“We were on our way back from Goa to Bombay on NH 17 in our M800/dx-Mpfi and in the process of negotiating a ghat section. With HCV's loaded to the brim and literally crawling up the ghats, we were in the midst of overtaking one such vehicle.

“Since the road on this highway section was only a two-lane one, our overtaking involved us moving onto the on-coming traffic zone. Of course there wasn't any traffic on the opposite side when we decided to and we would have overtaken the HCV pretty easily like millions of other times. But to our horror this is what happened - our car just died out on us just as we were overtaking and mind you - this was on a climb and not down hill !!

“We some how managed to get the car to the other side of the road without hitting anybody and later tried to push start it but of no avail - as it was pretty difficult to push the car in a reverse mode on a down gradient (now), full of twists and turns.

“Then on request, one of the Truckers agreed to tow us to the nearest garage. After twenty minutes or so of towing, I tried key-starting the car and there was absolutely no problem. It started the first instant and continued till we reached Bombay. In fact till date - there has been no problem - we did the trip in November ’02 and its April ’03 now!

“Interestingly enough, may be looking out for an explanation, at about 7 am the same day - we saw a spectacular phenomenon: to our right was the rising sun and to our left –at the same angle - was a full moon going down in all its glory - the classic 10:10 position on a clock. This made us wonder whether being on the ghat got us closer to the moon and the combined Sun/Moon gravitational forces played up on the Car’s ‘fluids’ - like a sea-tide – leading to the freak incident”!