This summer I had planned to learn three things- How to swim, how to play a guitar, and how to drive? Of the three, I had rated them the hardest to the easiest respectively. Swimming would naturally have been a tough thing to learn for an overweight and overgrown kid. As far as music is concerned, I felt I was adept at playing the synthesizer, and graduating to a string instrument like guitar felt like the logical next step. Driving- that had to be a piece of cake- I am a mechanical engineer, and recently I had been hired by the country’s biggest car makers- of course driving was going to be no sweat.
The result in the end- I know how to swim a distance of 30 metres or so after a lot of huffing and puffing. Breathless gliding was easy as no effort had to be made in order to float, but that was no swimming, and definitely no fun. I made lesser progress with the guitar- never got ahead of my Do-Re-Mi. It’s just so effing irritating. I kept on plucking the wrong string while pressing the right one on the fret board, or the other way. Yet, however hopeless I was at playing the guitar, I was never pissed off. (Of course, I could always accompany with a synth.) The thing that hurt me the most was the fact that I was hopeless at driving. That’s it. I have said it. In a world where boys are rated according to their toys, and all talk is about the latest hot chick or the latest hot bike, I am a misfit.
Not that I was always so inept with the devices of locomotion. In my toddler years, I was an accomplished tricyclist (if there is such a thing!) . It did not take long to switch from three wheels to two. When I was six, I got my first kid bicycles, the one with short stunt wheels on either side, and soon I was zooming along at high speeds, and soon the stunts came off, and I was riding a true bicycle.
Then came my boarding school years- in the heart of the Himalayas, where one had no scope for any sort of biking or driving. Ten ignorant years passed, and in 2004 I was back in the big mean world, a world where most of my peers knew how to drive. In my Oak Grove days, I had replied to inquiries about my driving experience by stating the fact that I had no driving license, but now I was 18, and no such excuses could be made. Well, before going on to the big things, one ought to begin small, or so I thought. So I once took myself to a go carting rink.
Well, a go-cart is a really treacherous machine assembled by engineers. It looks so bloody simple- a small engine, powering the rear wheels, while a rudimentary steering steered the front end. One pedal for gas, one for brakes. No gears, no tension. So I went on and had my Schumacher moment . It was really simple. Push the pedal, gain the speed, slow at the turns. So I was feeling really good, but that feel good lasted only a few seconds. I saw my younger brother really tear the tracks down with an exceptionally fast lap-zooming along. Well, the good old vixen called envy rose from its slumber, and I paid for a second lap. This time, I meant business. Pressing the pedal into the floor, I just let the speed soak in like some drug. It was easy, zoom full speed to the curve, slam on the brakes, while steering, and then slam on the gas again. The low height cart had no danger of toppling over. It went all good until the last curve. I was waiting to get there in order to unveil my masterpiece. I wanted to negotiate it in an exceptionally high speed, by waiting on the brake till the last second, while accelerating all the while till the moment. Those who have seen dive bombers in low dives, pulling off at the last moment, know what I was thinking of achieving. Well, Math has never been my favourite subject, and I miscalculated. I could never make that curve at that speed without stopping. I t would have spoiled the neat show I was about to make ( how often do dive bombers pause in mid dive above the skyline, ponder a moment and then go back up??) Still, the worse was yet to come. In my haste to stop, I pressed on the pedal hard, only to realize that it was not the brake pedal- no points for guessing, it was the gas. What happened next was spectacular. My cart went into the banks of old tyres flanking the rink, and packed enough punch to uproot the steel frame fence beyond. As for me, I was flung right out of the seat, over the steering wheel, over the tyres and the fence into the soft flower bed. I don’t remember it, but the folks told that I lay still for a few seconds, and they feared I was hurt badly. Of course I was, but not physically. Miraculously, I was totally unscathed, the flower bed was soft, and luckily the fence had gone down , because those jagged edges could have done some good harm. However, the way I was hurt on the inside cannot be put down in words. It all happened in full public view, and as my folks remarked later, in a Tom-n-Jerry fashion. They rued that the camcorder had no spare reel left to catch the incident!!
