Once, when Lucky took me to his shop in Munirka on his bicycle, Nani made me touch the feet of Raamji in the shrine and take an oath never to go again. She did not know, of course, that I had even ridden in the front seat of the Maruti—a driver had been hired for the day—and we had driven up Africa Avenue on our way to Nehru Park, where Lucky liked to jog in the morning before the smog and fumes ruined the air. We honked all the way, though there were no other cars out this early, and I was back home before Nani even left her bed. Had she known, she would certainly have made me take a full bath in gangajal.

*****

This brings me to the story of Cycle Baba, who appeared three weeks after the Maruti. The first time he came, he had the misfortune of leaning his bicycle against Lucky’s Maruti, inviting a stream of invective from the window. Unfazed, he turned to Lucky, who was leaning out of the window, and said, “Jai Gopal ji ki! I can drive that car and park it wherever you want, jajman.”

Didi and I burst into laughter, both because he had called Lucky jajman, and because an ash-smeared sadhu had claimed he could drive a car. He stood his cycle against the steel fence, opened our gate and came into our side of the yard. Didi knew he had come for Nani, because Papa never had anything to do with babas.

She called out, “Nani! A cycle baba has come for you.”

And the name stuck—Cycle Baba. He came every morning, smeared in ash, riding his bicycle, trident held carefully in the left hand, kamandal swinging from the right one, and dozens of rudraksh garlands coiled round the neck. When entering the house he would do a saashtaang pranaam—all seven parts of the body must touch the ground, Nani said, without specifying what those parts were—and sit at the kitchen shrine, where he held forth on the Bhagwat Puraan for an hour. When he left, Nani gave him a rupee and a coconut.

In his second week, he said, “Bhabhiji, that car should not be parked in front of your gate.”

He always called Nani “Bhabhiji”, asserting some relation we did not understand. And in case Didi and I had not heard his boast on the first day, he declared loudly, “I have learned how to drive a car, but Raamji chose to give me a cycle.”

*****

A month after Cycle Baba and Lucky’s Maruti had become fixtures in our house, Nani emerged from her room, placed a pair of gold earrings on Didi’s outstretched palm, and said, “Babaji has asked me to prepare for death.”

Her way of preparing for death was to give away the treasures that had long been stashed in her room. “Why would I need these after I die? I can’t take them with me.”

Over the next few days, a variety of objects appeared with some regularity. I received a clay Hanuman with a broken arm, a rocking horse that was perhaps Mummy’s 40 years ago, three fountain pens, an out-of-tune harmonium, and a box of King George V coins that had gone black with age. Didi received a diamond necklace, a few dupattas, an embroidered sari that had probably belonged to Mummy, a much thumbed copy of Ramayan, and a make-up kit that had seen better days. Papa received trunks of books—all 18 puraans, and nearly a hundred notebooks filled with “Raam Raam” in Nani’s own scrawl—and a bookstand of the type used in temples. That was how I discovered that Nani could read and write, having learned to transcribe the Gita as a young girl under the direction of a pandit.

Shortly after that, Papa could not find his spectacles. They were recovered the next day when our confused jhadu vali returned them—Nani had slipped them into her hands along with a one-rupee note. My belt went missing just in time for school, followed by Didi’s hairbrush and coconut oil bottle, and then the jhadu vali’s broom. It took us a few days to understand that, having exhausted her own supply, Nani was giving away our things.

Lucky came by, holding a small cauldron from our kitchen and looking embarrassed. “Naniji gave this to Mummy, but it’s not ours.”

Nani’s generosity swelled—pillows, bedsheets, buckets and mops began to disappear, perhaps given to beggars on the street. Word spread, and neighbours began to arrive every morning to return pots, pans, bowls, ladles and spoons. Our kitchen was circulating through the neighbourhood. Every family now had a designated member who would return Nani’s munificence with a smile and receive our awkward thanks. Once, the whole gas stove vanished, shutting down the kitchen and forcing us to buy food from the dhaba on Ring Road, until someone returned it three days later.

