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Non Fiction - Slice of Life

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The Driving Lesson

It came upon me to be his new driving instructor...

He wakes me up at half past five in the morning. Not being much of an early riser I leave my bed rather grudgingly. He is ready - fresh faced, in his jeans and T-shirt, raring to go. I reverse the car out of the gate and shift to the passenger’s seat. He lowers himself into the driver’s seat and takes his time adjusting the rear-view mirrors. Turning the ignition on, he wrestles with the gear shift to push it into first.  I can see his hands tightening around the steering wheel as he tries to get the car moving. The engine sputters out. I remind him to release the hand brake. He does so, starts again and this time the car jerks forward and dies on him. “Release the clutch slowly” I tell him. We finally get going.

A junction comes up and he turns right, in fact keeps turning until the car almost grazes the circle in the center. And keeps turning. “Straighten the car, straighten it” I shout. He now whirls the steering to the left. And keeps turning it. The car is now lurching towards the kerb. “No, no, not that much, turn right, right.” The car now swings out towards the opposite curb. And all this is happening at 40kms per hour. I grip my seat and shout “Slow down, slower and turn to left”. Finally after the pendulum has swung from right to left to right five or six times, the car is more or less in the center of the road. I breathe out and reach for my handkerchief. Mangalore is still a small town and I thank my stars for that. At six in the morning, vehicles are still rare and most of those which are running are ones belonging to driving schools.

He had been a two-wheeler enthusiast. He had earned his spurs on a friend’s Yezdi RoadKing. A 1969 Bajaj Vespa was his prized possession for the last 38 years. When it was decided to buy a car, he enrolled in a driving school even before the car was booked. The instructor from the driving school would give him lessons for 30 minutes each day, five days a week in an old Maruti 800. After precisely 20 such classes (for which the fees had been paid in advance), the instructor declared him ready, took him to the RTO and a week later the old tattered six-page motorcycle driving license booklet was replaced by a smart plastic Light Motor Vehicle Driving License card. The new car took another three months in coming. When it did come, it was soon apparent that he wasn’t ready for it. So it came upon me to be his new driving instructor.

“Change to second gear” I said pitying the engine wheezing up the slope in third. As he took off his left hand off the steering wheel and grappled with the gear shift, the right hand pulled on the steering and the car veered to the right into the opposite lane. The Taxi cruising in the opposite lane had to take some quick evasive action to save our lives. I put my hand on the steering and yanked to the left. He had frozen in fear and it took me some effort to overcome his grip. He completed the gearshift. Not from third to second, but to fourth. The engine promptly stalled and the car parked itself in the middle of the road. The Scooty behind us screeched to a halt inches behind the car’s… umm… backside. I looked back, surprised by the silence, by the absence of any invectives. It was a young lady in the driver’s seat with an extra pair of hairy hands on the handle from behind. An unshaven bleary eyed face peered from above the ladies right shoulder. Ahh… that explains it I thought. Another driving class. No wonder they were so understanding. Grinning back sheepishly at them I was trying to shake my pupil out of his rigidity and to get him to start the engine again. It was seven  by now and the city buses were on the prowl. One came up from behind and started blaring its horn. That only worsened the rigidity. After five false starts, when I finally managed to induce enough left foot - right foot coordination in the nervous wreck next to me to get the gears engaged without killing the engine, the car jumped forwards towards the left (remember? we had stalled during a attempted left turn) and almost ran over a curious bystander who was watching the proceedings with a smug look on his face. Serves him (the smug pot) right I thought but did not dare to look behind. I somehow managed to coax the driver and the driven safely back to the stables. As I stepped out of the car, my knees still knocking against each other in fear, I was in half a mind to let out a mouthful at my pupil but memories of an earlier morning doused my rage.

Nearly sixteen years ago, it was on a similar morning that I had woken him up at five-thirty in the morning. After much begging and pleading, he had agreed to teach me to ride his scooter that day. One of my earliest memories as a child is that of sitting on that parked scooter and pretending to be racing along on it. I would twist and turn the hand gears and accelerator to his exasperation. All through my school days it was my one dream to ride that Vespa. It was going to be realized that day. He had driven us down to a deserted stretch of road that morning, put the scooter in neutral and had slid back to the back seat. I had proudly climbed on to the front seat and squeezed the clutch and twisted the gearshift up into the first gear and let go. The scooter had bucked like a wild horse and had thrown us both off the saddle. Without a word, he had picked himself up, righted the scooter, kicked the engine into life and straddled on to the back seat. “Come on son, give it another try. Remember, go easy on the clutch” he had said with a serene smile. The memory of that smile fizzled out my anger today.

I owed my Dad that much.

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