Learning, The Indian Way

After 2 hours of driving around the moon-like surface of Vignan Nagar and its neighbourhood in a tattered Hyundai Santro, today morning, I and Ranji presented to Indira Nagar RTO office to apply for our Learner's Licence. It very nearly did not happen due to the various factors leading up to it, but, in the end, not only did it happen, but it happened in a typical Indian way.

It all started at around 6:15 in the morning when both of us woke up groggily, cursing the alarm that was ringing its way to glory. One good thing about these inanimate things are that they don't have to deal with emotions and are able to perform the duties given to them without fail. The same cannot be said of human beings though, especially to me. Every day, when I get up listening to its shrill sound, I wonder whether I should be going for driving classes or just dump the whole idea of going for a car. By that time, at least 10 minutes of time and 90% of my sleep would have gone, so I would drag myself out of the bed and would drag Ranji too with me. Today also was no different.

Since I had not been doing any reversing yet, we decided that Ranji would start off. Off we went on a new route yet again, this time right through Old Madras Road to Indira Nagar. I must state here, with not just a tinge of jealousy, that Ranji somehow ends up with the best of scenarios while driving. We went to Indira Nagar basically because the instructor had some work there, and he decided to do that at our expense. While coming back from there, we came through Thippsandra which was devoid of any vehicle that early in the morning, and I once again had a reasonably clear road to maneuver, which wasn't what I wanted. Having said that, we both drove reasonably well today and had no major issues while starting. We both did have problems while turning, though, but my kingsize ego would like to rather put it to the stiff steering wheel than to anything else.

Anyway, coming back to the LL, we were asked to report to the main office of the Dhanush Driving School, which was at Indira Nagar, at sharp 9:30. Being typical Indians, we both were there at sharp 10:05. We had carried all the documents, but Ranji forgot to carry the original of her passport. When quizzed about that at the driving school, it immediately put her off. She felt pretty irritated by the fact that she remembered so many things and forgot a single thing and got caught for that. She, thankfully, didn't start off her usual tirade at how she has to remember everything, etc. The clerk at the office filled out our forms and made it out as if we had failed our 10th standard exams which would then entail us to take the oral LL rather than the written LL. The latter is supposedly tougher, which again is relative when you are offering bribes for both. Also, there is this archaic thinking in the government circles that a person failing 10th is of a decidedly lesser intellect and hence has to be supplied with a much easier testing methodology. Now, that is a very sensible thing to say. But having put such a rule in place, there is no method to check whether one has actually failed or passed the exam.

I felt I shouldn't queer the pitch before I got the LL in my hand, so I held my peace, complied with all the instructions from the driving school, and went ahead and stood in the queue. For people not bred in India, the term "queue" might mean an orderly line-up of people standing one behind the other. Well, it holds a totally different meaning in India. It means a mass of people who are marginally better organized than rioting public. I was seeing why the people in government offices always have a short fuse. People just were disregarding any form of order. We had to get the filled-out form signed from one office (I suppose they are also to verify the documents, but they didn't seem to keen to do it, and I didn't want to encourage them) and then had to go to another office. Ranji was called pretty soon, owing to the fact that the female queue was wee bit lesser than the male version of it.

To prove that things weren't exactly going her way and also due to her innate innocence, Ranji promptly announced to the test supervisor that she has passed her graduation, upon which she was questioned as to things filled out in the form. She wiggled her way out somewhat by saying that the driving schools folks had filled it, but the supervisor wasn't relenting, asking her why she signed without reading what was written. Anyway, he asked her to come back after 15 minutes. Meanwhile, I was having an extended stay in the gents queue. Ranji got called after 40 minutes and cleared her test this time. I still continued my wait outside. It was another hour before I was finally called in. After the lengthy wait outside, the test was an anticlimax. It barely lasted a minute and he didn't even question my credentials regarding failing the 10th standard. I guess he was as bored with the whole process as the rest of us, and just wanted to get done with it. So, after 2 hours of waiting and 2 minutes of testing, we were both in possession of Learner's Licence. You'll hear more from me as the story unfolds....

Driving Yours Truly

It had been some time now that we've been planning to go for a car. In fact, I was all for a car even before going for the house. At least, in that case, my wife's (and my parents' and her parents') better sense prevailed, and we went for a house. It is one of the rare case where hindsight has been rather kind to me.

Anyway, now that we are firmly entrenched in our house, this fancy for a car again started gnawing at my mind. I was a little scared about bringing this up with Ranji, but surprisingly, she was all for it. I even made one Maruti salesperson come to my home for checking out the details. Unfortunately, one major speedbreaker for our car dreams was the fact that neither one of us knew head or tail about driving.

After hemming and hawing for some time, we both finally signed up for driving classes last week. We wanted to try on a Maruti Esteem but got a Santro instead. Being the man of the house, I decided to have the first go at it. The highly complicated mechanism of stamping the clutch, shifting the gear, slightly releasing the clutch, and accelerating slowly was looking extremely tough for me. When the car started moving, I felt like being on the top of the world. That joy was short-lived as the same issue of stamping clutch, releasing clutch, stamping accelerator kept popping up every 5-10 minutes. Control of the steering was rather okay, but I had major problems starting or stopping the car. Well, those are the major points, right? My confidence was beginning to hit rock bottom.

It wasn't long before my confidence got a much needed boost. This came in the form of my wife. She was looking extremely nervous much before sitting in the driver's seat, and when finally her chance came to sit there, she had fear in her eyes. She kept giggling nervously, which quickly turned to a worried expression as she struggled with the foot controls. She was using maximum strength for everything, be it pressing on the clutch or the accelerator or gripping the steering wheel. The instructor's main worry was whether the steering wheel would come off in her hands or whether it would break into smaller pieces. She was a nervous wreck by the end of it all.

For the next 3 days, we promptly didn't go as my health was a hindrance. It was today then, that we presented ourselves for the second class. This time, I made Ranji start off. She looked much more relaxed today, which was a good thing. Even though she still had some confusion with the controls, her eyes weren't threatening to pop out. I didn't get a chance today, but after looking at the improvement in Ranji, I am feeling all the more confident that I'm going to master this driving business sooner rather than later.

Onam

One reason why I stayed away from posting anything here was because there was hardly anything different happening in my life. It was more or less the same pattern throughout August, more work during week days and absolute relaxation during weekends. That pattern changed somewhat over this week, prompting this blog.

Onam was here, and I didn't have a clue about it. Rather, I had no clue until my cousin called me up the previous evening and reminded me that I was supposed to go to their place for lunch/dinner. I fixed it up for dinner since I had to work. When I reached office, I realized with a pleasant surprise that US has decided to celebrate Onam....er....Labor's Day, and that there was no work. So, I requested for a leave and got it rather promptly (a definite surprise if you know my manager). I went off with Bijit, my friend, to his place to check out the new laptop he has bought. It's an Acer system with almost all the gizmos needed. To say I wasn't jealous of Bijit having this sexy beauty would be a blatant lie. After admiring her in close quarters and seeing her perform.

I went to my cousin's place from there. She was pretty contrite that I didn't have food from her place. That made her serve me the thick payasam with a renewed vigor. Since I had woken up at an unGodly hour of 3:30 a.m., I had thought of sleeping at her place for some time, but my cousins' kids saw to it that I stayed awake. They are just great, and I love playing with them, and how much ever strong my will to sleep was, I wanted to continue playing with them. It was around 12 at night when I finally returned home, rushing to the bed to catch enough sleep before I got up early the next day.