Buying a car in Bengaluru just takes a tap on the keyboard, I thought to myself, ready to book an SUV online, when the lights went out.

I had waited till midnight to be among the first as the American vehicle manufacturer had revved up the excitement on various car portals on the prospect of owning its latest revamped model with the touchscreen entertainment console and six airbags.

It had given 123 lucky people throughout India just 24 hours to make the booking and bypass the months one must wait for the vehicle to be finally delivered to the doorstep.

I had kept my wife awake, who was barely able to keep her eyes open as she usually gets to bed early. She was sleepily holding a Visa card in her hand, as she was the one booking the vehicle, when everything went dark.

“Urk”? said the cat from somewhere in the dark. “I had warned you we need to buy a UPS,” said my wife.

“They all look so ugly, like a horrible souvenir someone gifted us. You would not want that in the living room where guests can see it,” I said.

The housing association generator kicked in, the lights came back on, but the Wi-Fi refused to come alive. “Let’s just go to the showrooms tomorrow and check out the other cars,” said my wife. “I am going to sleep now.”

Getting to the showroom the next day was not easy. Despite it being a Sunday, it took us 90 minutes and a spike in my blood pressure, as traffic crawled at 4.45km/h. “Bad ‘jaam’ (jam),” said the Uber driver.

More Bangaloreans are planning to buy a car today, though a two-wheeler is still the popular mode of transport in this congested city, I thought to myself, as families poured into the showroom.

Automatic transmission

Men seemed to favour a car with a popular brand name, women seemed more concerned about the safety features, air bags, non-skid brakes and the mileage, how many kilometres with a full tank. Men seemed more concerned about power windows, while women were looking for an automatic transmission, not a gear shift.

I remember praying for an automatic gear shift after commuting daily to neighbouring Sharjah. Many of my colleagues developed a ‘Sharjah knee” after constantly pressing on the clutch and changing gears as the traffic crawled every morning and evening.

“Let’s get one with a petrol engine, not a diesel,” said my wife. “We don’t want to add to the pollution.”

“A petrol engine is less expensive but petrol is not exactly cheap,” I said softly as the salesman was hovering around. “And you want leather seats, that will hike the price.”

“We will be mostly sitting in traffic, let’s at least get comfortable”, shot back my wife, as the salesman extolled the virtues of 17-inch alloy wheels that will glide us over potholes.

Driving in Bengaluru is very different from driving in Dubai where motorists text and crash at high speeds. I remember a police officer saying with relief that accidents had gone down one day because BlackBerry had an outage and no one could send messages while cruising on the highway.

“What are you doing?” I screamed at the Uber driver, on the way home. We were suddenly barrelling against the traffic on a one-way street.

Scooters with five family members perched precariously, small Japanese cars manufactured in India, huge buses with tiny drivers, were all speeding towards us. “This is a short cut,” said the driver patiently. “Or we will have to go five kilometres and then make a U-turn,” he said.

“There are too many cars on the roads in Bengaluru,” I told my wife. “Are you sure we need to buy a car?”

“Just maja maadi,” said my wife, in Kannada. “Just chill”.

Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. You can follow him on Twitter at @mahmood_saberi.