Delhi's car owners and their fascination with weird bumper stickers

Bumper stickers! The next time you are driving, slow down from your maddening speed and take a couple of moments to look around you. While you are welcome to stop and smell the roses, let me draw your attention to the cars that zip past you with the man, or the woman, staring at you and snarling away to glory, while you take it a bit easy.
A word of advice: if you have a bumper sticker on your car or have something written on it, stop reading right here.
Now, for all those still reading, on to the subject at hand: bumper stickers.
Bumper stickers originated sometime in the 1940s soon after the first cars were put out in the public market. The first known bumper stickers used as advertisements were for Rock City and the stickers usually covered most of the bumper.
Today the stickers are used for many things, anything from religious to humour to endorsing a candidate in an election in the US. The UN even recognises them as labels to identify the origin of cars that cross borders quite frequently.
Now, with globalisation and the opening up of the Indian economy came fancy cars. Where you only saw a BMW in a western movie earlier, you now see them a dime-a-dozen on the road. Along with these cars came the concept of bumper stickers.
And like all things Indian we decided to add a twist to the whole concept and make it our own in our own twisted way.
So, instead of bumper stickers what we have now are rear windshield stickers. Bumper stickers were meant to mean something. In this light, take a look at some of the bumper stickers around you.
What does the sticker, “Dad’s gift” or “Mom’s gift” on the car’s rear windshield say about the owner of the car? That he are a total jerk who pestered his dad or mom to buy him the car even though all he deserves is a kick up backside? Or, that the driver’s mom and dad have spoiled him so much that they wanted him to have a car and he, in order to show his gratitude or love towards them, got said sticker pasted on his car?
Think about this one: “Down payment by mom, EMI by wife, Enjoyed by me.” So, basically, the driver’s mom and wife are rich, while he is just a poor driver, is that what he are trying to say?
Here's another one: “No girlfriend, no tension”. What it actually means is that the driver of the car is a loser and doesn’t have a girlfriend and isn’t getting any action, while the rest of his gang or comrades or acquaintances are living it up.
A similar one to go with this is “Us bewafa ki yaad”. Dude, she dumped you or cheated on you, deal with it, don’t announce it to the world. Anyway, there are other fish in the world, so what if one got away?
A slightly arrogant one that announces the driver’s virility and high libido where it was supposed to mean something else goes like this: “Loins of Haryana”. Does this mean that the Innova on which it was spotted is the driver’s “loin” (if yes, then well, that’s one jumbo-sized set of loins) or was the word entirely misspelled from “lions” to “loins”. I’ll go with the misspelling.


Here are a couple of similar stickers:

• “Loss of money, Out of mind, Vaste of money, End of life”
• “I hait girls” (yup, those are the spellings, written in a flaming yellow font, of hate on the car)
• “Love is sweet possion” (Should have been poison, unless he meant potion).

Let’s move beyond statements of love and such and take a look at some of the other in-your-face kinds of decorative statements.
Among Delhi’s youth, there are a couple of benchmarks that identify you as an “arrived dude”:
a) The number of girls you’ve slept with or are dating or have “pataoed” (whether you’ve been dumped by all of them or discarded like a used sanitary pad by one or more of them is something else altogether, we’ve already been there; read above), and
b) How much alcohol you can hold.
From the second benchmark comes the sticker, “Jatt risky when tipsy”. I ask you, are Jatts, no offence to them, a separate breed of human beings? Isn’t everyone risky when tipsy? Or does it mean that anyone who is tipsy, by dint of being tipsy, is a Jatt? But then again, when you spot stickers like “Jatt Boyz” splashed across the back of a car, you do tend to wonder, “What is it with these guys? Does being a Jatt automatically make you something different? I mean are they supposed to be a better class of people, better built, better everything?” If you get the answer, let me know.
And then there’s the very, very cryptic, “It’s me” with a black hooded figure pointing its fingers at the shrouded figure’s face staring back at you from the back of the car in front of you. You wonder “Kaun hai yaar ye”, don’t you? Next time, see if you can come parallel to the driver, roll down the window and say, “Hi, Me”. Though, I doubt the driver would understand what you are hinting at, but at least you’ll have made a new friend and his name will be so easy to remember: “Me”.
Another thing I don’t get is, ok, you’ve got yourself a fancy SUV or whatever, why, after having got that fancy ride and having got it registered in Delhi or the NCR, would you want to paste on a number plate of some car in California or some other US region? Is that the licence plate number of your car in the US or wherever you were before returning to Bharat Mata? More likely, it is a copy of the licence plate of the sedan your tayi’s chachi’s son’s bhua’s beta’s nephew is driving out there, while you are so proudly sporting it here on your car.

