Learning to ride a gearless two wheeler was easy-peasy; I’d learnt to cycle as a child the hard way — that is, by falling off — and graduating to a motorized two wheeler, albeit a somewhat heavy and bulky one (Kinetic Honda), was (literally) fairly painless.
Getting to grips with manual gears in the car was a different story.
My parents – mostly my mother – taught me car driving, and this was a good thing because after the first several “lessons” I kept on learning over a period of months. Surprisingly, there were no clashes of ego in learning driving from my mom. She was – surprisingly for her – quite patient with my numerous innovative attempts to stall the car at high speeds and low, high gears and low, high roads and low.
My dad’s contribution was also valuable, because, me being the questioning sort, he had the technical knowledge to convincingly fend off most of my queries. In those days, Fiats and Ambassadors ruled the Indian roads, and if you’d been driving for any length of time, you invariably became more familiar what was under the hood than what was behind the wheel. My father had taken the inevitable a step further by buying a couple of very technical, and, in those days, pretty expensive and advanced books on automobile engineering. One of these – the simplest – I actually studied for a few days and acquired some basic understanding of how cars work. It was very interesting.
In those days we were in Chandigarh, which was in many ways an ideal place to learn driving. There wasn’t much traffic back then, and there was always enough parking space, so you didn’t have to struggle with terrors like reverse parallel parking. Later we moved to Delhi, and this was fun too, because on Delhi roads you could really go fast! In Delhi, when I used to zip from one end of the city to the other, through heat, cold, sleet and rain, I loved driving, both car and two-wheeler.
Things changed after we moved to Bangalore. One day I was taking Amit on my two-wheeler – my red Kinie which had been shipped down all the way from Delhi – on CMH Road. Even eight years ago, CMH road was crowded like hell. I wasn’t used to taking Amit pillion and hadn’t quite realized what a difference his weight made to the pick up and braking of my trusty Kinie. I tried something foolish – overtaking a bus in the face of an oncoming bus – and got into quite a tight spot. First, my bike didn’t have the pick-up I’d expected, and, when I realized that I couldn’t complete the maneouvre in time, I braked and almost panicked to find my bike not slowing down as fast as I’d expected.
Well, we escaped that situation alive, but Amit, whose faith in two-wheelers had been shaky at best, completely lost faith in my biking skills. This alone might not have made much difference to anything except for the two cars that I wrecked a little later.
The first wreck was in the US. It was the weekend after I’d passed my driving test and got my American licence and we were driving from Chicago to St Louis (I think). Amit, against his better judgment, allowed me to drive on the highway and it was a decision we both regretted shortly thereafter, when I managed to flip the car 360 degrees in the air and land us on the meridian… right side up thankfully, and without breaking anything except the car. That little experience in a lovely rented red Pontiac Grand Prix cost us only $70 in penalties (violating the meridian!) but I was a nervous wreck for days, maybe weeks afterwards. I never drove in the US again and even when I sat next to Amit in the car, I sometimes had to bite my tongue to stop myself from screaming out loud.
In that accident, we were very, very lucky to walk away without a scratch.
When we came back to India, I started driving again, but the next accident in Bangalore in our 15-year-old Fiat was not far down the road. That one, again mercifully without any injury, resulted in repair costs that exceeded the value of the car, and consequently cost us the price of a new car.
With two wrecks on my conscience, I was absolutely loath to drive the new car and for many years I hardly drove. I had also stopped taking Amit on my bike (which had been downgraded to a Scooty and could hardly handle his weight anyway). But I continued to enjoy two-wheeler riding and eventually worked up the courage to upgrade my 75 cc Scooty to a full-fledged 150 cc five-gear motorcycle, which had been my secret dream for more than a decade.
Along the way, I tried to overcome my – I can’t say fear, but perhaps lack of confidence is a better term – of car driving a few times by forcing myself to drive more often, but it never worked. I was always super-sensitive to Amit’s comments and I only enjoyed driving alone and on empty roads – and where, pray, do you find those in Bangalore?
Inexplicably, of late I have begun enjoy driving the car again. The roads are as crowded as ever – yet, I feel now that I want to drive and that I am a capable driver. Could it be that the lack of confidence that has been with me for eight years is now starting to wear off? Maybe it’s just that the car is old enough now, that I won’t feel so horribly guilty if I get a few scrapes and scratches on it? Maybe, most likely, it’s that I see a lot of my friends beginning to drive and that makes me want to join the club. Whatever it is, I’m happy about it, and I guess so is Amit as he can sometimes take off his Chauffeur’s cap and snooze in the passenger seat. Just hope this feeling lasts (and so does the car).
