You really don’t look 34” is the first thing we say to Mavrick Cardoz when we meet him outside his apartment building in Mumbai. He laughs it off, explaining that he gets that a lot. “I really am 34, though,” he says. “You can check out my licence if you want!”
Mavrick is a tour leader for European tours. He is the guy who handles a busload of Indian tourists who have purchased a package tour for Europe and the guy who will stand at the head of the aisle, mouthing off a spiel about some monument they have just passed. As you might expect, Mavrick spends a lot of time on the road (not driving, though). He is out of the country, leading tours, for most of any given year. In fact, there are times when he has led five-six tours back to back, and not come back home at all in the interim.
The last year had been particularly busy. His tour company merged with another one, increasing the influx of new customers much more than the influx of new tour leaders. He has been in Europe for 16 months straight, with barely a few days to spare between consecutive tours. Oh, being from Goa, this extremely fast-paced lifestyle did not suit Mavrick well.
He was all set to return to India, when he came across the Nissan Terrano Bridging Distances post on his Facebook feed. He was to go to Mumbai first thing when he landed in India, finish off all his accounting at the company’s office and then, finally, go back to the tranquillity of his home in Goa. He wanted to make it back in time for his parents’ anniversary. They were completing 30 years of togetherness, and Mavrick really wanted to be there for that.
But to make that journey by car –that would be splendid, he thought. Mavrick has been a bit of a car nut ever since he was a little boy, and driving was one of his sweet pleasures in life. He hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car in all of the 16 months he had just spent in Europe, and we understood his agony. When he saw the Terrano, he immediately jumped in the driver’s seat.
