Freedom to Curse

Almost everyone I knew told me that once I learn how to drive in India, I can drive anywhere (none of them Singaporeans). So after I got married and moved to India, I decided to spend my mornings learning how to drive and ride a scooter. On my father in law’s insistence, we had signed up for an instructor to teach me driving over 13 sessions. So every morning, I would have one hour with an instructor followed by one hour with my husband as my instructor to “practice”.

The truth was half the time I din understand what the instructor was saying. For example his classic statement would me “ Hume hai na….ki ..err..aagewale ko bhi bachana hai…aur pechewale…err per bhi dyaane dena hai….err aur side main jo hai…us per bhi nazar dal na hai….hmmm” (It translates to ‘We should look out for the person in front of us, and behind us and on both sides of us’….with many pauses). He would insist that I reserve by turning my head and looking behind, while Sumit would tell me to just use the mirror to reverse.

There were times when I felt that driving was less scary than riding and there were times I felt that riding was so much easier than driving. Especially because there was a family of water buffaloes, who everyday chose the same time to go on a walk as I would back my scooter out. The very first day Sumit was teaching me to ride a scooter; there I am trying to balance, when bang in the middle of the road there were 3 buffaloes chewing away blocking every inch of the road. This meant I had to go between them and that was not something I could handle, cos I thought I was gonna jus crash into them. So I did the first thing that came to my mind; let go of the handles, close my eyes, curled up and screamed. Thank God for Sumit’s long limbs, his hands were able to reach for the handles from the back and manage the scooter.

There was another time, about a week later, when on a road that was wide enough for one car to pass, two cars tried to cross with me in the centre on my scooter. By this time, I was more used to this kinda craziness, so I tried to not panic, but as soon as the cars had passed, I went and parked in the corner to ‘calm my nerves’.

Now when I go to India, I find excuses to take the scooter out, much to the dismay of my in-laws.

But driving, that is a different thing altogether. I still can’t drive in India without someone seated with me to ‘guide’ me. I truly started enjoying driving in Abu Dhabi, where I was driving an automatic car without the worries of a manual car. Even though at times I cursed how slowly the gears shifted, I think overall I was less tensed and eased into driving comfortably.

Till I came to Singapore. I think I have cribbed about driving in Singapore a lot to a lot of people. I am not saying that driving was perfect in India and UAE, far from it. But atleast over there, when the other person did a really stupid mistake, you could roll your window down and curse at them and they would curse back. There were so many times I wish we had the freedom to curse in Singapore. I mean loudly at the other guy and he hearing it. Its not effective if you are shouting and the other guy doesn’t hear and it and drives away.

Its become like a trend, you honk at people to say ‘you are wasting my time, get out of my way’. Hell you get honked at even when its not your fault and the other person is wrong.You are new to a certain area, and you are driving slow, you try to keep to the corner lanes, so you can get a better view of the road names. All of a sudden you hear a startling ‘honk’ that makes you jump. The rest of the road would be free but noooo, he has decided to drive on that lane and you are blocking the road.

Roundabouts are something Singapore should not have, people do not know how to drive on them. Its common sense that the inner most lanes should be used to make full turns or right turns, and if you are exiting then you should come to the outermost lane. Nooooooooooo…Somehow in Singapore it translates to ‘I managed to squeeze into the inner lane, now I want to turn out, hell with you I am gonna turn left. Dare you to enter the roundabout when I want to leave’.

I feel like there is so much built up frustration when I drive, which I worry will one day come out with me banging into someone’s car if they come into my lane.