The sight of myself behind the steering wheel driving out of our neat little campus into the sea of vehicles jostling for space right outside hadn’t been witnessed by many or one should say any. One could sense that there was a general consensus amongst the family members that my expertise should be reserved for rare occasions and it was a mere coincidence that such occasions never materialized.
The moment arrived while RR senior(S) and junior(J) were away for vacation to grandparent’s. RRJ’s school books needed a pick up from his school before 12 noon on a specific day. Being alone and free from family I had been going for frequent outings with my female friends. Impressed by their carefree driving my emancipated self was eager to give our car a much needed run on the city roads and what better time than when it is not under the protective care of RRS. I set out pretty confidently and 10:30 not being the peak hour for traffic, managed my way reasonably well till I reached just a few blocks from the school. To get off the main road into the by-lane I needed to cut across the road. I was waiting for that little gap in traffic when a giant scorpio van came in the reverse traffic and stopped wanting to make a U-turn. With a giant waiting for me to clear some space and time ticking by the feeling of being under the spotlight was getting ever stronger. I am not too sure what made me decide that the right thing to do was to step on the accelerator. The traffic not being visible behind the scorpio, it turned out not to be the wisest of moves after all. A lot of brakes screeched while I drove on into the by-lane almost running over an on coming motor-cyclist. Whizzing past the sudden confluence of many vehicles I was a bit dazed by the glares from all sides. There have been many instances when I have been known to misread people’s intent in their eyes but I was fairly convinced it wasn’t the case this time. Parking the car near the school I found only a black mark all across the left side of the car the as the tell tale signs of my near miss. The top millimeter of the bumper of a fellow car deposited on ours is not something to lose one’s sleep over, after all what is so bad about a little bit of give and take between road mates.
I could see the pile of books waiting for me but the teachers were not ready to let me come anywhere near without seeing proof of money deposited for fees. So there I was, it was just not the way back home that had to be negotiated but surprisingly I was all for it. I took a few deep breaths and made my way back without much to write about and got the all important little piece of paper. Back in the car, a little pep-talk was need of the hour. “Take it easy, don’t get pressurized into doing any thing, drive confidently” I repeated after myself. A few puffs of deep breaths later I was on my way, a picture of cool calm confidence. The pep talk seemed to have done a world of good as nothing could flutter me. The motorcyclists wanting to quantify the probability of survival against all odds, the buses asserting their space or the autos making last minute decisions on the direction of their path, absolutely nothing could stir me. Happy with the effect I repeated my little mantra one more time but by the time I was reminding myself to drive confidently I realized that very confidently I had driven a good 10 meters past the turn I was supposed to take. My immediate reaction was to come to a halt and put emergency lights on and do some thinking. I did. Not confident of making my way back any other way I started to reverse back with emergency lights announcing to the world to keep away from me for good reason. The people sitting on the road side did there bit by controlling the traffic and I did my bit controlling the car and together we managed to circumvent the little digression and I was back on track humming to the tune on radio.
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