So it was this year that I took it upon myself to learn driving once more. Well, in the job interviews, they often ask of mechanical engineer, “While driving, have you ever noticed…..” It felt very odd to tell them that I haven’t learnt to drive. Once again, I tried to begin small, and took a scooter for the job. Well, a scooter is definitely, a tougher beast than a go-cart. It has got ‘gears’. I knew the theory, courtesy the AutoBook I had crammed up earlier in order to appear in that interview. Start the engine, revv it up, engage the gear, engage the clutch slowly while increasing on the gas. Well, practically it was much tougher. First thing was learning how to mount the beast. Bicycles are mounted by throwing the right leg around and across, and I tried the same on the scooter, nearly bringing it upon myself. Then I was told to mount it like one would mount a ladies’ cycle. Well that was accomplished. Next came the starting. After getting the kicker slam on my ankles a number of times ( and for the love of God, it hurt!!) I managed to get it started. Now came the real problem-releasing the clutch while increasing the throttle opening, just in the right amount to glide along slowly gaining speed. It looked so damned easy, but it wasn’t. Either I was wringing the accelerator so much that I was racing along towards the nearest wall, or I did it so feebly as to stall the engine: Worst was the case when I released the clutch too quickly and shot off like a Jack-in-the-box. Wow, after half an hour of careful and anxious guidance, I managed to take one round of the ground, and then another. That’s all the ‘flight hours’ I have ever logged on a geared vehicle, and even that exhausted me so much that I didn’t touch the scooter or the 4-wheeler after that. I have foot plated on railway locomotives, and even driving a locomotive seems easier than driving a vehicle!!
Nowadays I see perfect idiots driving along easily, and I get a big inferiority complex, more so when I spotted one of my Professors-I cannot name him for obvious reasons- riding along on his bike. This Professor is the worst of the kind- a duffer who does not know elementary stuff. Till our last course with him, we suspected he did not know the spring-mass frequency equation-he kept on messing it up even after copying from the book- and this semester, he proved us wrong; he doesn’t even know primary school geometry, when he designated an obviously obtuse angle as 180 degrees ( and he is an M.Tech, Ph.D, and MBA- you can just imagine how good his professors were!!) Yet, though the big duffer he is, he knows how to drive- and that has really inspired me-when the most stupid person alive can learn it, why can’t I ? So see you guys next vacation, hopefully with a driving license!!
The result in the end- I know how to swim a distance of 30 metres or so after a lot of huffing and puffing. Breathless gliding was easy as no effort had to be made in order to float, but that was no swimming, and definitely no fun. I made lesser progress with the guitar- never got ahead of my Do-Re-Mi. It’s just so effing irritating. I kept on plucking the wrong string while pressing the right one on the fret board, or the other way. Yet, however hopeless I was at playing the guitar, I was never pissed off. (Of course, I could always accompany with a synth.) The thing that hurt me the most was the fact that I was hopeless at driving. That’s it. I have said it. In a world where boys are rated according to their toys, and all talk is about the latest hot chick or the latest hot bike, I am a misfit.
Not that I was always so inept with the devices of locomotion. In my toddler years, I was an accomplished tricyclist (if there is such a thing!) . It did not take long to switch from three wheels to two. When I was six, I got my first kid bicycles, the one with short stunt wheels on either side, and soon I was zooming along at high speeds, and soon the stunts came off, and I was riding a true bicycle.
Then came my boarding school years- in the heart of the Himalayas, where one had no scope for any sort of biking or driving. Ten ignorant years passed, and in 2004 I was back in the big mean world, a world where most of my peers knew how to drive. In my Oak Grove days, I had replied to inquiries about my driving experience by stating the fact that I had no driving license, but now I was 18, and no such excuses could be made. Well, before going on to the big things, one ought to begin small, or so I thought. So I once took myself to a go carting rink.
