Edited by: Kiana Manian
Clutch down, break, first gear, hand break down, release the clutch, accelerate. That’s what I taught myself at 17 when I took my mom’s pride and joy out for the first time. A long sedan – not the ideal car to learn on but it’ll do the job. After all, the alternative was an SUV, which wasn’t any better. It was an undeniably challenging place to start, but I was enthusiastic and determined.
The first time I was ever behind the wheel, I was 15. My dad let me drive his behemoth of a car around the layout I lived in. It was exhilarating, zipping down the lane at 10 kmph, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles hurt because it felt like if I didn’t the car would tip over like a bicycle. In my head I was on a highway with the wind in my hair, hard rock music blasting on my speakers. I had never felt happier.
Fast forward to February 2021; I was freshly 18 years old, ready to finally get my license and drive myself around, but as luck would have it, a week before my test I injured my foot so bad I could barely walk all month. By the time I was ready for the test, the second wave of covid had hit. It kept getting delayed and at this point I was convinced I wouldn’t legally be allowed to drive until I was too old and brittle. Finally, in June everything eased up again and I was legally considered capable of handling four wheels, and I was over the moon. With work from home and online education still going on in full swing, the roads were more or less empty, which is unheard of in Bangalore. After everything I’d been through, learning to drive in this was not even a quarter of a challenge.
In the week preceding my move to college, traffic was back in full swing. I had to find a new mantra now. Clutch down, break, release and repeat followed by knee pain, knee pain, knee pain! Extending my left leg after about an hour of driving around felt like I was stabbing myself in the knee with a really blunt screwdriver over and over. The amount of brain power it took not to touch an auto driver or a careless biker who cut you off out of nowhere is so immense I needed to take a long nap after to recuperate. The three lanes demarcated on the road somehow manage to squeeze in five and a half lanes of vehicles, and if I ever wanted to reach my destination I had to figure out how to slither through the gaps. Auto drivers are so used to getting clipped by or clipping other vehicles that they don’t even flinch when it happens, but the smallest scratch on my car makes my heart drop so avoiding them is my biggest priority. It really was a pain.
All that being said, at the end of the day that miserable traffic and the frustration it accompanies was what made it feel like home, and now that I’m on the opposite side of the country for college there’s nothing I would love more than to go back home and drive around again, still zipping down the roads at a raging 10kmph, only with worse knees and better technique. A pretty bad accident and almost a year of driving later the steering wheel feels like an extension of my arm and my bad left knee just feels like it’s meant to be.