Read on …

October 2005: 

Through 2003 to 2008, we had stayed in the city of Hyderabad, located in the state of now Telangana which was formerly known as Andhra Pradesh, India.

Hyderabad is a very lively city with a great history behind it which makes it one of the oldest cities in India.

The state has fantastic roads that fan out in all directions and if a motorist wants to drive, over a twelve-hour stint can visit many tourist locations.

My parents were visiting us for three months right after the harsh summer had ended. We chalked out a plan to visit over the next weekend to a place called Nagarjun Sagar. It is about one hundred and fifty-two kilometers south-west of Hyderabad.

The place is famous for its twenty-one sluice gated dam, which stretches over the Krishna river.

The other attraction which makes this place historically important is it’s seat of Buddhism study.

On a bright Saturday morning, we set off in our spanking new Maruti Zen LXi. With my mother’s wheel chair tucked securely on the roof rack, we planned to blast off.

Due to the constant pressure of being a project manager, we could never plan our travel trips in advance so when we managed to get a day or two holidays, elation had consumed us.

We filled the gas tank, dumped our travel suitcases, and away we hit the highways.

The Zen was one of the most well-designed cars, fifteen years back, and commanded a huge respect for being a trustworthy tour companion. 

We had finished our snacks and were mid-way when the engine oil warning sign started to blip on the dashboard console. This meant the engine oil was leaking and the level was slowly going down. This was quite alarming as this meant the frictional forces will soon be in play and the engine temperature would slowly rise, choking the pistons in the cylinders. 

We were chewing up the distance at about a hundred-hundred twenty kms/hour; reduced speed to about a mundane sixty to keep in the range of most economic driving. After about an hour away, and with another seventy kilometers to kill, I stopped and checked the oil level, it had gone down appreciably.

We gave ourselves a break of twenty minutes, to cool down the engine and saw the slow dripping of the oil along the lower arm which meant the oil was coming out of the oil filter. I had no special toolset to open the hoses, nor I wanted to stop over a desolate section of the highway alongside a nearby wood. We started again and maintained a balance of speed and temperature.

As has been my good luck with my beauties, my Zen reached us Nagarjuna Sagar guest house intact. I had to get the car fixed as we had a big plan to drive around the dam and explore a few nearby areas. The day temperature typically climbed in these areas to about forty-seven degrees centigrade so we needed the air conditioner running almost non-stop. 

After my family settled in the motel, I immediately drove away on the lookout for a garage that could fix the car. I got one, but it was not a typical service station but a roadside service outfit with a lone mechanic. The man readily agreed and said that he had spare parts for the filter and would take, a maximum of one hour. 

I helped him open the filter and after he fixed it, unfortunately, the oil light came back on. He opened up again and spent about an hour more and re-fixed it but the problem persisted on. It was dark by now and asked him if he can look into it one more time.

The mechanic said he would not work in the night so he will attend the car early morning. I was very disappointed that our travel was getting slowly compromised. 

He promised to keep the oil pan, and all equipment “as is”, and asked me to drive to the guest house for the night. He also agreed to give his own Jeep for two days in case the Zen was not repairable. I thanked him for his kindness.

A long drive, followed with the manual work to fix the car, and the sun beating down for almost two to three hours had made me very tired and while thinking about the car, I rolled over and into the oblivion.

In the vast abyss of my dream, indistinct characters clouded my vision.

I found myself running into a man, he resembled a friend at Kolkata. He has one of Kolkata’s very plush Maruti Service center. I found myself explaining to him what had happened and our inability to figure out the cause of the oil leak. However, as I heard him, my friend’s voice sounded very faint, and it sounded different. He made a lot of gestures but I could not read them. I kept on telling him, what we had done. The checklists what we ran but he kept his hand outstretched towards something I could not see. I again looked at him and I found what he was showing; the oil pan underneath the car.

I asked him, what he meant but hardly I could hear him. I saw myself bending below the car where the oil pan, half-filled with the engine oil rested. I reached for it and looked at it, and then again looked up to my friend.

He asked me to put my hand inside the oil. I did what he asked and after running through it, an object touched my hand. I brought it out, it was an “O” ring. It was about three inches in diameter and was deep gray in color of rubber. I fished it out of the oil pan and looked at him, he was not talking but asked me to put that ring into the filter and re-attach it to the car. A glow filled me.

A quiver ran through me, and I was completely drenched in my own sweat. All I could see was darkness around me. I heard the air conditioner humming and the fuzzy red night lamp on the wall glowing red. What is this…Where’s my friend? Where am I? 

Goodness me, it was a dream after all. I was surprised at the distinctness of it. I looked through the window glass and saw the first defused bluish-white light of the early morning. I was excited. My family was fast asleep. I got dressed, picked the car keys, and tiptoed out, locking the door behind me. The weather was simply brilliant. The first rays of the streaking sunlight had surfaced over the river Krishna, and the blueness deepening. I ran through the cool breeze towards my car. I got in. I switched on and the red light glowed and stared at me. I started her and came to the mechanic’s house where his Jeep stood. To my utter relief, so early in the morning, he was up. I asked him for the oil pan.

He brought it from his house, exactly how I had seen it the last evening. The mechanic placed it, and in went my probing fingers into the murky oil. My heart had missed several beats as I did it. I touched an object, I fished it out. My ears became warm and ran down my hands and spine.

The ‘O” ring, exactly what I had seen it in my dream, deep gray, about 3 inches in diameter. The mechanic too was surprised to see it. He said, shall we try again. He opened the oil filter container and this time, he clamped the ring on to the oil filter just underneath the cap. The ring which seals the gap between the screw nut and the filter body. He slowly put back the parts for the eleventh time, I guess. 

Poured the two liters of engine oil which we had drained out. I started the engine. Once again, the red engine oil glow warning came back. I kept on looking at it … 5 , 8, 10 seconds…

The mechanic asked me to keep the engine running for two minutes or more. Eyelashes fixed, my eyes watched on, and with a joy of complete victory, I hugged the mechanic, the red light had disappeared. I switched off the engine and started her back.

The red light was not there. I paid the mechanic and drove back.  He stopped me, asked me how did I find out the root cause of the problem.

I smiled, “Just a thought … from my dancing mind. I had the car’s manual with me, where I found the fix for the problem”.

He smiled back, shrugged and walked away.

As I drove back, multitude of thoughts crossed me. I was convinced that there is some force that connects with our subconscious which tends to unite the beads of a system that gets torn away by some sort of a wild destructive force. The system always tries to bring back those strewn beads back and restore stability which is far more powerful than a human being can imagine. The uniting power comes from the object, we love.

The mystic logic stays deep in recesses of our soul.

I went back and we finished our journey without a single hitch. The Zen drove like a song, along the winding country highways and with a muted sigh, asked her whether it was she who guided me to the solution…

All I could hear was the rhythmic hum of her fluid engine pulsating through the steering.  

I will never know.  This graceful Zen incidentally has a fascinating story of climbing a rocky incline on the Golconda fort.

Although a different car, she too, bailed us out exactly the same way, the Maruti 800 did, at College street, Kolkata and heavily water logged Camac street.

Love to hear from you as you can click-read the above three links of baffling mysteries.