Mahindra: Mumbai and Monroe. Neyveli, too!

For a few months now, on my way to work, I have been intrigued by a billboard, and was waiting for a non-rainy, non-foggy morning for me to pull over and take a photograph.

Finally, today was that day.

It was a pleasant 49 degrees when I left home, with the sun trying its best to break through the cloud cover on the eastern horizon.  It was so pleasant that I drove with the sunroof opened.  (Yes, Ramesh, it was awesome and not cold!)

I spotted the billboard and flipped my vehicle indicator in order to turn into left, into a logging road.  After the turn, as I pulled over away from the road, a couple of trucks fully loaded with timber reached the intersection.  Both the drivers seemed to look intently at me as if they were wondering what I was doing there.

I nodded at them and kept walking.  I am used to that feeling of being the odd man out.  Story of my life!

All for this photograph:

I would never have imagined a billboard for Mahindra so far away from India, along the back roads in the Willamette Valley.  This is perhaps the best example, yet, of how much India has changed, especially over the last two decades.

(Coincidentally, all those rapid economic changes happened in India after I left for the US, which then easily lends itself to my joke that by leaving India and coming to the US, I simultaneously increased the average IQ of both the countries!)

Mahindra's product was an important part of life in Neyveli--the product was not the tractor by the Jeep. Throughout most of my years in Neyveli, because of the projects-centered nature of his work, father always drove to work and back in a Jeep that the company provided for him.

Father was one of those who believed that an official vehicle was for official purposes alone.  I do not recall ever having had a ride in one, during all those seventeen years of my life in Neyveli. So, the second-best option for my brother and me was to sit in the parked vehicle and pretend we were on a drive.  Our throats made sounds of gears being changed and we had quite a few imaginary drives on Neyveli's roads.

And, now, Mahindra is here in Oregon. Selling tractors.

The Doubtful Thomas that I am, I wondered if the billboard stated the truth about Mahindra being the world's largest tractor seller.  The company's website adds details:

We began manufacturing tractors in the early 1960s for the Indian market.  Nearly 50 years later, we are the number one tractor company in the world (by volume) with annual sales above 200,000 and over 2.1 million tractors sold to date.  Our products are making farms more prosperous in more than forty countries on six continents.

What an awesome transformation!

A lot more transformational that anything that can be achieved with a new Pope!