And there I was back on the road, albeit briefly, a somewhat wizened old lady, sallow and rickety with the lack of care. But I managed to trundle around town. But with Kenizé going back to Paris soon after, I was back in the garage.
Finally, in 1967 it was resurrection time for me. Muzaffar Ali, the eldest of the raja’s three sons, heard that the Statesman newspaper was planning on organizing a vintage car rally in Lucknow, like the ones they were holding in Delhi and Calcutta. And Muzaffar thought that an old gal like me still had enough spunk to impress people.
So he brought along some mechanics and helpers to Kotwara, and had me towed all the way to Lucknow. In Lucknow, the operation began to get me back on my feet, and I must say that they did a good job. in 25 days I was ready for action and none too worse for wear at the start of the rally. I got my long legs stretching again and lo and behold, there I was, cruising at 110kph! By the end of the day my new friend, Muzaffar, was a happy young man: we had won the

trophy for the Best Performance and Maintenance for a vintage car made before December 31, 1930! True, I was 38 years old already – not a nubile young thing any longer – but I was still very healthy. I had travelled just 19,000km in all these years, not counting the boat ride i’d made from Scotland to India. and though many photos of mine were taken, one really nice one was by a 12-year-old enthusiast called Debashish Chakravarti.
Now it was Muzaffar who was my guardian. The raja was happy to see me back on the road but was more engrossed in his social and civic activities: he was at that point the State Welfare Commissioner of UP and on February 4, 1968 he presided over an all India Shia Political Conference in Lucknow.
Muzaffar then took me to Delhi in March 1970 to participate in The Statesman rally there. After that I was sent off to Calcutta where I spent the next two years of my life in the garage of Tom Roy, another scion of a royal family, that of Santosh, a princely state that is now in Bangladesh. There I had

some very interesting and classy garagemates and I must say that that was the first time I realized that there were other elegant ladies from yesteryear just like me out there in the wide world.
In 1972, Muzaffar had to let me go. And I don’t blame him: I was getting on in age, a little cranky, a little cantankerous, and like many middle -aged ladies of standing, somewhat high maintenance. And Muzaffar had to get on with his life – he couldn’t quite mollycoddle me forever, could he? Six years later his first film Gaman would be out, establishing him as one of India’s finest moviemakers.
A Brit called Ian Mcroberts became my new guardian. I was back on a ship, heading back to good ole Blighty four decades after I had left its shores. Soon after I arrived I found myself settled into a garage in Hellingly, East Sussex, with quite a few other upper crust automobiles. My new guardian was a certain Peter Grant. Peter was very different to the men – and women – i’d