Fancy car on fancy bridge

Last month saw the launch of two technological marvels: the Bandra-Worli sea link, and the Audi Q5. DNA hit upon the idea of introducing the two to each other, by ‘test-driving’ the new bridge in a Q5. We bore witness to the spectacular encounter between engineering wonder and automotive magic.   

We’ve often come across the phrase ‘cynosure of all eyes’. We knew what it meant, like most people do, but we’re willing to bet that 9.5 out of 10 people who know what it means don’t know what the word ‘cynosure’, on its own, means. We didn’t. We have never seen it used anywhere outside of the idiomatic phrase. Nobody ever says, for example, “How is your cynosure?” or “Don’t touch the cynosure”.

The Q5 taught us the meaning of the word ‘cynosure’. It also taught us that you don’t have to be Rahul Gandhi or a model-turned-Bollywood superstar, or even a certain cricketing icon in the twilight of his career to get a mass of strangers to stare open-mouthed at you with a mix of awe and admiration, and then smile and wave at you in pure joy: anybody who stands up and pokes his head through the sunroof of a painfully beautiful moving vehicle on the Bandra-Worli sea link will evoke the same reaction from the average Mumbaikar. Three of us journos took turns with the stunt — we couldn’t resist it — the reactions were the same.

An executive in a Honda Civic gave us a thumbs up sign and yelled out, “The car’s sure worth it, man!” A bunch of punks who’d taken a cab for a joyride gawked at us and screamed “Ganpati Bappa Morya”. A middle-aged man in a Hyundai Accent didn’t know whether to look at the road or the Q5. Cab drivers who looked as haggard as their Premier Padminis looked at the Q5 as they would at the handsome new son-in-law of a close friend. Even the traffic cops only gaped at us in stupefaction as we took a blatantly ridiculous U-turn a few metres past the toll bridge. Only Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi watched us from the hoardings in silent disapproval.

Yet, you could sense that it was not only the Q5 magic at work. Sure, some cars have that effect on people, and this ‘baby SUV’, which believes itself to be a sports car, looks like one, and even behaves like it is, can hypnotise car watchers. But the location, and the occasion on the location also had something to do with it.

For one, the traffic on the bridge was mostly of people who were out for a joyride, to ‘try out’ the bridge on its opening day. So we got to see a rather weird metamorphosis where the locals suddenly turned, en masse, into tourists in their own city. It was easy to pick the ones that were there on a joy ride from the ones who were merely using the bridge to get to elsewhere. The former were the cars packed with people — sedans with the entire family crammed in, taxis fully loaded with working women, a gang of boisterous youths hooting out of their Scorpios, couples with their kids and their kids’ friends scrambling in the backseat. They all drove slowly, and kept pausing to take pictures of themselves with the towering pyramidal cables in the background, causing a massive jam that all the news channels telecast live and all the papers moaned about the next day.

One sardarji had parked his Maruti 800, and with one foot on the bonnet and another on the railing, was videotaping the traffic jam that he himself was creating as he stood there with his camera like a turbaned Steven Spielberg, as if waiting for Tyrannosaurus Rex to suddenly materialise from the sea on the other side of the bridge.

Workers in blue crash helmets who had toiled for years to build this bridge stood idly by on one side, watching the fruits of their decade-long toil crystallise into a traffic jam in front of their eyes.

All this lent a certain carnival-like air to the traffic. It was like the good-humoured, slow-moving jam created by a mass of people who had come out to cheer the triumphant cavalcade of a cricket team that had returned with the World Cup. There was no doubt that many were there simply to celebrate the bridge — to celebrate the fact that it was finally available, that it was phenomenally good-looking, and that it was so good to just be on it.

Into this atmosphere of high spirits, sea breeze and cool drizzle, enter the Audi Q5, with its sunroof open, and a stranger standing and smiling, as if from a chariot; you don’t care that it's a nobody in that car with celeb looks — you're just blown off your feet. You say to yourself, God knows who these funny-looking people are, but they sure as hell picked the right car for this bridge, for this day, for this moment, and you can't tear your eyes away. As you acknowledge this fact to yourself, you realise you’re waving at the funny creature with the body of a car and the head and neck of a human being.

Incidentally, the dictionary explains ‘cynosure’ as follows: “the North Star itself; hence anything that strongly attracts attention or admiration.” Want to drive a cynosure on a cynosure, anyone?