“If she keeps going, we will have nothing left,” Didi told Papa. “Why don’t you ask her to stop?”

He merely shrugged, not wishing to create a scene. Papa and Nani had lived in the same house for 20 years yet barely spoke to each other. In the beginning there was Mummy to serve as intermediary. Then we came along to carry messages back and forth. When we were in school there was the jhadu vali, so they had no need to speak directly even though her shrine was within whispering distance of his room.

Didi then decided to confront Nani and chose the moment after she had finished her Chalisa, when she would be in a more forgiving mood. Nani responded, “I never give away anything that belongs to us.” We peered hard at her face, afraid to believe what we in fact knew.

Finally, Papa gave it a name, and her dementia became our family’s pressing problem. She was much older than the 75 she admitted to, Papa said. A doctor came and went; pills were bought; she was prevailed on to swallow them before going to bed. The slightest sound from the shrine brought the household running to her in case something had happened. The most unsettling part of our day became her daily visit to the temple. Papa began to send the jhadu vali with her. This caused her to break her rule of not speaking directly to him —she demanded that the escort be removed.

“Just in case,” Papa said meekly.

“Just in case, what? I am fit as a young woman. Do you not see?”

She stalked off to show that the jhadu vali could not keep up with her, slowing down only to squeeze past the Maruti. Sitting in the car—where he was now seen more and more often—Lucky let loose a cacophony of beeps. Nani stood in front of the car, glared at him, and cursed the car.

“This red monster must prepare for death!”

And she continued, with the jhadu vali scrambling behind her.

The real reason the jhadu vali was sent with Nani was to ensure that she did not give away anything valuable to the temple pujari. Should that happen, the jhadu vali was to take it right back. Didi noted the flaw in the plan—nothing prevented the pujari and the jhadu vali from joining forces and sharing the loot—yet the very first time she was sent to the temple, the jhadu vali brought back Nani’s gold bangles and earned Papa’s gratitude, along with two rupees.

Nani’s mind was like a fog rolling over a mountain, but a strong wind had torn holes here and there in this fog, and through the holes the green valley could be seen below. So she might start listing, with astonishing clarity, everything she had given, and to whom, in the last three days. Didi or I would whip out a notebook to write it all down. After five minutes of calm and precise dictation, she would clam up, and nothing we now said could jolt her into intelligible conversation, until the next hole in the fog should pass by. Armed with our list, we would scour the neighborhood on a recovery mission. It became so that neighbours, on seeing us outside their homes, asked, “What did Nani give us today?”

When we returned from our salvage missions, Nani would look askance at the objects we had brought, as if accusing us of theft. And if Lucky should happen to honk the horn, she would say, “That car needs to prepare for death!”

Our biggest fear was that she would hand something very precious to Cycle Baba who, unlike our neighbours, would neither reveal the gift nor return it. Didi claimed to tell a man’s character by a mere look at his face, and in Cycle Baba’s she saw dishonesty because, she said, he did not believe in the lines he recited from Bhagwat Puraan. Besides, which sadhu in all of Delhi rode a bicycle and claimed to be able to drive a car? So, when the baba visited us, we were on high alert, using every conceivable pretext to walk past the shrine and eavesdrop on their conversation. Once, when he saw me peeking inside his kamandal, he said, “That is gangajal. One drop will cure all afflictions that Raamji sends.” I was not fooled, and neither was Didi. It got so serious that Didi and I now took turns sitting down to listen to Bhagwat Puraan—Nani was pleased—and that was how I ended up attending hours of sermons by the baba. Better to keep your enemy close, Didi said, without explaining why the task of keeping the enemy close should always fall to me. We noted what Nani pressed into his hands and followed him to his bicycle, where he would gamely return everything—a piece of silver, a kitchen bowl, and once a wrapper with sticks of chewing gum. He would of course keep his fee—a rupee and a coconut—and that we tolerated as his due. Before mounting his bicycle, he would glare at Lucky. Once, Lucky responded with an angry honk that threw the bicycle to the ground, spilling the gangajal in his kamandal. He got up, dusted himself, picked up his bicycle, and hurled an imprecation.

