It is the kind of moment people wait a lifetime for. As I sit in the driver’s seat and stare over the hood right into the eye of the famed three-pointed star, I wonder where the sense of heightened excitement is. Why are my sweat glands hibernating when they should be working overtime to create beads of sweat on my forehead? Why are my adrenaline producers shaming me by putting up this public display of their depressing impotency? Where is the customary lump in the throat? The mandatory quickening pulse?

It is a white Mercedes-Benz E-class that costs in excess of Rs 40 lakh. Note that I eschew quoting an exact price. In the segment we are talking about, it is unfashionable – even insulting – to speak in terms of ‘rupees’. The ‘Least Count’ that buyers in this segment can identify with is ‘Ten lakhs’. On the same lines, whether the car produces 280bhp or 300, whether it does 0-100 in the elevty-fourth xrillionth of a second or three-twelveteenth fraction of a moment is a matter of scarce consequence. Honestly, even trying to find out whether this super-luxury barge is an E240 or an E280 would prove futile, because apart from a tiny difference in badges on the boot, you would not be able to make out. I wasn’t. Well, for the record, this one is an E280. Petrol or diesel, then? And with a Mercedes-Benz, does even that matter? Anyway, a petrol it is.

I am trying to squeeze myself rather clumsily into the elegant leather-crafted driver’s seat. Some debut this is starting off to be. I realise – in good time, of course – that the seat has a few zillion adjustments that can allow every crest and trough of the body to fit snugly into the seat. All of the settings, mind you, are electric, lest you waste your million-dollar-a-minute time trying to figure out which lever on the seat will adjust what. Thirty seconds into the activity, though, and I figure (with much chagrin) that I can’t seem to make up my mind with respect to the precise seat height I want, to go with the exact degree of under-thigh support, to match with just the right amount of lumbar cushion. Confusing already? I haven’t even spoken about how the addition of three more parameters can increase the number of possibilities exponentially. Anyway, after playing around with the switches for a while (and pretending that I can really differentiate between the levels of comfort different settings offer), I reckon it has been quite a while. I cannot allow my debut to sink in never-ending permutations of what the Merc’s magic seat can do. There surely is much more to the car. Or is there?

Time to lift off. Snick the characterless auto-stick into ‘D’, and floor the accelerator pedal. Good night, then. I am almost lapsing into an afternoon siesta; this car is b****y driving itself. On a ramrod straight section of the expressway, I stare at the needles rather desolately. 140-160-180-200 ticks the speedometer with barely a care in the world for the laws of physics or aerodynamics. The tacho needle swings to 6500, swings back rapidly to 3000, and begins its cold, clinical climb back to its peak – 6500. Inside, it is all so insanely insulated, it is like travelling in a time machine. Wind noise, tyre noise and other noises are reduced to mere concepts in textbooks; the sad part is that you can’t even hear the engine note. It’s a different world inside – eerily quiet, queerly disconnected; much like a video game being played in an airtight room at the top of the Himalayas. Not a single vibe transmits through any body part that is in contact with the car, and that only heightens the feeling of numbness that is only just starting to take over my entire body. Suddenly I am not dejected with the abject unresponsiveness of any of my senses. Come to think of it, this is so undeserving in any case.

Two hundred kilometres an hour, then, is reduced to a mere statistic. One of those things you can brag about at the all-guy pyjama parties. So while the entire gang looks up to you with almost-idolising admiration, your conscience nibbles away at the very heart of your er…heart. Because deep inside, you know that even a novice 18-year old – even George W Bush – can go faster than 200km/h on a straight road in a powerful, self-propelling Merc.

My twenty-minute ‘intimate’ interaction with the E280 is coming to an end. There is no drum roll crescendo to mark the culmination of an especially significant event. Well, by now, I am not expecting any at all. If one were to ever try making love to a pillow, it would be quite a lot like driving the E280. In many ways, then, I am somewhat glad that precious adrenaline was not wasted over a pointless drive, which will forever remain a mere milestone in my automotive life; a milestone devoid of all emotion whatsoever.

As the Merc coasts to an eventless stop, my colleagues rush towards me, expecting to find a three-pointed-starry eyed Jayesh staring dreamily into emptiness. Instead they find a Jayesh with a weird expression on his face. Significantly, he has nothing to say. And that does not happen very often. Well Sirs, it took me a while to collect my thoughts; but now that I have, I am having a tough time controlling the flow of words. So what really is new?

‘Two hundred kilometres an hour’ is new, and it has the potential to radically alter one’s subconscious perception of speed. That speed, even if travelled at, for a meagre ten minutes skews one’s perspectives beyond recognition. I step out of the ‘hallowed’ Merc into a diesel-engined Innova, and trust me, it takes me more than a few minutes to get my bearings in place. In the ten minutes that I travelled at 200km/h, my mind had already made changes to what I perceived as ‘speed’. Without my knowledge. Consequently, driving the Innova flat out in fifth gear turns into a restless experience. I keep trying to figure out what is wrong with the car. Why won’t it go ‘fast’? One glance at the speedo – with the needle refusing to budge beyond the 150 mark – and it strikes me that this is just about as fast as the Innova will go. Outside, the entire world seems to be moving in an extended, all-pervasive, real-life slowmo. Words can never express how thoroughly numbing the entire experience feels. With the sensation of speed metamorphosed so rapidly, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how fast I am going just by looking at the scenery whizzing past backwards. After a couple of significantly scary misjudgements with the speed – cornering at close to 120km/h in the Innova – I resolve to keep a close watch on the speedo to re-tune my mind to come back to its senses.

My mind drifts to my sixteen-year old Maruti 800. All of thirty-seven horses, and yet the most thrilling, the most scintillating, the most memorable and the most enjoyable drives. When you have only 796cc and thirty-seven horses at your disposal, every cubic centimetre and every horse counts. Each one plays a role equally significant; as opposed to an army of a few hundred steeds fighting with each other so bitterly that it has to be kept under wraps of expensive insulation.

It is not about a hundred horses, or even about a thousand. It is about the experience, the joy of communicating with a car that wants to get you familiar with her innards, rather than ruthlessly insulate everything. It is not about how quick you can accelerate, or even about how fast you can go. It is about how wide your grin is at the end of the drive. It is that feeling for the car. It is that raw emotion between man and machine; the emotion that logic is so thoroughly incapable of describing. Suddenly, I miss my 800 a lot; much, much more than I have in a very long time.

It is a white Maruti 800 that is, sadly, worth a few thousand rupees. But deep inside, I know exactly what I would choose, given a choice between a white Maruti 800 and a white Mercedes-Benz E280. Every. Single. Time.

Picture courtesy Kunal Khadse