|  Though
he hails from a family of car buffs, funnyman Kunal Vijaykar has a few
peeves when it comes to things on wheels. Vardhan Kondvikar comes away
smiling.
“I’m
quite a safe driver but get distracted easily.”
It’s
an instantly recognizable face — he’s the guy with cucumber
slices over his eyes, whose screen wife covered his ears while he changed
channels, who hissed in horror at the thought of antiseptic. Kunal Vijaykar,
theatre artiste, character actor, funnyman, adman, painter and all-round
relaxed guy. He’s also the owner of a superbly maintained old-shape
Honda City 1.5; “the better one,” he says. And he’s
extremely proud of the car, which he bought after a brace of Esteems.
“I’m actually a big fan of the Esteem; the Honda City had
been launched by the time I bought my second one, but the top-of-the-line
Esteem, with power windows and everything, was cheaper than the base Honda
City, so I didn’t bother with it.”
After the facelift though, he went for it anyway, and has fallen in love.
“I tried out the new City, but it was like a truck in comparison.
I mean, it’s not at all heavy to drive, but it has no response,
no feel. I don’t know whether I’ll get much resale value now
for my car, but I didn’t want to spend more money and upgrade to
a car I don’t particularly like.”
During his advertising days, he had a couple of company cars: a Premier
Padmini with floor shift and bucket seats (India’s M5 at the time),
and a first-generation Maruti 800, with the Japanese engine. However, his
history with cars stretches far further back. During Kunal’s childhood,
his grandfather used to own a car dealership at Mumbai’s Chowpatty,
selling Packards, Mahindras and Hillmans; the dealership had a four-storey
workshop behind, with a lift equipped to carry cars. “Whenever my
grandfather picked me up from school in his car, we used to go up to the
fourth floor in the lift — it was quite something.” His grandfather
was quite a car buff; having found a rotting Studebaker, he cleaned it up,
welded massive fins onto it and decked it up with red and silver paint —
must have been quite a sight.
Kunal confesses he isn’t as much of a car guy though, and generally
dislikes driving, especially in Mumbai, except at night, when it’s
empty and looks quite pretty. The longest trips he’s made are to Pune
along the Expressway, and even then, he prefers to take it easy. He’d
taken a trip to Pune with fellow actor (and Me & My Car star) Boman
Irani, and went along with him and a pack of kids to a go-kart track. While
Boman and the kids did their best to melt the wheels, Kunal ambled around
the track, one hand on the wheel, the other cuddling a cigarette, till Boman
started hopping in fury, calling Kunal “a disgrace, who should not
be allowed to drive.”
Plus, he claims to know nothing about how cars work, and is worried because
any wily garage mechanic can take him for a ride. His main automotive talent,
he says, lies in back-seat driving. Technically it’s front-seat driving,
because he hates the rear, saying “I get really hassled if I can’t
see the road. I’m always heckling my chauffeur, till one day he complained
that I was starting to scare him.”
And this has increased since he had a terrible accident, while being driven
around at night in a friend’s Skoda. The Skoda went into a lamp-post,
and the airbags kept the driver and front passenger safe, but Kunal broke
his hip, and was out of action for four months. “Ever since then,
I get really nervous when other people are driving. I believe I’m
quite a safe driver; the only problem is that I get quite distracted,”
he says, popping his eyes out, “especially when I see a pretty girl
on the road.”
But never mind how he drives, I just hope he takes the cucumber slices off. |
July 2005