Driving Woes

Driving a vehicle comes naturally to some people.These select few can drive them all .Be it a a bicycle, unicycle , motor cycle , car , lorry , or tanker. Legend has it that they are the direct descendants of the Lord Suzukeshwara Maruthi , the Multi-Religional god of speed. They even go so far as to claim "when you've driven one , you can drive them all".  This talent is hereditary,  perhaps . But one can't be too sure ,  as these "genes" that are purportedly responsible for all matters hereditary ,  choose to show up or not show up in a given generation ,  based on patterns that are not easily predictable. According to studies by chaps who are curious about such rummy things ,  color blindness , a relatively mild genetic disorder can skip a generation . But it seems they didn't find time (read didn't give a rat's backside) to find out whether or not driving skills or the lack of it , can be passed on through genes. Going by my experience with genes and driving, the two seem to have no relation whatsoever. I have turned out to be the black sheep of the family . And its not for scarcity of this talent in the bloodline, there's plenty. Just none left to be "passed on" to me apparently.

Three years back, my father bought his first ever car and we were thrilled. But none of us knew how to even start a car , let alone drive one.We did take lessons at a driving school , but anyone who has been to one of these "schools" will tell you that its a bit of a waste of time and money. All i learnt there was that the 1st gear comes first , the 2nd gear comes next and so on till the 4th gear. Mind you i was completely surprised when i found out there is a 5th one as well.The real reason driving schools are still in business, is that they can get you a driver's license for most vehicles without you having to actually take the trouble to learn how to drive it. Provided you are willing to pay an exorbitantly "small" fee of course.  So for my car driver's license test , all i had to do was get in the car and act like i owned it. Needless to add, i passed it.

A cousin of mine, who is quite the formula one star of the family and probably is a descendant of aforementioned Lord , kindly offered to tutor me in this seemingly arcane skill. So armed with a thoroughly undeserved license and a desperation to master the four wheels , we would set out every evening with the car .Starting the car was quite easy , as all you had to do , was turn the key, but getting it to move even an inch , was a whole other story. Sometimes i would feel like it would be easier to just push the damned thing from behind. Especially when the traffic signal has just turned green and i am right in the middle of the road , blocking everyone's way and unable to go forward , because my feet did not treat the clutch with the required amount of delicacy. All the other people on the road waiting to race off at the green signal would make it a point to stop and yell at me on their way. Things like "Are you blind ?Can't you can't see it's green?", "What made you think you can come to the road?" , "Where have you left your brain?"  etc accompanied by the choicest expletives. Most of my fellow frustrated citizens wouldn't realize that its a girl behind the wheel and would inform me what they thought of my driving , assuming that i am a guy. At this point , i would like to add that it has become a common tendency (among Tamilians atleast) to assume that its always a man behind the wheel. The most commonly exclaimed sentence  when one sees a speeding vehicle is "Eppidi poran paaru!!"  or "See HOW he goes!!" . Nobody seems to bother to ascertain the gender of the driver.  However ,that is a topic that will be dealt with  in detail , in a future post perhaps. So after several driving sessions , with several more annoyed citizens on the road  and tremendous encouragement from the endlessly patient soul who was my teacher, i could finally take off with reasonable timing at a green signal.

Now i would like to take a moment here to explain a delightful term called "brain freeze". It actually means having a head ache from eating an ice cream or anything cold too quickly . But this wonderful phrase has another colloquial usage that describes a very unique sensation. When one is having a brain freeze , one's brain freezes or quite simply , refuses to work , as though someone(God?) suddenly decided to transport said organ to a virtual cold storage facility. So quite inconveniently , it becomes unavailable. This has happened to me twice so far . The first time was at college , while walking back to hostel after class with a friend. We encountered a cow who was quite mad and in a big hurry to get somewhere.(Yes there is a cowshed inside the college campus) She looked quite ferocious with her long horns and she didn't seem to notice or care that there were two girls in her way. That's when i had the brain freeze. My friend stepped aside assuming that i would join her. Instead i stood rooted to the spot , staring straight ahead at the menacing cow which was fast approaching and seemingly growing in size. In the nick of time , my friend managed to pull me aside and saved me from being knocked down like a bowling pin.

The second time this happened is more relevant to the topic of this blog post. I had become a bit more confident at the wheel now and my cousin decided that it was time for me to drive on a flyover.
Flyovers can be scary to drive on for a first timer who has never driven on a steep road. But with my new found confidence i aced the flyover test and was ready to take on the big and the bad Kathipara junction flyover. For those of you , who don't know what i am talking about , it will suffice to know that its quite a big flyover that serves as an important connector to many routes in Chennai. I will helpfully add the Wikipedia picture here for effect.

So that day , what we wanted to do was to go up on one of the wings of this flyover and come down another. This sounded like a piece of cake to me and we began the mission. Going up was quite easy and i managed it without incident. Coming down however was what made that day memorable. As you can tell from the picture , to go down one of the wings , one needs to take a downward sloping curved path. On  such a  road ,the sensible thing to do would be to slow down and let gravity do its work , but this is where the brain freeze happened. After barely managing to negotiate the curved path , my feet went nowhere near the brakes and I went hurtling  down the bridge at 60km/hr. Mercifully there was no one in my way  save for a biker who was far on my left . However there is slow moving traffic straight ahead , and if i don't slow down i am sure to go smashing into at least a couple of vehicles, probably filled with people sedately making their way home from work after a long day. All this was dawning on me very slowly ,as if i had forgotten that there are such things as brakes. My mind had totally blanked out and it felt as if someone had pushed a mute button on the scene that was unfolding in front of me.  Then suddenly , i could hear my cousin screaming at me to hit the brakes and in the last second i finally did .I did not cause any accidents that day , but that was just sheer luck.

For a  few days after that particular brain freeze , i refused to go anywhere near the car. But eventually i got over the blind fear and decided to give it  another shot. It might gladden the reader to know that i am no longer a nuisance on the road  and can drive you safely to any place you'd like to go , if you can point me in the right direction or give me a GPS device that actually works. (Some of them will instruct you to drive through solid walls .) I have also come to learn that frequent occurrences of  the brain freeze can be completely cured , by including generous amounts of that wonderful creation of man called chocolate in your daily diet.So if you're a friend and you find that i am starting to show signs of zoning out , be sure to offer me a chocolate (I prefer them with nuts and dry fruits)  and you will find that i am suddenly more focused!