I asked some of my friends about Faulkner’s remark that the American truly loves – not his wife or children, nor his country – only his car. They looked uneasily at one another, as if I had broached a risqué theme, and said that, while the comment seemed a trifle exaggerated, Faulkner knew what he was talking about.

A related experience was, when I took a new job in Washington thirty miles from home and found that several colleagues lived in my neighborhood, I asked if they would like to car-pool with me. They would not. Their reaction was one of horrified disbelief. One took pity on me and explained the negative response. “In office,” he said, “we are bullied by our boss, and at home we are bullied by our wives. Our only moment of freedom and peace is when we are in the car. You want to spoil that by car pooling?”
 
Americans perhaps are not the only ones who love their cars. They are also perhaps are not the only ones who feel a sense of unbounded freedom in their cars, free of their superiors or spouses, even for a while. I remember how happily I roamed the streets of Kolkata, no matter the frequent potholes and less frequent traffic jams. In the US, I often do a thousand-mile trip through the hills of West Virginia or the fields of South Carolina, savoring the air of green pastures and the espresso of rest-stop Starbucks. Hardened travelers must wonder why a bespectacled man sits in a roadside café, peering out of a frosting window, occasionally sipping cherry coke and pecking at a laptop keyboard.

I am not overly fond of my car, nor am I trying to escape anyone’s bullying. Yet I feel a strange air of insouciance when I scurry out of city traffic, turn on the cruise control and drive on the interstate without a clear destination in mind. I feel maybe a fraction of what nomads feel when they leave an accustomed corner for the wide unknown. The first time I had bought a car in India I had driven out of town without a plan, except a utopian notion of experiencing the unexpected. I had more than my fill of adventure, for the car broke down miles from nowhere (you can’t blame an old jalopy for doing what comes to it naturally). I had to scour a tiny village for someone who knew about a car a little more than me, and sleep in a hut after dining on a bowl of gruel. I remembered the friendliness of strangers better than the Spartan accommodation and indifferent chow. I simply loved being away from the city and the curious sense of being uncluttered, in touch with whatever was around me.

So it is easy for me to understand why some people love their cars so dearly. It is always at our beck and call, ready to take us to wherever our fancy guides us. We don’t have to wait for a train, plane or bus. We can hop into our chariot at a moment’s notice and get going. Yet it is worth giving the subject a second thought. Every time a friend takes me to a show or a restaurant, as the car winds out of my cul de sac I am amazed at what I see. My neighbor has repainted his house an atrocious mauve; a lawyer friend has had his front lawn eye-catchingly manicured; the school next door has a shiny new wing. How come I didn’t notice these earlier? Because when I drive, I am focused on the street, traffic and pedestrians, and notice little else. The car may take me places, I may see new things. But, while doing so, it induces me to overlook many things; I simply do not observe many a thing worth observing.
 
Also, the euphoric feeling that speed generates, blinds us to the truth that a car is the most underused asset on earth. The world over, people use a car no more than two hours a day. 90 per cent of the time a car sits in a garage or on the street gathering dust – and, worse, losing its value. The moment you drive a car out of a dealer’s shop, it becomes a ‘used’ car and loses a third of its value. Tells you what an item of vanity and vagary it is. In any case, for that item people on an average cough up $15, 000 – unless you need a larger dose of vanity and spend a million dollars for a Bentley or a Lamborghini.

The astounding thing is that the internal combustion engine of a car is the most outdated thing in modern life. Developed when women wore corsets and men sported top hats, and nobody had heard of plastic or silicon, it represents the most inefficient use of energy and an outrageous misuse of the world’s resources. Its tailpipe emissions spew toxins and reduce the life span of thousands in major cities by at least ten years, causing cancer, asthma and lung disorder. Cars and trucks account for over four-fifths of world’s carbon pollution and trigger the worst threat of climate change. Also, the incessant thirst for gasoline it creates, not only generates perverse political alliances with oil producing countries, but triggers environmental havoc with technologies like fractioning. The rising sea level and the draughts and storms global warming generates do damage that, if factored in, would raise the real price of gasoline to $10.

​All this leaves aside the brutal fact of silent slaughter by cars every day – silent, because nobody talks about it and the press finds it too common to deem it newsworthy. When terrorists used two planes to kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11, it drew headlines for weeks; but 3,000 Americans die from car accidents every month – more than in wars in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan – and it hardly merits any attention. More startling still, over 3,000 people die every day in the world, with India a major contributor, and we, car lovers, scarcely raise an eyebrow.
 
