Dawn Of A New Era

Driving the Rolls-Royce Dawn takes me on a trip down memory lane, and on the path to redemption.

- Aninda Sardar

DEAR UNCLE, Remember the set of keys you spent hours looking for? It was a quarter of a century ago so you probably don’t remember what I’m talking about, but I think the time is ripe to confess. You didn’t misplace that set but it was I who transferred that key to a different place. A safer place. I couldn’t bear the thought of not ever seeing that car in our garage again and I just had to have a physical memory of it. Something beyond the family photos and the trunk full of trophies we had won with it.

Hell, even I had forgotten about that key until today. Today those memories have all come rushing back. There was something strangely familiar about the shape of the Dawn’s Parthenon grille with the Spirit of Ecstasy adorning its crest that took me back to that day; reminded me of my guilt. Watching the sun rise over this disused industrial compound, lighting up the flanks of this gleaming new Rolls Royce, my mind jogged back to those Sunday mornings we would spend cleaning Dadu’s Phantom. How I would sit on those enormous running boards munching a sandwich, as we kids weren’t allowed to eat inside the car.

Life has come a full circle. For years I imagined what it would be like to drive Dadu’s Rolls, knowing full well that dream would remain but a dream. Except this is no dream. This is not a 1936 Phantom II, but this is a Rolls-Royce neverthless. And just like our Rolls was at the cutting edge of automotive technology when it was introduced to Kolkata’s streets, so too this Dawn is the pinnacle of… well… I'm at a loss to explain what a two-door four-seat convertible represents except for decadence on an unimaginable scale. But the excitement I’m feeling, that fluttering of the heart is exactly what I used to get every time I climbed into the seat of our car and drove out in to my world of make-believe.