'Can you drive?' - is a question that keeps me fabricating interesting answers. While the answer should have been Boolean but let me share some facts in hand to help you guess my emotional trauma. I possess a valid driver's licence but feel very incompetent when I hold on to the steering wheel. But unlike most good drivers who only knows the steering seat of a car, I can appraise you of seats from where you can be a shadow driver. Believe me I carry experience that not much drivers have.For road scared creatures with a crave to be a good driver the most lucrative position is the one diagonal to the driver to experience a pseudo driving experience.It acts like a mental pulley. You see the road and your driver in action. React to these data points being knowningly unaware that there is gap that equates the width of your car and hence your reaction would never match the action of your driver. Still never mind breaking all benchmarks I have often observed that at the turn of a road even if a car rush on to our right I lift my right leg to press an unseen brake just to realize I am not driving. Well you thought it was all to exposure a serious weakness all in fun. No - hang on!!
I have another weakness and which gets exposed because of people I don't know but happens to drive by my car. So what that I can't drive but to get licence I read rules. Yes just that I know them empowers me to speak out and set expectation. Yes, essentially to my driver who takes the pain to bear my weakness and abide by rules I feel are healthy on road. Strangely most drivers in my city feel seat-belt is for local police to collect fine when they need money.I can't help how and what they think but can enforce rules. That is what I do - put your seat belts on and don't attend mobile while driving are two thumb rules that I expect my driver to follow. He feels jittery , may be annoyed too.
Strangely enough men in bigger cars drive by him every alternate day with one hand on steering and the other balancing critical mobile calls. I look so foolish in the rear glass trying to educate the less privilege. The man on the steering must be laughing at heart to know what a fool he is carrying on the back seat. The unknown elite driver puts me down being so careless that a weak sole is trying to tame a piece of this rushing city traffic with some basic rules. If men in branded suit driving big cars break rules of the game , simple jockey like me loose the race for no cause.
Often back home on such frustrated moments wonder how to change the system - educated to uneducated or the other way of ? The only piece of the journey that makes me happy is am in India, where someone at least is available to cover your weakness. My weakness forces me to be an employer and have the privilege to preach ethics of the skill that I miss. Only if my road friends would have valued a few rules I could have stood out a good teacher.
Gyan #26 - Be in the system to change the system
