The Drive to Drive

Yesterday, as I was driving in pouring rain and unusually heavy traffic, I was mentally running through different ideas for a blog post. Usually, I end up writing about some recent event that has triggered a reaction in me - positive, negative, amusing, nostalgic, thought-provoking or just plain irritating. The last category has been more than ordinarily represented in my mind in the immediate past but I was finding it difficult to motivate myself to vent my feelings. Doing that sometimes ends up adding to the aggravation. As I drove on with no ideas emerging, some guy abruptly cut into my lane and forced me to hit the brakes hard. I just about avoided scraping his car but that reminded me of various experiences I have had as a driver.

I learnt driving as an eighteen-year-old in an Ambassador car. I never went through any form of military training but trying to maneuver that vehicle was probably no different from driving a tank. There was obviously no concept of power-steering in those days and the big, heavy car had a very wide turning radius. Getting my father's permission to drive on my own was a huge challenge. On one occasion, I managed to convince him and went off to see a movie. On my way back home, in the free-for-all lane-less roads of Bombay, I happened to scrape the right side of a taxi with my front left bumper. We pulled our vehicles over to the side and talked about how to deal with the situation. I had very little money on me but my house was not far away and the taxi-driver agreed to follow me home to discuss compensation with my father. In my nervousness, I ended up in the wrong lane and was forced to take a turn I did not have to. The cabbie thought I was trying to escape from him and immediately went into James Bond mode. He moved from behind me to overtake and swerved in front of me to force me to stop. My reactions weren't the fastest and the right side of my front bumper scraped the left side of his taxi. Just for symmetry. My dad eventually sorted things out and I guess there were more scars left on that cab than in my memory.

Though my parents were based in Delhi for nearly four years, I only visited that place on holidays and never spent more than two or three weeks at a stretch over there. On one such visit, I had to attend the wedding of a friend. I took my father's Ambassador and set off on unfamiliar roads to find my pal's home from where the baraat was to proceed. Unlike South Indian weddings where the muhurtham can happen as early as 6.17 a.m. and 'lunch' is served by 9 a.m., North Indian weddings usually take place at night. After navigating through the dimly lit by-lanes of Delhi, I finally got to my destination. The house had an L-shaped drive-way and I knew I was at the right place when I turned the corner of the L and saw a flower-bedecked car parked in front of me.

I joined my buddy and a few others for some pre-baraat ceremonies and, finally, the time came for the procession to begin. The only minor hitch was that my car had to make way for the groom's vehicle. And getting the old Amby to back away and go past the corner of the L was a serious struggle. It required several back-and-forth iterations and my progress was closely watched by initially anxious and progressively more irritated baraati onlookers. The groom's brother was agitated and asked me to hurry up. I offered to let him take over the steering wheel if he thought he could do it any faster but he declined. With each passing minute, an assortment of visions passed through my mind. A worried bride waiting at the hall. Many heavily moustachioed men, each wearing a flowing pink pagdi, pacing nervously up and down. A fussy pundit intoning, "Muhurat nikla ja raha hai". More pacing. An ominous voice making the dreaded pronouncement, "Ab yeh shaadi nahin ho sakti". The moustaches getting into a heated argument on whose pagdi could stay on and whose had to come off. Guns being drawn. Shots being fired. Someone finally remembering to ask, "Kidhar hai voh $@£@ Madrasi"? And a lynching mob converging on me. Luckily, I managed to turn the corner and catastrophe was averted.

I don't think I ever drove an Ambassador after that.

On another occasion, I was driving back to Bombay after a weekend out of town with some friends and gently nudged a cow while passing through a village. The creature collapsed to the ground and I was left wondering if it was trained to perform that act because our vehicle was immediately surrounded by a group of irate villagers. Fortunately, the cow got up quickly enough, dusted herself with her tail, and walked away with no apparent injury to anything other than her dignity.

I have fallen victim to the trick perpetrated by con-men near Mahim where some kid slides under your car and pulls out the connection of the fuel pipe to the engine when your car is stopped in traffic. You don't know what has happened but find that your car has suddenly stalled. A few goons then materialize out of nowhere and offer to fix it and charge you a Wall Street CEO's bonus for the service. I have narrowly escaped being the victim of road rage in Bahrain when a crazed thug threatened to beat me up with a baseball bat for cutting him off. And I have been involved in a fender-bender when on holiday in Europe because I momentarily forgot to keep my car on the right (literally) side of the road.

By and large, Singapore is still a safe and disciplined place to drive. But traffic has increased substantially in the nine years that I have been here and the strains are showing. That's why I am quite happy to take public transport whenever possible. That way I can think more peacefully about the various irritants about which I may want to blog.