OF ROAD

Please forget winches and jerry cans this time around

- Kartik Ware

Sand, snow, and rocks? Broken paver blocks, cracked concrete and questionable tarmac, that’s your ideal mode selector,’ I thought as the Defender softly thudded over yet another unavoidable section of Mumbai’s infrastructure. This Land Rover’s sophistication was quietly rubbing off on me, too, as I noticed myself making remarks to an imaginary butler; ‘I say, Jeeves, isn’t that Thar too close to our posh posterior?’ The Defender’s excellent ClearSight rear-view mirror was always filled with the Thar’s face, its bumper a chin that Jay Leno would be proud of. But what were we doing in South Bombay with these two unlikely partners for a day?

Well, to quote an old one, there’s many a slip between cup and lip, and those slips are where modern off-roaders endlessly commute. The attractive image of an SUV and the chastening fact of being a buyable commodity mean that, more often than not, approach angles are tested on nothing more than speed breakers and flyovers. Wading depths are useful in the monsoon, though. We don’t often get two important 4X4s in the same year, at least none with the history and tradition that these two tow along wherever they go. And I also thought that these two might look good together, which they do. That’s quite a lot of intent in one frame, caged in a sleepy urban morning.