As a man in his 30s, one is often doomed to encounter finance influencers warning about the perils of buying a house and the restraint one must exercise when purchasing a car. When I returned to India from the US, I toyed with the idea of buying a new car. But as we started planning the budget for our wedding, that thought promptly moonwalked back to wherever it had come from. I decided instead to keep using my dad’s car.
Buying a new car wouldn’t have made sense anyway—I was here for only a year and a half. Once I returned to the US early next year, the car would mostly sit idle, aside from the occasional drive my mother might take. I’d also decided not to rent an apartment in Panjim but to stay home in Ponda instead. Rents in Goa had skyrocketed while I was away, and after that anxious winter in Lisbon, I wasn’t eager to live alone again. Cooking for myself wasn’t the problem; eating the same leftovers for three days straight was. So, I stuck with my dad’s car, driving it daily from Ponda to Panjim, where I worked at the Goa Archives and the State’s Central Library.
The car was perfectly functional, apart from a few dents here and there. It lacked the sleek touchscreens and built-in GPS of newer models, but it did have Bluetooth, letting me make and receive calls while driving—a feature that still felt novel.
Today, as I hesitantly drove it to the servicing center, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this might be one of its last visits before a replacement became necessary. My father bought his first car in 2004, around the time I finished school. For years, it mostly sat unused because he took an awfully long time to learn how to drive it, preferring his Hero Honda Splendor to navigate the familiar roads of Goa. It wasn’t until 2014 that he felt confident behind the wheel. Meanwhile, our uncles and extended family members kept upgrading to newer models, but my father’s reluctance persisted.
I got my license in 2009 but didn’t start driving regularly until 2017. That year, on his birthday, my father bought a new car—a top-model Honda Jazz. It was the most extravagant purchase he’d ever made, surprising everyone. As the eldest of five siblings, his life had been defined by frugality and sacrifice, shaped by the constant responsibility of providing for his family. Yet, this time, he chose indulgence.
He drove it for just ten days. On one of those days, he scratched it while parking too. Then, he fell ill with what started as a fever. Within a month, he was gone.
The car, once a symbol of his quiet rebellion, became an artifact of his absence. I avoided it for months after his death. When I finally began driving it, it was out of necessity rather than sentimentality. Still, every time I slid into the driver’s seat, I couldn’t help but feel his presence—not in a supernatural way, but in the small details: the faint scent of his aftershave, the scratches on the dashboard from his rings, the way the seat was always adjusted slightly too far back for me.
Even now, I tell people it’s my dad’s car. Somehow, calling it mine feels dishonest.
At the servicing center, the mechanic examined the car and rattled off a list of required repairs. All four tires needed replacement—6,500 rupees each. A dent in the front right door, thankfully, could be covered by insurance. I texted my wife: “The bill has escalated to 26k in the first five minutes.” He continued with a detailed breakdown of the servicing, totaling another 17,000 rupees.
Servicing a car always stresses me out. Unlike other boys my age, I’ve never had an interest in cars or bikes. As a child, I didn’t even dream of driving. As a result, I understand very little about how cars actually work. I nodded along, unsure whether I was being fleeced or if I simply lacked the knowledge to question him. I’ve seen others haggle at moments like this, but I can never bring myself to do it. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to come across as “cheap,” a holdover from the frugality ingrained in me growing up. Now that I can afford such expenses, I feel caught in a strange paradox: the desire to seem effortless in my spending, weighed against the guilt of every rupee spent.
This car embodies more than practicality; it’s a relic of my father brief, joyful indulgence in his otherwise sobering frugality. But today, as I hesitated for a second to approve the repairs, I realized it’s also a reminder of everything I’ve inherited from him—habits, anxieties, the mental math that accompanies every decision.
This constant push and pull between wanting to embrace modernity and feeling alienated from it—is this what upward mobility feels like? Or is the hesitation itself is some kind of inheritance, passed down from one cautious generation to the next?