Drive wild!

OK. it was a beeg thing in my community if a girl drove .. learnt driving before marriage!!
Sure, after marriage, you can do anything provided your husband allows you to, but not before.

Rules like these NEVER  applied to me. or rather, I never let the rules remain rules, I always broke them.
I asked my father for the money to learn driving from the driving schools. Of course papa said NO.
Would that stop me? Ok.. dont give me the money.. I will learn on my own.. I started to watch the driver, how he drove and how he changed the gears.. asking him questions in between as to why he did what he did... and how? I even managed to get the steering from him, so that I got some steering practice.

We had a Maruti 800, and I practiced driving with it. I used to stealthily take the keys in the afternoons, when everybody slept and tiptoed out of the house, get in the car and practice driving forward and backwards on the footpath (it used to be broad enough in those days), in just about a space of 15 feet and 20 if the footpath was bereft of cars. But I got a real high doing things like that.. :P
Suffice to say that my back driving is as good as my front one.

Once I learned it quite well to be driving it on the roads, there was no stopping me. I ate drank and slept driving. I had great pleasure in parking the car in the minuscule of parking slots in one go. I dream't of manoeuvring the car in toughest of traffic situations. I looked at all the buses and trucks as if they were dinosaurs out from the Jurassic park and I had to duck and dodge them all the time!

But, I learnt driving well in the end. I can say I am quite a good driver.
I have been wild and I was wild with my driving too. There were times there were almost 14 of us packed together in that tiny car.. wondering how? Well, thats one thing we Indians only have the liberty to do!

Vidyasagar Setu (the bridge over Hooghly)

I used to go for morning walks to the Victoria Maidan in Calcutta. I picked up friends and then a bunch of us would walk for half an hour and then drive off.. I stepped on the gas pedal as soon as the car reached the Vidyasagar Setu, a newly constructed bridge across the river Hooghly. In the morning hours it would be practically empty of any traffic. The speedometer showed the maximum limit which was 120km/hr for that car,only 800cc na. By this time I was usually in the middle of the bridge, and then I switched of the ignition, held the steering steady with my left hand, got up and sat on the window sill of the car and yaayyy, screamed and hooted and breathed deeeeep! I got such a kick doing these stuff!!

Looking back, I know I was crazy and bad, and I hope my kids never even get a fraction of my craziness in their genes!

Picture from here and here