A Few Flashbacks..

If somebody asked me which task do I consider the most irksome on earth, I would certainly say that it is teaching somebody to drive. I don't know the reason, though. I cannot generalize that it is arduous to teach any skill which you are good at, since lately I had been teaching a couple of guys how to swim, every moment of which I enjoyed. I don't know what is wrong with driving, and I am not trying hard to figure too.

But, that brings up some interesting thoughts to me. Who taught me to drive? How did I drive during my initial days, or how bad did I drive my 'teacher' nuts. I had been driving for almost fifteen years now, it's turned more my habit these days, but honestly I have never looked back at the above questions. Now when I looked back, I made some interesting discoveries. Here goes..

First thing is that nobody ever taught me any skill that I have today. Don't be amiss here that I am a great talent with a bouffant skill set. I will discuss all I know that I have, but the point here is, whatever I have, I had learned those myself.

The first thing I can hark back to is how I learned to ride a bicycle. I was in high school and never had felt the need of being bicycle savvy, until that eventful day when I was given a bicycle and asked to fetch some stuff for the drama which we organized for an arts showdown. I stared at the two wheeled thing as if I was looking at an alien space ship. I announced that I don't know how to ride it and my teachers and friends gazed at me in sheer shock and disbelief. Later I did some research on the QT and learned that nobody in my class is incognizant about riding a bicycle.

Having learned the importance of knowing to ride a bicycle, I badly wanted to learn it. Nobody had a bicycle at my home, neither anybody did in the neighborhood. My friends who had a bicycle at that time considered it too valued a possession to spare for practice sessions. I did not tell my requirement to my parents or anybody for that matter, for reasons which I am unable to recollect. But I was so very frustrated about none I know having a bicycle.

Midsummer vacations came, I was at a farmhouse we had at that time, where there were cows and such. There was this professional milkman who used to come everyday morning to milk the cows. To my great delight, I discovered that our man used to come in a bicycle, and that it had no locks! I deferred my habit of sleeping till ten in the morning, for this guy used to come at six and spend about an hour at work. From where he used to keep his cycle, there was a slight slope through the private road of the farm house ranch, which lead to a main road. The road did not have much traffic, especially that early in the morning, but still I was cautious about riding straight into the road. There was a heap of hay before reaching the road, which I marked as the target. The bicycle was too tall for me, my feet did not reach the ground if I sat on it. So I sat on the luggage carrier. I would keep my feet down, and let the cycle go down the slope, trying to keep my feet off the ground as much as possible. First time, I did not have much idea about how the brakes worked and all that and I banged into the hay. But in a couple of days I gained a reasonable amount of confidence and control over the new skill.

In the next two years many things happened. To my surprise, my dad bought me a bicycle, and what shocked me even more is that he let me ride on that to school. In the last two years of my high school, I ditched the school bus for my cycle and used to look up on the pour souls who go in school bus with such disgust which states, boy, you are in tenth, are you not ashamed to still use the school bus?. I ultimately became a cycling wonder who can ride on a single wheel with no handle bar and all. I can write a novel on my bicycling adventures.

Now, let me take a break and think about how difficult it was to teach somebody ride a bicycle. I had attempted to teach only one guy who was with me for Engineering and still did not know how to ride a bicycle. We tried on the streets one night where a dozen dogs chased us and we ran for our lives carrying the bicycle. To my knowledge that good friend of mine cannot ride on a bicycle till date. But I cannot recollect that I had found it very boring to teach cycling. Another point to ponder is that at the time of writing this, I have not ridden on a bicycle for the last fifteen years or so.

After I finished high school and went to college, I had this friend who brought his dad's motor cycle one day. I can remember that it was a Hero Honda CD100 SS. We disconnected from all the lectures of the day and took the bike to a nearby ground, where I pulled and kicked every lever of it and after a day long trial and errors, I could decently ride on it. I did not ride on it to the road, since it required a license to do so.

A month later, back at the same old farm house on vacation, my dad's subordinate at office came there to meet him for some urgent thing, on a motor bike! Delighted, I demanded the key, pretending to be an expert motor cyclist riding on the confidence of the day session at the ground. Now, the guy could not refuse as I am the son of his superior, and the superior was not in sight. Given the keys, I jumped on the bike careful to show that I have a lot of experience. This was a different kind of bike, the Yamaha RX100, which is considered to be the most powerful bike in its class till date. I kick started it and the last thing I remember doing before I had to trouble a few guys around to come and pick myself and the bike from a nearby drainage canal, was shifting the gear! Till today I can distinctly remember the owner of the bike had made a squirrel face when he looked at me before leaving.

That incident had kept me away from motor bikes for sometime, also because I was too young to get a license, but later I was back with a bang - not the drainage bang this time - and owned my first motor cycle during my Engineering days. I had owned four motorcycles till today, and had been exceptional in riding when I used to. I think I have not rode on a bike since marriage, except for one time when I rode with my wife to the railway station on a friend's bike to catch a train - oh! boy, that was on war footing. However, I have not taught anybody to ride on a motor bike, so don't know how difficult that is.

Two years back, I had dared to jump into the swimming pool at my office and learned to be friendly with water and swim, all by myself. I am not an avid swimmer till today, but I can swim reasonably well in standard sized swimming pools. Of late I taught a couple of my US friends to swim, and I count that as an enjoyable experience.