No surprise that Uber and Lyft are doing good business and Zipcars, temporary-use cars, are gaining ground. I can barely wait for automatic, driver-less cars.
 
Our adoration of private cars has become as old-fashioned as our nostalgia for horse-drawn buggies.
 

Ghosts are wispy creatures and, in most stories, seem rather flimsy and elusive. The ghost I once encountered was robust and, after the initial moments, quite articulate, almost assertive.
 
I had just bought a new car, a Fiat – one of the only two brands then available in India – and it had a sky-blue color that the company was marketing that year for the first time. My boss, a French speaking Englishman, loved the fact that I spoke French and adored French authors like Camus and Malraux. That winter, as the Christmas season approached, he rewarded me a Friday afternoon with an expensive ticket. It was to a piano concert by a visiting Argentinian maestro at a local theater. I was delighted.

The next evening, as the maestro took her concluding bow, in a resplendent emerald costume that still shines in my memory, I quickly exited the theater to escape the emerging crowd and walked over to my sky-blue Fiat. I started the car and revved toward my home in another part of town. To avoid crowded streets, flocked by Saturday’s merry-making hoi-polloi, I decided to cut through the empty grounds north of Chowringhee and drive along the Red Road.
 
I have to confess that, when I entered and seated myself in the car, I had a faint sensation of discomfort, the mildest, minutest reaction to something amiss. But, what could be wrong with my entering my own, brand-new car? I brushed the feeling aside and proceeded to start the car.
 
Strangely and inexplicably, the feeling did not quite leave me as I kept driving. In fact, the feeling grew a little stronger as I drove. I was now driving through a dark area, while the city lights twinkled at some distance. The sense of unease grew. Something was not quite right. I did not know what, but my guts quivered with a sense of foreboding.

As I drove on, determinedly, my discomfort seemed to crystallize. I now had the eerie sensation that I was not alone in the car. Nonsense, I said to myself, there was nobody else in the car, certainly not a ghost. I had left an empty car, carefully locked, and, on return from the piano recital, I had unlocked the car. Moreover, when I entered the car on return, I had seen nobody inside.
 
Yet, my disquiet simply would not leave. I almost had the uncanny feeling that I was sensing the soft, nearly imperceptible breathing of another person. I was now quite upset. While I kept telling myself that my mind was imagining some absurd phantom presence, my body cringed at the persistent sensation of another presence.
 
Then, as I continued to race through the dark, intent to reach a better-lit area as soon as I could, I could no longer ignore some muted sounds on the back seat, as if a person was turning on the seat. Shivering, still driving, I decelerated and tried to look back.

Through the corner of my eye, I saw a large, black figure slowly rising on the back. I swiftly turned the steering wheel to take the car to the side of the road and pressed the brake with all my force. As I now turned, I saw a large dark ghost-like figure become upright. My tremulous left hand still on the wheel, I turned on the light with my right hand.
 
I saw a large man on the back seat, his head and shoulders still draped by the black blanket he had covered himself with while sleeping on the seat. Rattled beyond measure, I wanted to ask what he was doing in my car. But the man pre-empted me. Shaking in terror, he tremulously asked, “What are you doing in my car?” Before I could reply, he followed up with, “For God’s sake, where are you taking me?” Clearly my unease was nothing compared to his.

​I tried to explain that I thought it was my car, the one in which I had gone to see a performance. Now, with the light turned on and a more careful scrutiny, I could see that it was the same sort of car, but it had a baby photo stuck on the glove compartment and a small chain hanging from the rear-view mirror. It certainly wasn’t my car.
 
The man said he was a professional driver and his employer had gone to see a film with his wife in an adjacent theater. The employer did not want his new sky-blue car to remain unattended and had suggested that the driver sleep in the car while he and his wife enjoyed a relatively long film. The driver had been sleeping peacefully, until he woke up to find the car moving. He feared that he was being kidnapped as the car was being stolen.
 
We both returned to the spot where the car had originally been. Fortunately, the driver’s employer had not yet returned, and my car stood pristine a few hundred yards away. My key opened my car door as smoothly as it had opened the other car’s.

