I vaguely remember what I was doing that eventful afternoon more than 30 years ago. However, I do remember what it led to - an ideal toy for us kids and loads of fun which gave us amazing memories and a craving to own that toy someday!
Willy's Jeep is a mean machine in the world of machismo or even otherwise. It has stood the test of time, since its launch in India in the 60's, and is still considered a stud vehicle. If you have one you are the man and that's how the tagline should go!
I do not belong to that era, however, I am pretty sure that Willy's Jeep or just Jeep, as they say in common lingo, must have made its impression on the Indian psyche - especially the macho psyche - post Aradhana, the 1969 Shakti Samanta classic. Rajesh Khanna (without any bulging biceps nor a six pack to match) made girls swoon with just a tilt of head and a disarming smile - which some find irritating in our era. And what is better than Rajesh Khanna - Rajesh Khanna riding on a Jeep, driven by the hero's friend, the stereotyped Sujeet Kumar, with that smile (killer or irritating - take your pick) and gyrating head! That gave the girls of that era the much sought after reprieve from their mundane lives and boys of the 70's, the excuse to own the macho machine!
One such macho machine, with Mama astride and his Sujeet Kumar in tow, drove into our Bengali styled home in Deoghar on a sleepy afternoon. This was late 80's, pre-liberalization India, when people used to reach earlier than their travel plan messages.
Ma and Mausi were pleasantly surprised and we kids were shocked not by Mama or his companion but by that beautiful gray colored Willy's. He parked it under the mango tree at the house's entrance - the innocuous looking one with terminatoresque branches and a girth to match. And there it laid parked (or may be is still parked) to become a bag of bare bones structure minus all the proverbial bells and whistles!
The urgency of the drive or for that matter the purpose of the trip is lost somewhere in the time travel of the last 30 years or was never told to us kids. I don't even remember for how long Mama stayed but his Jeep stayed with us as long as we stayed in that house in Deoghar.
Majestically parked under that mango tree Jeep was our adda. We would be Jackie Shroff one day, or Mithun or whatever hero's movie we had watched the previous weekend on our neighbour's VCR. This story is so old that neither we had TV's at our homes, nor Doordarshan had started it's weekend movie Bonanza! Mr. Bachchan was on his waning spree and Anil Kapoor was just making his mark around that time so it was mostly Gunmaster G9 who was ruling the roost in Bollywood. And we would each take turns to be the CBI officer who was saving the country from unknown enemies (unseen , too in this case, since all of us were heroes in our heads and in our respective parallel stories).
A special mention is needed for the shiny crystal head on the gear lever, which was cynosure of all kids' eyes. It would serve as a secret transmitter aiding the very stylish Gunmaster G9 on his super secret missions, to being an automatic button to pop guns off the dashboard (which was minimalist in that Jeep), to being a plane gear lever being handled by very able G9's side kick. Sometimes the Jeep would be our aircraft and this lever with its crystal head would be magically used to drop bombs, fire bullets or just convert the craft back to Jeep.
The windshield in the front of the Jeep also deserves another special mention. It had a mechanical lever to open it and place it on the hood. We didn't have much success with the lever and I even remember one day one of us had a finger crushing experience with it (and then that kid was carried away by Ma or Mausi away from the after effects of the mercury shooting mood of the male members of the family). The Stepney* tyre that was fixed on the rear half-door (rustic yet beautiful - Jeep designers knew their machology) of Jeep also served as an essential prop in our adventure stories. Someday our hero would be hanging on for his life on it while the Jeep would be a speed boat, racing past all super villains and their Tonygunj (I came to know much later that it was Tonygun and that it was actually a very efficient assault rifle used by Gangsters of New York). On better scripted days, it would serve as a cover against adversary gunfire for our hero who would be shooting from his imaginary gun, with uncountable bullets in it, to save damsels in distress.
Jeep, the original company, has finally made an impressive entrance in the Indian market which makes me wonder - if only the owners of this Jeep had retained the four-wheeler and if only we had known the worth of that beautiful beast then!
*Stepney in UK was the place where a typical styled Tyre was manufactured, which could be used as spares in older cars and hence the name.
