EYES AHEAD AND PRESS GO!!!!

Sitting in the car in India was quite an experience…never mind driving!! I remember on one of my early visits to India the driver was happily driving ahead and I saw cars whizzing past me and I realised we were going down the wrong side of the road….when questioned the driver just said that there was too much traffic the other way so he was taking a ‘short cut’. Now drivers and their ‘short cuts’. Another time I realised we were going down a one way street and when asked, the driver said “but I am only going one way….theek hai!!!”

Everyone used to say that if you can drive in Calcutta you can drive anywhere in the world and I actually learnt that that was true…it was not a myth. 

After we got married Vinay and I would often go out for a drive after dinner to have paan or kulfi. One day I decided that I wanted to drive so with much trepidation Vinay agreed. Now remember we only had Ambassador cars at this time which were leagues apart from the cars I was used to drive but my logic was a car is a car is a car! How difficult can it be? First of all I have to figure out the gears. I have always driven with a floor gear so it was difficult to figure out this steering shift. Then I get in the car and start adjusting my rear view mirror and am most upset that there are no side view mirrors. Then to top it off there is no seat belt. Vinay is quietly just sitting observing me and I am muttering away to myself under my breath. He finally can’t stop himself from telling me not to worry about what’s behind me…just to concentrate on what’s in front of. Ok so very sage advice and off we go. So we come to a crossing and I wait  and I wait and Vinay looks at me and asks who I’m waiting for. I told him that we are at the crossing of a main road so I have to give right of way to those cars. He decided that this paan was never going to happen so he got out of the car,pushed me over to the passenger side and took over driving. He told me that there are very different rules of driving in India. You don’t need to look left or right or behind you. Just look ahead and keep driving.  Stop for no one and if anyone gets in the way give a quick sharp blow on the horn. It doesn’t matter if you bump into a car whilst driving or parking….just don’t kill anyone. Everything else can be resolved. So basically in the spell of five minutes he effectively untaught me everything I had learnt in all those months of driving lessons!!!

Early on in my marriage one day my mother in law wanted to go to a shop near New Market to buy some curtain fabric but the driver was busy so I offered to take her. She was quite thrilled and after asking me about 10 times that I actually could drive we went off. We reached there safely and she told me to just park outside the shop which I did but when we came out there was a policeman waiting by the car saying we had parked in a ‘no parking’ area. I was standing there trying to justify myself in English asking him to show me the signs etc which of course he couldn’t understand heads or tails of so my mother in law took over. She quietly handed the policeman a small sum and told me to get us out of there as fast as I could. I must say I felt quite exhilarated…I had like broken 2-3 rules within a spell of one hour but when we went home and told my father in law and Vinay they immediately banned the two of us from taking the car shopping without a driver….they said they wouldn’t be able to concentrate on their work wondering when they would get a phone call from Lal Bazaar to say they had locked us up!!! So that was the end of that!

I therefore didn’t drive much in India but I managed to drive from home to my mother’s place or to Tolly Club or later on from Alipore to the military camp for my morning walk. However, I’m sure my blood pressure used to fluctuate wildly when I drove because cars would keep overtaking from both sides and a couple of times I had extremely close shaves with buses and trucks so ultimately I decided to just stop putting myself through this daily torture. Do I regret it? Certainly….it is something everyone should be able to do and I often miss having the freedom to just sit in the car and drive off. I’m sure I could drive but I’ve just lost the nerve to and God willing I don’t need to. However the backside to all this is that I’ve stopped driving in Manchester too which is also a shame but then I go everywhere with my sister so I have never needed to drive. And it also gives me licence to have a glass of wine at lunch time which I couldn’t do if I was driving so I guess it’s a win win all around!!!