How I got married in life!. Review on Learning to Drive

When people tell you that they don?t know how to drive? laughing on their faces is probably one of the worst things you could do to them, and to yourself.

Learning to drive can be a pretty tough proposition to some people like me? just as it is very hard to get out honorable ex Prime Minister Narasimha Rao to smile or keeping Bill Clinton from sleeping with the inmates of the White House.

I learnt driving in my later teenage years, but I guess I will never be able to forget the initial stages of my driving, a time of the century when the pedestrians on the road had to double check the validity dates on their life insurance policies and other drivers had to make sure that their vehicles were not in the same country as mine at the times of the day I was practicing driving. After having confessed to some of my?cool? friends(who were stinking drunk at the time) that I could not drive? their laughter evoked enough shame in me to believe that I too was a normal human being who needed to know how to drive at least in this planet, if not Mars.

My biggest challenge was getting my father to believe that I wanted to learn driving because it was always an added advantage to me. Of course?my father knew that if Osama Bin Laden saw me driving, he would take refuge in no safer a place than some high security underground solitary confinement in the US Prison. Once my father gave me the okay nod on the condition that he would drive me to the most solitary deserted roads in the country(poor camels, here I come!), we were off on the very next weekend to the destined spot? something that I have never forgotten over all these years and something my father wishes he could forget somehow? at least by contracting amnesia.

We arrived at a spot on the out skirts of the city where the roads were depleted of all human and vehicle traffic. When my father asked me to exchange seats with him? believe me? it was the most glorious moment for me. Even princes wouldn?t be so glad to accept thrones from their Dads. Now came the tough part? I had to stick my middle region(that?s about the size of the largest country you could think of) between the steering wheel and the driver?s seat.

Something I have seen my fighting fit father do with ease? but wasn?t able to do it myself. After a little help from my father in pushing a driver?s seat to the extreeeeeme backward limit? I was able to fit in. I started the car and in my mind flashed all the stills of the great drivers and cars in our era(all my heroes in driving - from Michael Schumacher to the hero of the Knight Rider series), and I found my father mumbling something. I asked him what it was? he told me that it was a list of names of all the Hindu deities he could remember right from his childhood days!

Then my father told me what he called ABC? Accelerator, Brake and Clutch. He them explained to me the functions of each of these and asked me to apply pressure on the clutch and stick the gear lever in 1. Being a good boy that I am? I did exactly as he said. Then I was supposed to slowly relieve the pressure on the clutch and apply pressure on the accelerator. And to this day? I have no idea why the car was jumping like a kangaroo for the next few feet. The car went dead?and before I could restart it? my father did nothing less than engage the hand brake and pleaded me save the world(and the camels) by getting out of his hard earned car. We both went back home and I kept a long face because I felt I had been truly let down in life.

After a week of silence protest at home? my family decided that the driving school was the best place for me. My first day with the instructor was not so good though? he was trying to gauge my driving skills from the way I talked. After a little while when he finally felt that it was okay for him to be seen in the same planet as me, he took up the assignment of teaching me how to drive. I am not sure if I learnt driving the next 8 weeks, but I did learn one thing??Practice makes your instructor wealthy.? I simply hated the guy so much that I decided that I could avoid seeing his face by passing the driving test. And that is exactly what happened to me? I passed. But I hardly drove after that for the following few years.

Only in my college when my junior(a really sensual female with the perfect figure and lovely smile) called me on the mobile to pick her up from somewhere? I aroused all the courage to drive my brother?s spanking new car and picked her up. Only this time? I wasn?t imagining myself to be the hero of the Knight Rider series? like my father, I was mumbling the list of all the deities I knew? so that they would take care of me and all the unfortunate human beings who were in the road at the time I was driving.

I did not want to land up to see my junior in a thrashed up car? leave alone my brother killing me if anything happened to his car. But sooner than later? I learnt how to drive in the following weeks(thanks to the usual going out with my sensual junior at college). It was the time when I was confident that I was traveling on the roads the way I should be, my junior confessed to me that she didn?t know how to drive. Guess what I did? Just like my friends, I laughed right on her face? and she decided that there was no lesser way to punish me than to get happily married to me.

That?s why when people tell me when they don?t know how to drive? I rather keep quite than laugh and suffer for it.