​I have never cared much for Vibhishana. The Indian classic, Ramayana, makes him out to be a good guy, and the hero of the story, Rama, anointed him the king of Lanka, after killing its sovereign, Ravana. A bad decision, in my view.
 
I find Vibhishan’s very name odious. Bhishan means terrible, Vibhishan means especially terrible. That is exactly how I see him. If he was going to rule the people of Lanka by terrorizing them, that was a poor way to rule. Rama was responsible for foisting a lousy ruler on the poor people of Lanka. A poor decision, as I said.
 
Clearly Ravana was an impulsive fellow. Of all the women in the world, he set his eyes on Sita, who happened to be Rama’s wife. That was not a smart move. There were plenty of pretty girls who would given their right arm to marry royalty. Instead Ravana settled on somebody’s wife. Not just any body, another king. With lots of soldiers, as many as four brothers eager to fight, and a whole lot of other resources. Moses, even while lost in the desert, made it a point to tell his people not to covet another man’s wife. Clearly, Ravana made a very silly choice. But that is how some people are, very emotional, ready to lose their head over a pretty woman they don’t even know.

​But watch what our guy Vibhishana does. He goes to his brother and tells him to forget about Sita. I cannot imagine a poorer emissary to persuade Ravana to give up his great love – or lust, if you like. The text makes it clear that he had what it calls a ‘pure heart’ and was constantly meditating, doubtless to make it purer still. This was hardly the guy to persuade a hot-blooded royal rascal like Ravana. Particularly, when to give up his sizzling idea to abduct a winsome girl. I bet Vibhishana quoted from scriptures, mentioned the importance of a pure, lust-less heart, talked of resisting the temptation of a luscious woman, waxed eloquent about a dull, virtuous life. In short, he must have bored Ravana to death and given every sort of argument unlikely to make a dent. Predictably, he failed miserably. Ravana’s heart was set on Sita.
 
What did Vibhishana do then?
 
He abandons his brother, goes and joins Rama and his horde, and fights against his own brother, Ravana. This really takes the cake. I cannot imagine a worse act of treachery.
 
I have two brothers, and none is a lesser rascal than the other, in their own unique way. From poetry to politics, woman to whatchamacallit, on no conceivable subject can we ever reach agreement. But, to abandon my hell-bent brothers for that reason, would be unforgivable. Let them go to perdition, I will, reluctantly of course, go with them. That is what being a brother means to me.
 
When I was a kid, I read E. M. Forster’s classic declaration, “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” I heartily endorsed it and believed in it. In fact, I completely disgusted my colleagues in the diplomatic service, all eager to display their patriotic fervour, when I cited it as my cardinal belief. If it is that important not to betray your friend, it must be just as important, if not more, not to betray your brother. Vibhisan does a double betrayal: he not only betrays his brother, he chooses at the same time to betray his country. He well knows that the ensuing war will devastate his country, but he goes ahead anyway, joins the enemy and fights against his own country.

​I know, I know, the puritans will be hopping mad to hear this, for the only thing that counts with them is that the lecherous Ravana lusted for Sita. Nothing for them is as bad as the secret desires haunting their dreams, the vile longings that gnaw perpetually at their groins. Those have to be publicly pilloried, if only to tell the world how lily-white their hearts are. For me, there are things far worse than yearning, such as a repudiation of your closest bonds, including the abdication of one’s country and one’s kin.
 
A turncoat is a despised species in all lands. The name of Mirzafar has become synonymous with the act of treachery. Vibhishan was just that. From a perverse sense of virtue, he left his country and joined those bent on attacking it. But far more perverse to me is his abandonment of his brother. If his brother Ravana did not listen to him, it was his obligation to persist in an effort to change his mind, in the same way that it would be my duty to keep persisting with my brother if he were an alcoholic or a drug addict. It would not do to simply give him a sermon on addiction and move on.
 
Rama, our putative hero, shows a great lack of judgment when he accepts Vibhishan as a respectable friend. He should have accepted Vibhishan only as a strategic ally, for purposes of the conflict ahead, and cast him aside the moment the conflict was over. The British people demonstrated acute insight when they accepted Churchill’s leadership during the World War and promptly repudiated his empire-driven ideas the moment the war was over. Rama, to his eternal shame, did not show such insight and planted on defeated Lanka precisely the traitorous man who had betrayed his brother and his country. A bad decision all over.