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....