'Light' Trouble...

When I hear stories of poor visibility conditions in foggy Delhi making traffic crawl to a stop (unless, you know, it doesn't quite stop voluntarily and this happens: http://www.ptinews.com/news/471771_Vehicles-collide-on-Noida-Expressway--20-injured ), all I do is scoff.

Bah, why blame the heavens and climate change and chilly winds and what not for conditions that I can create almost effortlessly with just just a little external help. You want poor visibility while driving? Hey, presto here you are!

OK, a little rewind is probably required now. As you know, I drive a Fiat Palio. Now, I love that car (most expensive purchase I've ever done) but it seems that age is finally catching up with it a bit. A month and a half back while returning back from a dinner at night I noticed the left side of my field of vision not quite measuring up in clarity to the right side. Now normally after an evening out I don't really think too much of these little lopsidedness because the reason for such maladies are very clear based on my consumption during the above mentioned evening out. But on that day the standard explanation was not true. It was actually just a dinner!

Puzzled, I turned my head rapidly around, cursed, and with one hand supporting my neck, figured out that one headlight of the car was on a break. Well, I got back safe enough and as I am a bit conscious about safety and my car I promptly took the car to the garage on the weekend. I also got a full service done and the garage guy started treating the headlight issue as a minor glitch.

After the servicing things were fine for 2-3 days and then again I saw the lopsidedness. And because I had sufficient reasons to explain it this time, I ignored the problem. But a few days later I had to take the car back to the garage for redoing the headlight.

Again it was okay for a few days. I travelled a bit in between and I sort of reconciled myself to driving with less illumination on one side and started driving on high beam to get a view.

BUT today it just crossed the limits. The left side low beam AND high beam have stopped functioning. And to add to it the right side low beam is also gone. So I drove back this evening guiding my car with just one high beam of light on the right side!

I sense a conspiracy here. Do I have a stalking saboteur who takes perverse pleasure in mixing up the wires in my electricals (my car's, jeez). Or is it some heavenly interference that's saying, "Say, Swapnil, you didn't quite spend enough on your car repairs for a while. I'm going to make you pay and that too with the most irritating niggles!"

One more task enters the to-do list for the weekend.


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