Passionate About India

I was watching a movie in the first floor of our house that fateful afternoon of '94 when that call came and changed our lives forever. It was my mother who had called from the ground floor of our house to inform me through her uncontrollable tears that she had just then received a call that my younger brother had died in a road accident. I rushed down hoping against hope that it was someone else. My dad was sure it wouldn't be someone else – as I drove our car frantically towards Gurgaon where the accident had happened – and advised me to drive slowly. He had done his maximum possible to see to it that we never developed a fascination for motorbikes. An avid reader of about a dozen papers everyday, my father was definite that a motorbike was a sure-shot route to disaster on Indian roads. So the soonest he could, he bought a car for us. I still remember that day in 1993, after he had bought a fifth-hand 1977 model Toyota, he entered the house, lay down on the bed in a relaxed m...