On 4 Wheels And A Prayer

I know I signed up for this voluntarily. When I decided to shift jobs, I accepted the fact that my daily travel routine would be, on an average, 1.5 hours one way daily. The company-provided transport being the BMTC dabba-like-contraption that it is limps and crawls its way through Bangalore’s outer ring road, through traffic, the likes of which I have never seen in my 4 years here. The first one week, I ranted and cried so much to the hubby about my commute that he decided to shut me up by buying me a car. And has meekly agreed to teach me city driving. It was either that or hearing the good name of BMTC being mutilated daily. He’s a wise man.

But I have an inherent fear of driving that I doubt I will ever be able to shake off. It doesn’t help that when one drives, the mind recalls images of the day one almost drove one’s parents’ car into a nallah (after backing the car into a wall, then panicking and getting out of it and leaving the hand brake down on an incline, leaving the car rolling to said nallah). It took me a month to gather the courage to put hand to wheel and foot to pedal after that.

But for the sake of the hubby’s sanity and my own well-being, I must forge on. I have great regard for those gifted people who are not as challenged at eye-hand coordination, or such things as judging car-to-bumper spacing, or not-freaking-out-when-rabid-dog -zips-across-the-road. I envy them unfairly talented drivers who juggle effortlessly between choosing their favorite songs on the deck while cooing on the phone and maneuvering their way into the teeniest parking space simultaneously with just a touch of the wheel.

Parking a car takes a particular DNA make-up. Somehow the genes that are responsible for this fine art found their way into my sister through my parents (fine drivers that they all are), but did not so much as touch me with a barge pole. And so, unless the parking lot has enough space to land a plane, I choose to look elsewhere.

Having driven (or having got away with my kind of driving) in Goa for many years now, driving in Bangalore should not be a problem, right? Wrong, so wrong. Where Panjim has never felt the need for a flyover, Bangalore is the flyover capital of the country. Goa witnesses a traffic jam once a year – when the carnival is on, and Bangalore, oh where do I begin? So much for so-called city driving experience.

Anyways, lulled into a false sense of security, with the demons of my past behind me, I signed the papers last week. Now, if only the hubby could get me the 4-wheeler equivalent of bicycle training wheels!