Well, a go-cart is a really treacherous machine assembled by engineers. It looks so bloody simple- a small engine, powering the rear wheels, while a rudimentary steering steered the front end. One pedal for gas, one for brakes. No gears, no tension. So I went on and had my Schumacher moment . It was really simple. Push the pedal, gain the speed, slow at the turns. So I was feeling really good, but that feel good lasted only a few seconds. I saw my younger brother really tear the tracks down with an exceptionally fast lap-zooming along. Well, the good old vixen called envy rose from its slumber, and I paid for a second lap. This time, I meant business. Pressing the pedal into the floor, I just let the speed soak in like some drug. It was easy, zoom full speed to the curve, slam on the brakes, while steering, and then slam on the gas again. The low height cart had no danger of toppling over. It went all good until the last curve. I was waiting to get there in order to unveil my masterpiece. I wanted to negotiate it in an exceptionally high speed, by waiting on the brake till the last second, while accelerating all the while till the moment. Those who have seen dive bombers in low dives, pulling off at the last moment, know what I was thinking of achieving. Well, Math has never been my favourite subject, and I miscalculated. I could never make that curve at that speed without stopping. I t would have spoiled the neat show I was about to make ( how often do dive bombers pause in mid dive above the skyline, ponder a moment and then go back up??) Still, the worse was yet to come. In my haste to stop, I pressed on the pedal hard, only to realize that it was not the brake pedal- no points for guessing, it was the gas. What happened next was spectacular. My cart went into the banks of old tyres flanking the rink, and packed enough punch to uproot the steel frame fence beyond. As for me, I was flung right out of the seat, over the steering wheel, over the tyres and the fence into the soft flower bed. I don’t remember it, but the folks told that I lay still for a few seconds, and they feared I was hurt badly. Of course I was, but not physically. Miraculously, I was totally unscathed, the flower bed was soft, and luckily the fence had gone down , because those jagged edges could have done some good harm. However, the way I was hurt on the inside cannot be put down in words. It all happened in full public view, and as my folks remarked later, in a Tom-n-Jerry fashion. They rued that the camcorder had no spare reel left to catch the incident!!
So it was this year that I took it upon myself to learn driving once more. Well, in the job interviews, they often ask of mechanical engineer, “While driving, have you ever noticed…..” It felt very odd to tell them that I haven’t learnt to drive. Once again, I tried to begin small, and took a scooter for the job. Well, a scooter is definitely, a tougher beast than a go-cart. It has got ‘gears’. I knew the theory, courtesy the AutoBook I had crammed up earlier in order to appear in that interview. Start the engine, revv it up, engage the gear, engage the clutch slowly while increasing on the gas. Well, practically it was much tougher. First thing was learning how to mount the beast. Bicycles are mounted by throwing the right leg around and across, and I tried the same on the scooter, nearly bringing it upon myself. Then I was told to mount it like one would mount a ladies’ cycle. Well that was accomplished. Next came the starting. After getting the kicker slam on my ankles a number of times ( and for the love of God, it hurt!!) I managed to get it started. Now came the real problem-releasing the clutch while increasing the throttle opening, just in the right amount to glide along slowly gaining speed. It looked so damned easy, but it wasn’t. Either I was wringing the accelerator so much that I was racing along towards the nearest wall, or I did it so feebly as to stall the engine: Worst was the case when I released the clutch too quickly and shot off like a Jack-in-the-box. Wow, after half an hour of careful and anxious guidance, I managed to take one round of the ground, and then another. That’s all the ‘flight hours’ I have ever logged on a geared vehicle, and even that exhausted me so much that I didn’t touch the scooter or the 4-wheeler after that. I have foot plated on railway locomotives, and even driving a locomotive seems easier than driving a vehicle!!
Nowadays I see perfect idiots driving along easily, and I get a big inferiority complex, more so when I spotted one of my Professors-I cannot name him for obvious reasons- riding along on his bike. This Professor is the worst of the kind- a duffer who does not know elementary stuff. Till our last course with him, we suspected he did not know the spring-mass frequency equation-he kept on messing it up even after copying from the book- and this semester, he proved us wrong; he doesn’t even know primary school geometry, when he designated an obviously obtuse angle as 180 degrees ( and he is an M.Tech, Ph.D, and MBA- you can just imagine how good his professors were!!) Yet, though the big duffer he is, he knows how to drive- and that has really inspired me-when the most stupid person alive can learn it, why can’t I ? So see you guys next vacation, hopefully with a driving license!!
