Testy Driving

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I had always wanted to own a car and an apartment. Who wouldn't?

These were the twin symbolic aspirations of middle class folks who wished to jump into the set of 'haves' from the 'have-nots' and 'arrived', in India during my times. Indeed, whenever anyone new from our 'relatives' met me, these were the first two questions asked not very discreetly; and when I answered 'no' to both these questions, they left me happily alone out of their social circuit; and word spreads.

In an earlier post titled: 'Money Matters', I said that the day I got to know at 21 that IIT KGP would pension me, I burned both ends of my slim candle and the classy products of WD & HO Wills.

But when I got a son who entered Class XII, I resisted the temptation of spending all my Fifth Pay Commission Arrears, and with great paternal discipline, I logged Rs 5 lakhs into my Savings Account so that they would see him through his Engineering Education in a Donation College in Maharashtra.

But in life, there is no end of surprises: He sneaked into IIT KGP.

Then my thrift bombed!

Within a matter of one week, I bought an Apartment at Nellore with the help of my sisters and a Maruti 800 with the help of my friend NP.

When Arundhuti got to know this, she quipped as usual: "Sirjee, you are like a Bihari IAS Bridegroom to get both 'badi and gadi' at one go".

She hardly knew that I had to live hand-to-mouth for the next 5 years till I retired, meeting 2 hefty EMIs @ 14% Interest.

Anyway, it was a matter of Statics and Dynamics: You don't want your Apartment to start Moving & Shaking, nor your Car to stay put in her garage cooling her wheels.

I was then a ripe 57 and my 'Son of a Queen' a sweet 18.

My friend NP was our Driving Instructor. My son learned the thing in 2 days flat and was driving stylishly in the Fast Lane on the road past SN and IG Halls honking hard to invite the attention of their comely residents.

And I was still plowing around the Maidan reminding myself constantly which the clutch is and which the throttle. And NP was getting exasperated with me: everyone loves to teach a young brilliant student and none a slow-learner @ 57. Sigh!

But I was slightly better than the Campus Lady whose husband told me that when he put her in the driving seat she exclaimed: "I know those two pedals; what is this third one doing out here?". [Yeh teesri kya kar rahi hai idhar?]

When the D-day for the Driving Test at Midnapore dawned, my Agent told us that he would take both my son and me the same day. Fortunately it turned out that the Test wasn't on the lofty principles of IIT Kanpur's 'Relative Grading'.

The first candidate was my youthful son. Folks clapped when he whizzed to and fro and parked precisely 'parallel' in a whoop.

Then came my turn. The Examiner was furious: "Reversing korar aage honking koreynai, or parkingta khoob beka theda hoyeche".

My agent ran to him in public and whispered something in his ear and I was spared the demeaning 'F' Grade narrowly.

I guess I was charged Penalty Rates.

After a month of driving around in the Maidan, I decided to drive down to the Phy Dept one afternoon. The IV Year Lab Classes started at 1.30 PM. There would be tremendous rush till 1.35 and after that the roads were free. So, I told Parag to inform the other Lab Teachers discreetly that I would be a little late.

He was most pleased to announce loudly in the Lab with a mike: "gps will be late today: He is driving down in his car instead of walking!", to the merriment of all and sundry.

When I retired and was shifting to Hyderabad, I wanted to sell away my car at KGP. But my driver-friend Venkat was aghast at the proposal: "No one sells a Maruti 800 sir; she is a workhorse. I shall drive her down to Hyderabad by road".

That was the wisest counsel I ever got.

My son started driving in Hyderabad from Day 1 of her arrival; I took 2 years to venture out on the High Roads of Hyderabad,.

One fine day, I put my wife as Navigator by my side and drove from Khairatabad to Secunderabad Railway Station without maiming pedestrians and killing school kids.

I then found that driving around in Hyderabad is much easier than in Gole Bazaar. No one follows any rules here and all you have to do is to go slow.

Now I am currently the Driving Instructor to my daughter-in-law and she is most pleased with my Teaching Abilities because I don't fret and fume and scowl like her husband (after all I had taught worse Physics at KGP!).

[Last Laughs: When they left KGP, I used to get feedback from my students about their Driving Tests in the US:

Indra, the renowned String Theorist of Princeton, Berkeley, and now at MIT in a different avatar: Failed miserably in the Viva and had to take a supplee.

Kedar: His Examiner was snoozing happily beside him and dreaming sweetly when he was alarmingly woken up by a wild 'Bombay Honking'; he jumped and hit the ceiling.

'A': Managed an International Driving License from India itself. He said sotto voce that he would by and by try and take the wheel (by surprise!)]



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