Driving Lessons

I almost kinda hit a motorbike the other night. In my defense, it was dark and I’m a totally rubbish driver. Well that, and it was raining and my windshield wipers refused to cooperate. Oh water, you sly devil, you with your awesome refractive index and incredible surface tension. Hmph.

So September marked the third year of me getting my driving license and I thought I’d celebrate with another self-involved (and long overdue) blog post. (Well, I’M celebrating. City of Bangalore? Not so much.)

I learned to drive on a Maruti 800, an iconic Indian car by itself. (My driving instructor now has white hair. Hmm... A true mystery.) Then I graduated to the even more iconic Maruti Omni van. (Yes. A van. And white no less. I felt like a caterer.) And then, in January 2007, we got Speedy, my ’98 Mitsubishi Lancer. It came fully equipped with spoiler (?), air conditioner, and cassette player (cutting edge. I know.) My car, in which I’m not allowed to exceed 60 kilometers an hour (kilometers!), was nicknamed Speedy by my then 9 year old nephew. I don’t know if he was being ironic. Or maybe not. He was actually really keen on calling my baby a Chupacabra, the legendary Mexican legend. According to Wikipedia, that infallible source of infinite knowledge, a chupacabra is “a legendary cryptid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas. The name ‘Chupacabra’ (‘chupar’ is Spanish for ‘to suck’ and ‘cabra’ translates to ‘goat’) comes from the animal's reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats.” How cute.

Oh and did I mention that Speedy’s silver? Now I’ll be honest. There are many shades of automobile colors I absolutely adore. Black? Yes. Dark blue? Yes. Hunter green? Definitely. Maroon? Yeah baby. Baker’s chocolate? Ahem. *Cough cough* Totally. For my sisters, yes, yes, I know... Ateeu. For the others, don’t even bother. Inside joke people. But I digress. So there are tons of colors I like on cars, but silver? Silver is not one of them. See, in my head, I always thought that silver cars looked like giant thermometer farts. I was in denial for ages. Of course I love my car now with all its silvery glory, complete with accidentally on purpose racing stripes. OK fine. So it’s more “accidentally” than “on purpose”, but who’s checking? Just goes to show that if you’re a tree in Sheryll’s line of vision, you might want to get the hell outta there. Although, I must admit, I have improved considerably since that day in ’06 when I ran into the same auto-rickshaw thrice. In fact, my dad actually applauded the last time I parallel parked. Evidently, my parents don’t expect very much from me anymore.

But I learned a lot in these past three years on the road. Unfortunately, I can’t remember most of them. But here are some "driving lessons" that I do remember.

1. Driving barefoot is bad for your sole.
2. Music doesn’t necessarily make you a better driver, but it helps.
3. You CAN learn driving techniques from T.V. (I learned to parallel-park from Heroes. Don’t ask how.)
4. That retro eye-hand dance-like move is only cool if you’re John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. And even then, it’s pretty lame.
5. The hand wave dance thing is not cool ever.
6. Adding “Freestyle” to the end of a poorly constructed sentence does not make it a rap song.
7. To err may be human, but to obstruct traffic for no reason is bovine.
8. A weird noise emanating from your engine is a sign that you should take your car to a mechanic. Not to turn up the volume.
9. Traffic signals are not suggestions.
10. Cup holders are for holding cups. Not for holding sandwiches, or donuts, or cell phones.

P.S. Thousand apologies to all my fans (all two of you!) for being so erm… remiss in the whole blogging bit. The past few months have been a time of… let’s see… tremendous upheavals of the emotional kind. 100% pleasant though, I can assure you. All I can say is that I’m glad that my initials will not be P.M.S. for much longer.