Holidays in a rickety car at a time when nobody had heard of motels, mobiles or GPS

Last Sunday, on Karthigai Deepam, Tamil Nadu’s festival of lights, we decided to go for a drive after dusk, as a grey-blue night prepared to descend and a slightly watery pre-Poornima moon hovered above. We were on the outskirts of Chennai, driving on interior village roads that unspooled lazily along paddy fields and lines of palmyra standing guard. Every hundred metres or so, as we crossed a hamlet, the darkness would be punctured by pinpricks of light from the myriad earthen lamps that flickered outside huts, lined walls and streets, framed kolams or festooned temples. Traversing the soft grey gloaming that festive evening illumined by tiny flames and serenaded by cicadas and frogs was quite magical.

Driving holidays are my favourite. Bundled into a car, your many essentials and must-carries jammed into the back seat, like a tortoise carrying its home, off you head into the unknown. As we…