Under the title ‘Old cars never die, they only move to India’, an article appeared not so long ago, in the Automotive Digest in England. Its cynical message hurt, because it hit the truth. The bullock cart was after all, an Ambassador with the leathery hide of an animal, the Ambassador, the reluctant animal duplicated in steel. When it was weary after that long hot ride to the neighbour’s house its bald tyres were removed from the rims, so the body could regain its balance under the cool shade of a leafy tamarind tree. At tea time, a gallon or two of Mobil 307 was poured down her parched metal throat, then the driver talked to it, sometimes read it a short story from John Kenneth Galbraith’s An Ambassador’s Journal. After some time, the radiator snorted in an affectionate sort of way, and the gears jammed. And before you know it, the car was a slave for the rest of its life. Just like the family bullock. You washed it daily in the greenish slime of the village tank or hosed it on the driveway; checked its gums or peered down the radiator, knowing there was little difference between the two. No difference of speed or vintage or comfort. Not even a difference of skin colour. Both served you like no human being ever did. Of course, in the ‘70s when its time was over, the mechanical beast was put out of its misery, with just a quick and painless bullet in the radiator. The bullock cart lived on.