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All old men (and more so women) are great back-seat drivers, both literally and otherwise.
My sister Dr U and her hubby K are unfortunately childless. And they were a working couple. After building their own home and beautifying it and investing in gold ornaments and other fetching instruments, they decided to buy a car and enjoy. By then the hubby K had already retired (60) and his wife (53) was the Principal of the Girls College at Nellore. And after a thorough market research they zoomed in on a Maruti Zen (with A/C and a tape deck). And they made a nice parking slot in their home sweet home.
K wisely said he was too old to try and learn driving at his age...he never learned driving a pushbike...forget motor bike with the terrifying thing called a 'gear box'. But his wife was more adventurous and underwent driving lessons in an approved school who also got her a driving license for a song.
The first day she was on her own, with her hubby by her side, she hit their solid concrete pillar hard while maneuvering their Zen, with a sudden jerk, out of their parking slot. And it got a nice dent (the car, not the pillar).
Now, in Hyderabad, dent in a new car is a status symbol...it shows that the car is being driven on its chaotic roads and not sitting idle in its car park. So, no one bothers to remove dents as long as their car runs on the road. But not so in a moffusil town like Nellore. So K phoned in the garage boy to take the car and get its dent removed and repainted...he thought it was a minor affair like coating a patch on his wall.
And was heartbroken when the mechanic brought the car home after 3 days and charged a whopping Rs 9,000. Then on, K forbade his wife from taking the wheel. And employed a full time driver (a young and smart boy of 20). And since he was already retired and footloose (like me now), K would occupy the front seat whenever the car got taken out...just to make sure that the boy didn't drive too fast or steal fuel. That meant that the front half was full and one of the rear seats was occupied by his wife for her backseat driving. My mom used to decry this since there was just one or at best two seats for guests in the rear and there would be an unseemly scramble as to who would be the winners in the pot luck.
One summer vacation, while I was at my mom's place in Gudur, word came that my eldest (IAS) B-i-L was admitted to the Apollo Hospital in Madras and was recovering from his second heart bypass surgery. And mom ordered me and my sister, Dr U, to travel to Madras as her goodwill ambassadors. And I told my sister on phone that it would be best to book a cab and make the 3-hour journey by the newly laid Vajpayee Highway. But my sister and her hubby would have none of it and said that they would be arriving in their Zen with their youthful driver to pick me up on their ride to Madras.
I had just then learned driving my toy Maruti and so knew a bit of it. And as K occupied the front seat as a one-man vanguard, my sister and myself took the two rear seats and we took off.
That drive remains an unforgettable experience for me.
The Owner in the front seat would constantly admonish the driver:
"Slow!...Slow!!...Slow!!!"
and read aloud all the roadsigns for the benefit of the English-disadvantaged driver:
"Right Bend Ahead...Sharp Turn...Toll Booth Slow Down..."
And his wife in the backseat would be advising her driver on technical points:
"Honk! Come down to 3rd gear! Remove your foot from the clutch pedal..."
And when the youthful driver got bored and switched on his favorite film song:
"Gata rahe mera dil"
both my sister and her hubby would chide him:
"This is no occasion for film music...change to Gita shloks!"
The driver was apparently quite used to all this and was coasting along at 80 kmph in the 4th gear, simply because Zen didn't have a 5th.
And all of a sudden while crossing a roadside village, a kid of 5 zoomed right across the road and the driver stepped on the brake hard and missed the kid by a whisker.
All hell broke loose.
The Owner in the front seat belt almost fainted and went speechless while his wife hit her head on the rear of the front seat and started banging the poor driver left and right.
It was left to me to cajole her with a whisper in her ear:
"Your driver boy has fantastic reflexes...if it were me driving, we would all be in the Police station by now, forking out double the cost of your Zen"
That made her happy...for the nonce...
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All old men (and more so women) are great back-seat drivers, both literally and otherwise.
My sister Dr U and her hubby K are unfortunately childless. And they were a working couple. After building their own home and beautifying it and investing in gold ornaments and other fetching instruments, they decided to buy a car and enjoy. By then the hubby K had already retired (60) and his wife (53) was the Principal of the Girls College at Nellore. And after a thorough market research they zoomed in on a Maruti Zen (with A/C and a tape deck). And they made a nice parking slot in their home sweet home.
K wisely said he was too old to try and learn driving at his age...he never learned driving a pushbike...forget motor bike with the terrifying thing called a 'gear box'. But his wife was more adventurous and underwent driving lessons in an approved school who also got her a driving license for a song.
The first day she was on her own, with her hubby by her side, she hit their solid concrete pillar hard while maneuvering their Zen, with a sudden jerk, out of their parking slot. And it got a nice dent (the car, not the pillar).
Now, in Hyderabad, dent in a new car is a status symbol...it shows that the car is being driven on its chaotic roads and not sitting idle in its car park. So, no one bothers to remove dents as long as their car runs on the road. But not so in a moffusil town like Nellore. So K phoned in the garage boy to take the car and get its dent removed and repainted...he thought it was a minor affair like coating a patch on his wall.
And was heartbroken when the mechanic brought the car home after 3 days and charged a whopping Rs 9,000. Then on, K forbade his wife from taking the wheel. And employed a full time driver (a young and smart boy of 20). And since he was already retired and footloose (like me now), K would occupy the front seat whenever the car got taken out...just to make sure that the boy didn't drive too fast or steal fuel. That meant that the front half was full and one of the rear seats was occupied by his wife for her backseat driving. My mom used to decry this since there was just one or at best two seats for guests in the rear and there would be an unseemly scramble as to who would be the winners in the pot luck.
One summer vacation, while I was at my mom's place in Gudur, word came that my eldest (IAS) B-i-L was admitted to the Apollo Hospital in Madras and was recovering from his second heart bypass surgery. And mom ordered me and my sister, Dr U, to travel to Madras as her goodwill ambassadors. And I told my sister on phone that it would be best to book a cab and make the 3-hour journey by the newly laid Vajpayee Highway. But my sister and her hubby would have none of it and said that they would be arriving in their Zen with their youthful driver to pick me up on their ride to Madras.
I had just then learned driving my toy Maruti and so knew a bit of it. And as K occupied the front seat as a one-man vanguard, my sister and myself took the two rear seats and we took off.
That drive remains an unforgettable experience for me.
The Owner in the front seat would constantly admonish the driver:
"Slow!...Slow!!...Slow!!!"
and read aloud all the roadsigns for the benefit of the English-disadvantaged driver:
"Right Bend Ahead...Sharp Turn...Toll Booth Slow Down..."
And his wife in the backseat would be advising her driver on technical points:
"Honk! Come down to 3rd gear! Remove your foot from the clutch pedal..."
And when the youthful driver got bored and switched on his favorite film song:
"Gata rahe mera dil"
both my sister and her hubby would chide him:
"This is no occasion for film music...change to Gita shloks!"
The driver was apparently quite used to all this and was coasting along at 80 kmph in the 4th gear, simply because Zen didn't have a 5th.
And all of a sudden while crossing a roadside village, a kid of 5 zoomed right across the road and the driver stepped on the brake hard and missed the kid by a whisker.
All hell broke loose.
The Owner in the front seat belt almost fainted and went speechless while his wife hit her head on the rear of the front seat and started banging the poor driver left and right.
It was left to me to cajole her with a whisper in her ear:
"Your driver boy has fantastic reflexes...if it were me driving, we would all be in the Police station by now, forking out double the cost of your Zen"
That made her happy...for the nonce...
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