Inappropriate Behaviour

The monsoons aren’t the time to be driving a sporty convertible, and we found out the hard way.

- Aatish Mishra

IT WAS THE FIRST TIME IN TWO hours that I turned the wipers off. Heavy clouds still hung low in the sky, threatening to ambush us with their fury, but that didn’t stop me. I reached up to the switch above the windscreen and retracted the Mini Cooper S Convertible’s roof. The windows came down, the canvas roof detached itself and within seconds it was folded, and stowed away behind me. There was no way I was going to be cooped up in that Mini (no pun intended) any more. My brain was already frazzled courtesy some brilliant planning by the evo India photography team and I needed to air-cool my bald head. The monsoons are actually a great time to drive a convertible, when it isn’t raining obviously. The tropical sun is hidden away, temperatures are pleasant and the scents floating through the countryside would shame any fancy-ass cologne. Absolutely brilliant, until an approaching car splashes through a puddle and gives you and the interiors a good dousing. Don’t make a liquid-cooled joke, I’ll punch you.

Here’s some context: we planned to drive the Cooper S Convertible at one of our regular shoot locations, but some genius decided it would look great with the Pawna lake in the backdrop. So we set course only to find that the road had been eroded and all that were left were craters that would give the Mars Rover nightmares. Now, the photographers hanging out the back of an SUV trundled through it slowly, but not particularly uncomfortably. Never in my life did I think I would want to be driving an SUV over a Mini Cooper S, the ten-year-old in me would have been horrified at this thought. But then again ten-year-old me wasn’t babying a Mini Cooper S through a minefield while offering silent prayers that the underbody comes out unscathed from every pothole.