Saturday Mornings

Like most other boys I too grew up playing with He-Man and G.I. Joe toys which resulted in many fun Saturday mornings considering the fact that the corresponding cartoons were our staple diet during the pre – cable days of Indian television. Along with these we also had our Hotwheels cars which were pretty awesome when you were’nt yet 10 years old. I spent endless hours directing and enacting exciting car chase sequences with impressive (considering my age) story lines filled with twists and turns with my wonderful cast of Hotwheels cars.

Fast forward a few years and one fine Saturday morning I stumbled upon a telemarketing program on some obscure Australian channel that was somehow getting picked up by my cable operator, which really grabbed my attention. Now I’m as skeptical of these telemarketing shows as the next guy but the reason why I was hooked was because they were selling scale model cars. Which for the uninitiated are replicas of actual cars that have been scaled down to size. The hosts did a pretty commendable job of describing each model in detail and every Saturday morning I used to pull out a calculator to convert the cost of each model which I fancied into Rupees. Not that it was of much help seeing as I was still in school and several years away from earning from first salary. Nonetheless it was my first brush with scale model cars and I continued to watch the show faithfully every Saturday till my cable operator decided to replace the channel.

Fast forward by about a decade and I had built up a small collection of model bikes over the years but it was only after I began working that I started paying attention to the available models in the toy section of each store. I stayed away from cars for quite a while, primarily because my income wasn’t matching my expenditure but eventually I took the plunge and bought my first 1:24 scale model car – the iconic 1967 Ford Mustang GT. And one by one, my collection has slowly grown to the extent that I’ve had to displace some of my books from the shelves of my place only because I prefer keeping the cars (in their original packing) there instead. Saturday mornings were spent experimenting with photography on any new addition to the garage. Bliss.

One brand that I have not been able to lay my hands on was Ferrari and even though they seem to have lost the plot and forgone the option of making achingly beautiful cars, I knew I would eventually add the company to my garage. Recently I picked up my first assembly kit for the gorgeous Ferrari 430 and spent a thoroughly enjoyable hour today morning putting it together and then photographing it. And I have another one which I need to assemble next weekend – the Pininfarina designed Enzo Ferrari. I also have set my eyes on the assembly kit of the Ferrari 360 Modena, which I hope to pick up in silver.

In fact the only thing better than photographing the cars in your garage is putting them together and then photographing them. No wonder I love Saturday mornings!