“Raamji will destroy that car.”

*****

Three days before Diwali, I saw Lucky’s car keys on the dashboard. Now that I think of this, I should have gone into Lucky’s yard and shouted, “Lucky bhaiya! Your car keys are on the dashboard!” but I knew he was not home—Diwali was his most productive season and the shop was open from dawn to dusk. On Dhanteras, two days before the firecrackers, people buy silver and utensils, he told me, and they also buy furniture. It is an auspicious time to fill your house, and a profitable time for shopkeepers. So he had enjoyed the car seat early in the morning—perhaps afraid to honk when Nani was in bed—and taken an auto to Munirka. That may have been why I did not warn Lucky. But Shanti Aunty was home and I could have told her, so maybe the real reason was that the thought of doing Lucky a good turn did not cross my mind. Perhaps the car was locked—which would mean an additional headache for Lucky if he did not have a spare key—or perhaps it was not. I am certain I did not tell Nani. I might have gone to the shrine, sat down next to Raamji and said, “Nani, Lucky’s car keys are on the dashboard.”

“What do you do with a car key?” she would have asked.

“You use it to drive the car.”

“What is a dashboard?”

“The black ledge in front of the steering wheel where Lucky keeps a Sai Baba photo. When the car brakes, the garland on that photo swings back and forth.”

Nani would have asked how I knew that, and I would have had to tell her about the ride up Africa Avenue. It was just once, but she would have made me take that bath. That may be why this conversation with Nani did not happen, and I am certain it did not. What did happen was this—two hours later, Cycle Baba’s bicycle lay propped against the steel gate, and the Maruti was gone.

I ran inside to ask her, heart pounding with dread. She looked at me strangely and said, “What car?” I heaved a sigh of relief, grateful for the fog of dementia.

Lucky was apoplectic. He came charging into the house—well aware of her habit of giving things away—and nearly assaulted her, and called her names, and lobbed threats. The police came and questioned her. She seemed confused. After saying she had given a nice young man some keys, she said the man had died three years ago. Then she pointed to Cycle Baba’s bicycle and said, “There is your Maruti.” Finally, she brought out the gold bangles—the same ones retrieved from the temple by the jhadu vali—and gave them to the bewildered constable, saying, “I am preparing for death.”

Lucky knew this would go no further. Which policeman was going to arrest an old grandmother who thought a bicycle was a car? He managed to lodge a formal report at the police station, and looked forlorn as he rode around on Cycle Baba’s bicycle for the next few days.

We did not see Cycle Baba again.

After that day Lucky seemed broken, subdued. I heard from someone that he had recovered much of the value of the car through his insurance, but money in the bank is not the same as a Maruti at the gate—it has no horn, no engine, and no logo with Maruti 800 written on it. Even as Lucky’s spirits sagged, ours soared. It was exhilarating to open our gate without having to squeeze past the car, and the absence of the honking made us realise that our colony was full of bulbuls and pigeons.

Nani’s dementia worsened, as did Papa’s indifference. Three years later, she took to her bed. I was with her when the end came. It was early morning. Papa was at JNU, Didi in her new college. Nani asked for water. I rushed to get a glass.

“That red car,” she said, after taking a sip.

I was surprised she still remembered it. “It was not your fault,” I said.

“That vulgar boy. The horn was too loud. I could not hear the Bhagwat.”

“But Nani, you did not know. You thought the cycle was…”

“I can tell a cycle from a car,” she said calmly. And that was when I knew—a window had opened in the fog, and the valley below was green and clear. And she was confessing.

Then the jhadu vali came in and Nani thought she was Mummy. “Nirmala! Come and sit with me.”

Now I was not sure the fog had lifted. She died that afternoon. I ran and re-ran her last words in my mind and kept wondering if I had heard her correctly. There was no way to know. After calling the jhadu vali Nirmala, she did not speak again.

Sujit Saraf is the author of several works of fiction. His latest novel is Every Room Has a View, published in 2025.