HUSTLE AND BUSTLE Navigating a crowded street in India

By Leow Ju-Len in Kolkata, India

IN INDIA, I’VE discovered, the people have it rough while the cows have it easy, whereas it’s the other way round in the developed world.

And so these happy bovines lope aimlessly around, fully aware that surrounding drivers would rather steer into a ditch, or each other, than smack into one of their sacred flanks.

Hence their tendency to munch on the grass alongside the highways, then decide that it’s greener on the other side and step out right in front of you to cross over for a taste. Not the best thing for your heart, if you happen to be barreling along at well over 200km/h in a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti.

I can tell you that much from first-hand experience, having been in the driving seat of a 612 from the coastal town of Vishakapthnam all the way to Kolkatta, with roughly the distance between Singapore and Hatyai between the two, diverting towards a holy city or temple or ten along the way.

Ferrari is currently on a mission to spread a little scarlet fever around the Indian subcontinent, where it doesn’t yet have an official importer, and as a result there are two Scagliettis making their way around an 11,000km loop of the country.

The cars were flagged off from Mumbai in late February and should arrive back there after a 70-day journey, if Indian traffic and road conditions don’t destroy them first.

Proving that two of Ferrari’s flagship grand tourers could survive such a journey is another reason for the Magic India Discovery tour, as the event’s called.

“It gives us the chance to test the car in very particular circumstances,” said Andrea Constantini, a development engineer who looks a bit like an Italian Daniel-Day Lewis, when I asked him about the purpose of the drive. “Italian roads may not be the best in the world but, compared to this…”

At that, he nodded at the road ahead of us, relying on the obviously shabby quality of the tarmac we were on to make his point for him.

“Everybody knows Ferraris are fast,” he added. “But if the cars can be driven here, they can be driven anywhere.”

I’ll be the first to vouch for that. There were roads I wouldn’t have wanted to drive a Land Rover over, with potholes that would have tripped an elephant, and speed bumps that would have fended off invading Mongol hordes.

Some roads just looked like someone scrambled a plane and dropped bombs all over the place, just for the heck of it.

The Scagliettis, I have to say, took it all in their stride. Apart from a scrape or two as we tiptoed diagonally across the taller obstacles, they held together superbly and offered surprisingly pleasant surroundings for days and days of driving and sightseeing.

It’s not as if a Scaglietti is a bad place to spend plenty of time in to begin with, mind you. It’s properly spacious, and even if you spend an hour or so in the back seat you’re unlikely to need ayurvedic help from a yoga centre afterwards.

The sound system comes with its own harddisk for storing music, and even if you exhaust the supply of tunes, you’re still in a Ferrari. Which means that the 5.7-litre engine yowls in a way that gives your spine a good twanging when you tap into its 540-strong corral of horses.

When you’re cruising along the Scaglietti’s engine emits an ever-present but nicely subdued thrum, and it’s even quite soothing hearing the voices of those 12 cylinders, humming away in the background.

So on most days, I emerged from the Ferrari as fresh as newly-clipped flower.

While the Ferrari itself tends to look after you, the traffic conditions put your senses on high alert for every second that you’re behind the wheel.

The main rule in India seems to be that there are no rules, so you swiftly find yourself on a collision course with anything that moves.

What would seem like a two-lane road to you and me, in reality has an infinite number of lanes for Indian road users, as bicycles, rickshaws, motorcycles, bullock carts, heavy vehicles and cars funnel their way past each other, each one moving at a pace which suggests that its driver had just found out that his house was on fire.

Right in the middle of this surging, multidirectional chaos, you’ll find people, goats, chickens, and of course, cows who either sit around calmly or pretend that they’re strolling along a meadow.

And when a dangerously overloaded bus with a bent chassis breaks away from the pandemonium to crab its way into a head-on smash with you, you’re just grateful to the 33 million or so Hindu gods who live in India for the sharp steering response of a 612 Scaglietti.

As you’d expect, threading your way through the throbbing madness of urban Indian traffic in a Ferrari, while trying desperately not to alter its styling isn’t great for your nerves. But in a Karmically-balanced sort of way that’s just wonderful, Indian roads do offer the odd sight to melt the tension away.

Like motorcyclists who ride on the highways tucked under umbrellas to shelter themselves from the pelting rain, for instance.

Or like the scene I saw one morning when I looked out of the window to see two hefty bulls bang heads with enough force to produce an almighty crash that I could hear from inside the Ferrari’s cabin.

One of the squabbling beasts came off the worse from the encounter, and promptly fell over backwards to flatten a row of parked motorcycles (and immediately raise the question of whether insurance companies in India cover ‘act of gods’).

From where I sat it looked hilarious, but it eventually dawned on me that a Ferrari painted red was perhaps not the best thing to be in around an enraged bull, snorting loudly and thumping a hoof on the road not five metres away from the Scaglietti.

Thankfully, a touch of the throttle propelled us to safety with typical Ferrari alacrity. Cows may be sacred in India, but spend plenty of time in a 612 Scaglietti as I did, and it’s impossible to come away without worshiping the prancing horse instead.