I did not know Ram Kiran Vvs (Hillram) until the summer of 2008 at a Hyderabad Team-BHP Meet where he had volunteered to tow a BMW with his Tata Sierra during our excursion to Nalgonda District, AP.
Hillram (as he is better known) is known for his passion to acquire, restore and preserve vehicles (both 2 and 4 wheelers) that carries a legacy in engineering and ownership pride.
Some of his immaculately maintained vehicles.
The Candy-Red Fiat is a definitive head turner.
The array of colors made me crave for Cadbury’s GEMS.
He also has a large number of Dinky Cars that complement the real ones.
and symbolizing his colorful fleet.
Hillram’s 2-Wheeler collection (which includes Lambretta, Vespa and the Rajdoot ’Bobby’) is however scheduled to be photographed by me.
His attachment to his vehicles is well supported by the reliable service backup of his time-trusted mechanics at Hyderabad.
Hillram’s vehicle collection is in itself – one mini Automobile Club, notwithstanding the fact that he is also heading the Media Relations of ‘Deccan Heritage Automobile Association’.
Afterall “one car a day, does keep the mechanic away”.
The Year was 2008 and I had settled at Bangalore with my better half still in Hyderabad by virtue of our jobs. It had been a month of separation and with her Birthday coming up on the 3rd September, I was desperately wanting to visit Hyderabad. Just as ever, I packed my usual stuff and hit the road, leaving Bangalore on 30th Aug 08 evening. Below is a slideshow including some comic experiences at Hyderabad.
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The beginning of the journey was a bit of a dampener, courtesy my wonderful sense of direction in spite of having a GPS in my phone and my trace knowledge of Bangalore Roads. One guy got so concerned, he started off in his Activa and began leading me without much help as both of us lost each other in the evening rush hour traffic. I lost my way and ended up at Malleshwaram. I managed to reach Hebbal Junction after 2 Hours ever since I passed MG Road.
After a night of playing with headlights on an unfinished NH7, next day 7.30 am I’m having breakfast at Hyderabad. No stress, no fatigue, no drowsiness. The 575 Kms distance went like as if I was following the PM’s covoy (most of the stretches).
While the onward journey was Overnight, the return (HYD-BLR) was a Day drive on 3rd Sep 2008. It took approximately the same time as it took on 31st Aug Night and both ways the distance between Shamshabad and Devanhalli took 9 Hours.
With the NH7 being closer to completion, there will be a time when the the distance between Shamshabad and Devanhalli may take just about 5 Hours and weirdly another 2.5 Hours for escaping Bangalore and 2.5 Hours penetrating Hyderabad Urban Limits, the way traffic congestion is mounting in Indian Cities.
I am just one among the lakhs of Car enthusiasts in India, and discovered Team BHP to be one of India’s Premier and Leading Automotive Forums in the year 2006.
Ever since Age 12, I have been drawn towards automobiles and take keen interest on their engineering aspects and have witnessed the growth and transformation of the Indian Automobile Industry.
At Team-BHP I have discovered the best of like-minded people.
It does not matter whether you are in Chandigarh, Hyderabad or Trivandrum, as long as you are in the company of the automotive enthusiasts fraternity of Team-BHP.
Team-BHP follows a definitive code of conduct in posting and comprehension to maintain quality and standards, quite a task for the moderators indeed who are committed round the clock.
The length, width and depth of what all is discussed at Team BHP about anything on wheels amazes me and though I have been a silent spectator to the immense variations of meaningful interactions, I am mostly active in the Travelogues Section under my Brand Name.
Click on the link here to find my posts on Team-BHP
Drove a Fully Laden Multi-Axled Truck on NH2 for about a Kilometre yesterday. The truck had power steering and twin axles and 6 forward gears. I managed to have a smooth drive without stalling the engine.
One has to rotate the steering wheel quite much to steer and its not advisable to turn wheels lock to lock as we do in cars as then the axles have a hard time getting traction during turning maneuvers.
The gears and clutch felt like a Mahindra Armada. The brake pedal is an gas valve kind of thing and very delicate and even a slight pressure rocked the massive behemoth to a strictly arrested halt. The view from Rear view mirrors are extremely essential and useful as well.
I didn’t mind having to walk back to the highway stopover I had started from, the distance I drove. But missed making them take a video of me, due to their haste.
How does he manage to be on the Highway most of the time?
How can he drive Non-Stop across 12 states?
What is his profession?
Will he help me too, if I call him?