I can just imagine the conversation you must have had with the relative abroad:
You: “Tinku, teri gaddi da number ki hai?”
Tinku (a little offended at the use of the familiar name): “What’s it to you, man?”
You: “O das na, yaar. How number plates look there, I want to know.”
Tinku (fidgeting on other end of phone): “I’ll mail you a pic of my car’s licence plate.”
You: “O nai Tinku, tere lasens di nai, number plate di photo bhej.”
Tinku (looking exasperatedly at the phone): “The number plate is the licence plate.”
You: “O yaar, tussi bade advance ho. Number plate te lasens ik hi hai?”
Tinku: “Yeah, nice talking to you to, bye.”

A couple of days later, you check your email and find a mail from Tinku with the photo of the “lasens plate” (his mom got him to send it).
You (addressing your son): “Oye, Pappi, aa photo di lasens plate banwa leya."
 Next day, you take your car out with a flourish, drive over the neighbour’s plants in his outdoor, street-side garden while you are reversing and put an extra coat of polish on the licence plate so that it shines. If you had your way you would have put huge signs directing everyone’s attention to your car’s newly acquired “lasens plate”.

And by the way, if you didn't have this conversation, good for you, but you still have the US number plate on your car, or don't you?

Here’s a list of some of the more memorable stickers:

1. Beer is cheaper than petrol. Drink, don’t drive (Sound advice, I would say)
2. Hell was full, so I came back
3. God is relly busy, May I halp you? (No, thank you, I can ruin my day perfectly without your help!)
4. Horn broke, watch for finger (Cocky!)
5. “Amli jatt” (Another Jatt quality, I suppose)
6. Nobody remains virgin life fucks everyone. (Never a truer word was said)
7. I am the best! (don’t even dare question or argue that)
8. My brother is in the army (Oh, great. Is this another way of saying you can score cheap booze from the army canteen to impress your lazy ass friends and show off to that girl you’ve been trying to patao for the last three years with her not giving you enough ghas?)
9. It’s my Grandpa’s road (Baap ki nahi to kya hua, dada ki to hai!)
10.  On my way to work... PLEASE KILL ME (umm, no, we won’t. If we suffer, you also suffer)
11.  Mum to be on board (with two cute prams beside the middle line) (Good luck to you)
12.  Princess on board/baby on board (this one is usually spotted soon after #11 and the car invariably has a middle-aged old man behind the wheel. Maybe he’s called “baby”, I don’t even want to guess about the princess bit.)
13.  Wife and dog missing... reward for dog. (think what you will, but am sure, the guy isn’t married)
14.  Toyota/Ferrari/Lamborghini decals on Tata Indica
15.  Car sickness is the feeling you get when the monthly payment is due
16.  On a Mahindra Renault driven by an old man—“Dad says, puttar no aashiqui”
17.  My day is not complete until I’ve terrified a complete stranger (written in one of those horror-type fonts)
18.  You may be rich, but I am single
19.  On a Reva, “Emission impossible” (You rock, dude!)
20.  Love is trash, girls need cash (reminds me of Agent Smith’s dialogue in Matrix “Only the human mind could have created something as insipid as love.”)
21.  Chal Rani, dhande ka time hai (this was behind a truck, but makes you wonder, no?!)
22.  Loose wait, don’t wait (yeah, those were the spellings for lose)
23.  Girls are looking smarty, but heart is very dirty
24.  Girls R injurious 2 health
25.  My other ride is ur mom (Seriously, dude, you’ve got issues, do/talk to your mom)
26.  Maaf karna, kad zara lamba hai (behind a car carrier in Gurgaon)
27.  Horny ok please (had too much Viagra or didn’t get any action at all?)
28. Wail for side(!!)

Last but not the least (these were spotted behind Maruti vans being plied as taxis: “Black Perl” and “Captn Jacks Pairo” or the absolutely inimitable “Gems Band” (put it in the comments if you figure that last one out).
If I missed out some of the more interesting ones, put them in the comments.