Nissan Bluebird

Nissan Bluebird

Nissan Bluebird was my first car and obviously, we were over the moon, I mean, I, and the car, when it was bought. The reg no was: F551 PVL. The white bluebird car was bought in September 1995, in Scunthorpe, which was my then abode in UK. I was then a Senior House Officer in the Scunthorpe hospital, my first proper job as a UK Doc.

I had already passed my driving test by then and a matter of fact, possibly the only exam; I had passed in the first attempt in UK, apart from my Citizenship test, done very recently!!

The car was bought for £2700, had already clocked 77,000 miles on it, which was Amazing! This was almost around 1, 30,000 km and I would be very desperate to know whether cars in India would be still alive and sold from a garage, with a three months warranty, after having clocked that many miles!

The fateful event, catapulting me to buy a car, was an evening stroll along the Chennai marina beach sands, with my sister and a friend of mine from Srilanka. It was the then summer of 1988….well, I really mean it!

I was in Year three at Stanley; might have had a revelation or some sort, for, I knew how tough life would be for an ordinary chap with a moderate background, daring, first, to dream about a car and then actually touching one in his life time!! (There were no superlative banks loans those days, I can assure you...)

Well the conversation went something like this; My sister , jokingly, uttered, possibly to begin a conversation, mentioned that one day or even within next five years or so, Suren( that’s me) might buy his own car…….

To which my Srilankan friend (not my girl friend!!) retorted back ……without even thinking or blinking for a nano second, “Are you joking……….. Akka” (Sister in Tamil)? This was in 1988. I bought my first car in 1995. Not that bad!

My friend and my sister too, for her part, I don’t think, really meant what they were talking if you would ask me; however, I knew that, on that day, I was taken for a ride and no sooner came off the pedestal and my already dwarfed self esteem, with a big bang!

This strolls of my life, knowingly or unknowingly likely to have played along my subconscious mind and pushed me towards PLAB exams and UK and guided my similar stroll along Scunthorpe roadways and eventually helped me buying my first Nissan CAR!!!

Well, after picking up the car, we (Ramesh, Shafeek, Ganesh and I ) drove towards the Burger Kings for a treat, which eventually was not uneventful, as I already taken my first smear whilst parking (first of my few!!) by that time! Ramesh is a GP in Grimsby now and Ganesh is a Consultant Physician in MRI, Manchester. Not sure about Shafeek’s whereabouts though.

Well, that’s another story to tell!