These are some general questions asked regularly on popular online automotive forums nowadays. Many people new to Highway Driving have got introduced to him and have received voluntary assistance from him (that includes me).
HVK by profession is a Chartered Accountant, an Entrepreneur and an advisor to clients like UN. He is also a cross country tourer. As I put it sometimes colloquially, “Major highways like NH3, NH8, NH17 originate from his home itself”. He currently drives a Scorpio 2.6 Litre Diesel which as of Year 2010, has clocked more than 2,00,000 kms and still going strong.
Now HV Kumar may have more than 20 years of experience of driving on Indian Highways, and 1 Million+ Kms of driving experience, but what makes things enthralling is that he is a human GPS.
Such detailed are his video-graphic memories of roads that if one dials him from almost anywhere in India, he can provide directions and route information on the phone by making them spot landmarks and references on the very road one is, irrespective of wherever he is located.
While Thousands of Miles clocked on my odometer, Travelling with HVK – The Baadshah of Indian Highways, would keep on deferring for years. Though he would always be with me on the airwaves and be able to ‘see’ where I am, during my own trips, I finally did a trip with him in January 2010. As they say there is a time for everything.
Many of us, including myself may have done intercity trips and claiming records, but what sets HVK apart is that he is truly a consistent performer. For someone has been more than 20,000 hours at the wheel, there are intricate preparations.
Forget opening the laptop, mere holding onto oneself and the essential gadgets becomes the prime survival challenge here. But then you have the spoils – His Scorpio’s cabin is a Mini Reliance Mart.
So while you munch away fruits, snacks, biscuits and sipping ‘leh berry’ juices to glory, the lifeless luggage items merrily sway to the immense G-Forces from the vehicle’s sharp and calculated turns.
Quite a challenge in itself – The fact that you have to make sure that all of them need to be restored where there were originally placed, every now and then.
Some of my perceptions on how my 6000 km drive with HVK was like.:
There had not been a single moment where we had to do wheel-lock braking.
He never zigs-zags through traffic.
He never decelerates when he has vehicles even remotely behind. How he manages that is his personal skill.
He decelerates much in advance when there is any apparent hurdle/slowdown ahead.
There had not been a single anxious moment when I felt insecure.
He prefers to drive undistracted, without music, GPS ogling etc.
Yes he does take power naps, food on the go and the fuel breaks provide additional forced breaks.
He sticks to the speeds as the roads permit. On an arrow straight empty road like Mumbai Pune Expressway he had touched 150kmph but very gradually. So no over-speeding or aggressive driving.
[Disclaimer: This is purely a personal observation and opinions if any expressed herein are unbiased and not intended to be construed either as a recommendation or being analytical about it. We all drive our own vehicles independently and have our own ways of doing it. There is no such thing as an ultima-perfect driver.]
Conclusion: Contrary to my initial beliefs, the key to his consistency is more due to the fact that he has had a good homework of his route and his minimal breaks.
Southern Avenue with its Boulevard and Rabindra Sarobar Lake is a place unmatched, unchanged, makes one rethink life, and allows one to rewind in its own way of static-ness.
Those trees, their romantic smell and shady lanes gives you a feeling of longing, longing for something you never ever get to know.
Southern Avenue is a lover’s paradise, an adulterous couple’s den, and what better a place can there be with its shady boulevards and niches where couples can cuddle up for hours at a stretch without being noticed.
Rabindra Sarobar Lake is a place for various types of people for various times of the day. While the morning sees majorly old people, the day is followed by school kids and by the time afternoon strikes, the extramaritals creep in. Evenings are for intense lovers and the late nights are prowled un-straights.
There is yet another interesting pattern that throws up on examining in detail how romance progresses geographically. In the 3 sq. km area you graduate from one zone to another as shown in the map.
And the moment you leave that place, you realize you had been in some Garden of Eden.
For some, Southern Avenue is just one of the many posh South Kolkata addresses, for some it is life, but for me Southern Avenue is the ‘Best Place on Earth’.
Every evening around 7pm a car parks on the Sarat Bose Road Boulevard diagonally opposite to Kurry Club and stations there till 10 pm,
causing a roving eye to hundreds of office returnees and a side-vision (not allowing you to notice, that they noticed) of pretty young things, much due to the ambient light of a laptop en-glowing a busy face propped inside, though the low-bass thumps emanating out of the cabin are unable to surpass the hi-frequency street noise outside.
The Ubiquitous people you observe at Southern Avenue are a spectacle.
The interesting fact is, it’s been a Decade doing this.
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