On December 14, 1983, Indian Airlines employee Harpal Singh received the keys to a white Maruti-800 from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and became the first owner of India’s best known car. The newspapers did not know that this was in fact the second Maruti, because the first – a red Maruti-800 – had been secretly delivered to Lucky Dhamija, a shopkeeper in South Delhi. पहली पहली मारुति (The Very First Maruti) is the hilarious story of that secret first Maruti, which landed like a meteorite in a government colony, awed the children, office-goers, sweepers and pandits around it, and upturned the life of a grandmother with creeping dementia.
