Of Tigers And Vintage Cars
I love analogies. You know, asking myself questions like, “What do cars and humans have in common?”
I remembered one instance when I discussed Forrest Gump’s “Life is like a box of chocolates, you’ll never know what you will get,” with a friend who is equally weird as I am. We ended up quipping, “What else but chocolate? Not unless something else was put in the box. Well, that’s another story.” Seriously, this one intrigued me a lot. A vintage car rally for tigers? Why? What do vintage car and tigers have in common, anyway? Was there ever an instance that a vintage car all-equipped with an Acura legend mud flap crouched on the street like tigers do? Or did anybody discover a centennial-old tiger?
Last weekend, a three-day vintage car rally, participated in by more or less 13 vintage cars was held from Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, 500 kilometers southeast of New Delhi, India to Dudhwa National park, one of the main wildlife sanctuaries in Northern India, to promote tiger conservation. The area serves as home for about 80 tigers, threatened to be extinct due to humans’ incursion to their natural habitats.
Among the vintage cars that participated in the 220-kilometer rally were Morris Minor, Austin, Fiat and Hillman produced in 1911 to 1950. According to thaindian.com, the rally aimed to carry out the twin objectives of tiger and vintage cars conservation.
“Maintenance is very important for vintage cars. So such a run helps to keep these cars in motion which otherwise stop functioning,” Kulbushan, a participant during the rally, said.
Meanwhile, Sandeep Das, one of the organizers, emphasized on the society’s role in protecting wildlife particularly the tigers in the Dudhwa National Park. Currently, the government declared Dudhwa and other nearby areas as critical tiger habitats.
Tigers and vintage cars. As what one of the rallyists said, both need maintenance. On my part, all I could say is that both’s fate lie in human choices.
