The Car Wallah

The Indian guy and the Skoda

When my work contract in Korea ended, I flew to India to see my friend Roopa who I’d met in LA and had moved back home to care for her elderly parents. Not having seen her for almost three years, I was super excited to reconnect with her and even more so to experience India. 

Roopa collected me at the airport with her old friend Suresh, the owner of an aircraft engine parts company who’d left his factory in the capable hands of his general manager, having agreed to drive us around sightseeing in his brand-new bright red Skoda. I’d never seen this Czech automobile before, and it was clearly his baby.

Suresh loved driving it and upon learning that I was an avid motorsport fan, relegated Roopa to the back seat, insisting I sit in front with him as we zoomed around, dodging the German Shepherd-sized monkeys that line virtually every roadway in India. I called him the Transporter and being a Clive Owen fanboy, he loved it.

Every day, we would drive somewhere different and every day, the red Skoda looked like it had just been driven off a showroom floor – immaculate inside and out. I knew Suresh loved the shit outta that car, but many of the places we went involved driving over muddy, unpaved, and rutted roads, so its pristine condition puzzled me.

The day after a long drive to a zoo out in the countryside, we had a day trip planned for a remote village deep in the bush where some famous Guru lived in a cave. When Suresh showed up with his car glinting in the brilliant morning sunlight, I couldn’t resist asking him why he’d cleaned it, knowing it was gonna get waaay dirtier today.

Over steaming cups of chai, he told me about his car wallah. In India, the word wallah refers to a master or seller of something, so I assumed his car wallah was a guy who took care of the precious Skoda. Indeed he was, but the story Suresh told me shifted my worldview, and altered my perception of something impacting us right now.

The car wallah’s name was Bahnu, and he was one of the very first people Suresh hired to work in his factory back when he began his company years ago. After an accident on the factory floor, Bahnu could no longer perform his job and was despairing over how he would support his wife and three very young daughters.

Suresh bought him some car-washing supplies and showed him how to thoroughly wash car exteriors and tires. Bahnu figured out how to detail clean car interiors, using supplies he bought for himself. After a few months, Bahnu asked Suresh to let him detail clean the interior and exterior of his car for 20 rupees – less than a quarter.

Seeing his excellent work done for the price of a daily cup of chai, Suresh hired Bahnu to clean his car every day and encouraged all his friends and colleagues to use Bahnu’s outstanding car detail cleaning service. And in this way, Bahnu saved enough money to move into a house and put his three daughters through college.

This story made me remember a very similar one with a different ending that had taken place at a film production office in LA where I was prepping a movie. Every Friday, a Mexican guy and his brother would arrive in the parking lot in a pick-up truck outfitted with car cleaning supplies and a sign offering car detailing for $15.

At the time, car detailing cost around $100, so many of us jumped at this opportunity, gladly forking over the 15 bucks when we came to work on Fridays, and leaving our cars unlocked so the guys could do the interiors. As it turned out, these brothers were sending half the money home to their mother and sisters still living in Mexico.

Eventually, the Hollywood bigwig who owned the company found out about the car detailing service being offered in the parking lot on Fridays. He called the police and had them run the Mexican brothers off his property claiming they were conducting an illegal business there without his consent.

Which brings me to the point of Suresh’s story that’s impacting us right now…

His story about Bahnu is what social consciousness looks like. It’s when we pay a pittance, a ridiculously small amount of money that we can easily afford just to help out someone in need who is less better off than we are without blinking an eye or having to give it a moment’s thought. 

Social consciousness. Not corporate consciousness. Not self consciousness.

Social consciousness begins in our own hearts when we make an effort to take some small yet significant step that benefits one person at a time, costing us next to nothing and delivering happiness and hope to someone who really needs that help and support. Social consciousness is part of what defines us as humans.

And right now, we have none. We don’t care about people who are struggling or living in poverty. Instead, we’d rather buy an obscenely overpriced coffee drink at Starfucks. We’ve lost an essential part of ourselves that inherently recognizes how easy it is to offer help to someone who’s need is much greater than our own and then act on it. 

Instead, we just think - 'Fuck ‘em, not my problem - I’m good.'

No wonder online therapy is 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀.....