Coming to driving, I drove my dad's car for the first time in the same ground as I rode the motor bike for the first time. My dad had taken a train to attend a meeting at a far away place, and his driver was supposed to wait for him day long at the railway station. Usually he used to go watch some movies on such occasions, but this time I too was with him. I had a different agenda when we left home, but cancelled those later as I decided to use the opportunity for more prospective things. The driver took me and the car to the ground, where I tried the steering alone for a couple of rounds, and then switched over to the driver's seat. I cannot say that the driver taught me anything, since as far as I remember he was a person who did not talk much, and during the entire day I was doing what I wanted to do, and he playing a kind of supporting role for whatever I did. The experience with bikes helped, I would say, but by evening I was in a position to give my dad a shock by driving all the way back home! Since then I used to take the car alone and make short trips, not taking too many risks, knowing my limits, and driving slowly developed as the best skill that I possess today. In the last fifteen years I have driven a variety of makes of cars, trucks, and even six wheeled buses.

Whomever I taught driving in the last fifteen years, are top class drivers now. There are not many, I can recollect that I trained my sister, two of my friends and a cousin to whom I gave a crash course as for some reason it became mandatory for him to learn driving before his marriage. Some other not so close people had approached me but I declined because it is the most boring task for me. Now, I am training my wife, in fact I am training her from the last two years almost. She almost had gotten there before we left for the US, but here I had to re-start from the scratch.

Now she's driving reasonably well forward, and practising hard to drive backwards. The saying is true that 'when your wife wants to drive, do not stand in her way', so I am at the most boring task again. I wonder when will be the next time I will have to do this. For my daughter may be..

Its too late in the night, tomorrow we are going on a three hour drive and my wife is going to drive all the way. I need to hit the bed now, sure of having some scary dreams, but that's how it goes.. cheers til next time.

An year, summarized..

In the last almost an year of my refraining from blogging many of my reader fans had questioned the abstention and I turned them away feigning to be a busy person having better things to do. But the fact that had curbed my blogging practice was that I forgot my password!! I am sure my fans wouldn't believe, but that's the truth.

In the last so many months many things happened. Work brought me to the United States of America again, this time too in short notice, triggering a chaos and sudden wrap up of my Pune establishment. I had to sell my furniture and appliances in less than three weeks. I was not sure if this was possible in that short a time and was concerned. Fortunately, there is this company called Infosys, which recruits freshers and underpays them, but makes them believe that they are superior to the rest of the people whom they share the world with just because they are Infoscions. I could find some of these Infoscion snobs at the right time, who thought that they should not bargain - in fact that they should pay some extra bucks than what asked - and I could sell all my things to them in three days at the price I quoted! I am sure they don't need most of the things they bought.

I couldn't sell my car, since I had a loan on it and it demanded official procedures potential enough to consume twenty plus days to strip off it before I can find another Infoscion ready to pay more than what I bought it for. On top of that the staggering passion I had for driving made me decide that I would drive the two thousand and something kilometers to my native state and would leave my car there. Now that I am married, I had to get permission from my pregnant wife, who agreed, but insisted that she would also travel with me. That made things more complicated since now, I had to get permission from the doctor too, but fortunately the doctor was not as insane as other people who would not shut their mouth for hours together on hearing something like this. She was okay with my wife taking the trip, unless it was in an auto rickshaw. Since the doctor gave me permission and more importantly some other people said I should not do that, I decided that I will do that. Thus we set off in the car loaded with stuff which made it look like a truck. After two and a half days of driving, which turned out be the best road trip I had in my life so far, we reached home in one piece with a week to the United States.

We came into zero degrees in the USofA in November last year, to the same place where I had been in the year before. With the two weeks of financial and non-financial support from my organization, I could resist the many advisers here who would tell you shouldn't walk the roads or eat the food in America, and settle down pretty fast which the advisers think is record fast for a person to build a settlement here. I think the advisers and their view points would be an interesting subject for another article, so I leave it here without further comments..

Oh, ya, couldn't help mentioning this one. Since I was going to have the baby and nobody would come over from India to help - something for which the Americans envy us Indians for - the advisers try to scare the shit out of me, attempting to picture the baby before me like a monster who is coming to teach me a lesson for all the sins that I committed in life ! True that I did not know how a baby is like to be with 24/7, but if I was to get scared of by any advisers, then I wouldn't have gone for the baby. Also I had the option of leaving my wife behind in India to deliver - which I wouldn't do. Both mine and my wife's parents were ready to come over, but I told them that they can come later on a vacation, because this time we won't have time for them as we will be busy taking care of the baby!

And we had the baby. She is the most wonderful baby I have seen - I have not seen many, so up close and personal. She did not eat us, as the advisers had predicted. My wife and I did not have any change in our life at all other than having a third person to stay with us - a very cooperative, adorable and sweet person. Life goes on with her, its so much fun to induct a person into the world, I had been enjoying it all the time, whether it is introducing her for the first time alien things like diaper or clothes, or getting a passport and travel records for her. Though I have never asked her explicitly, my wife also seems to enjoy the whole thing. She often keep singing nursery rhymes and cooks delicious food without a printed recipe. She is in the process of shifting her driving skills to the left side, so that she can drive in the US. I should admit that I am scared to be in the passenger seat with her, most of it would come out as scoldings. But Nikita - that's my little one's name - seems to enjoy it. I don't mind, as it would inspire my wife to complete her driving license tests. Then I can get drunk anywhere since I have her to drive me back home!

So people, that was the summary of my last one year without the password. Now that I found it, I would come back often with posts. Now we are going out to wal-mart to checkout what China has exported last week. See you later..