MOTORCAR DIARIES

an ordeal an experiment where lifes smallest talents are the oughest to gain. Driving : manslaughter of the human heart"








When Henry ford built his “carriage without horses”, he probably would have never anticipated the number of heartaches it would be the cause of. Ladies and gentlemen, do not be mislead by the innocuous usage of words for this ain’t no story of how my heart ached when I bought a car for somebody but rather a story of how I learnt to drive.

I had barely passed my first year at college and even more than the anticipation of the results was my anticipation for March 6, 2003;the day I would officially be an adult and more importantly be eligible for an official license. So the day I got back home I adamantly announced that I needed to get my license. My dad had just recovered from getting a license for my mom which, trust me, was really a promethean task. Yet he couldn’t talk me out of it. It was a question of my prestige at college and I was in no mood to let it go by that easily. Every poor father tires out in putting some sense into his son, and my dad was no different. Finally with much persuasion he succumbed to my demands. Period.

True he had agreed to me ;but then after the gruelling experience that he had been given by my mother he decided to get me "educated " by a driving school. Thus the great ordeal began.


As a kid who played a lot of games on his blasted comp, I never expected to do too bad . So that morning , me and dad went to the driving school guy and enrolled.I had expected that driving school would be like our college labs where there was theory first and then a practical class.So after an agonising wait for about half an hour, the guy looked at me and asked"pokaam"(which means lets go). I was absolutely bewildered.I was wondering where he was taking me;maybe for a ride to explain all thats there in a car .WE reached near a Maruti 800 (which looked like an abandoned 1950 volkswagen beetle than a 1994 model that the rusted writing on the bonnet indicated) which quite obviously had suffered at the hands of many a bad student (like my mom i laughed to myself).

A few seconds later my laughter quickly subsided to horror as the teacher tossed the keys to me and asked me to get in the drivers seat . I thought he was trying to scare me or something but as I got in the car I felt better.It was just like in the video games ...only difference was that if i crashed a single R button restored me to the game ..while this was the real thing.

Well to cut the big thing short , and to my pride I could drive without the teacher yelling much in about a week. Five days into my classes, I realised that I was to share my one hour of driving with a girl. Just like Tupac said , I was "fresh outa jail california dreamin".The thought that I would be with a girl in the car made me feel happy.NIT Jaipur hadnt been very fair to me in the first year. Little did i know that my fragrant dream was one i would never forget ....maybe why im writing this three years down the lane.


So then finally a week and a half since I started my illustrious career as a driver, we finally stopped before a huge mansion and this gorgeous beauty came tumbling down the road(not literally, but thats the way she walked).As she came my instructor muttered that she had comeonce before and didnt get the license ."Enjoy the ride mone!!(enjoy the ride son!!)".

So she got into the car , the overpowering perfume clearly indicating her dad was a gulf dude .She looked back and smiled at me .
"Asha",she help her hands out.

"Yardley?" ,it slipped outa my tongue.

"excuse me? "

"oh I'm nithin, I was asking about the perfume".

"oh ....hee hee .....cute boy"

And so the ride started........a ride i would never forget.


-to be continued