What are you passionate about?
Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you – Oprah Winfrey
I love to drive. Long drives with the windows rolled down, at a speed where you can look out and enjoy the wind blowing through your hair, are the kind of drives I am talking about. That first evening I met this guy, we had gone for a drink with a common friend and when I hit my curfew I stepped out to look for an autorickshaw. This guy was just an acquaintance and stepped out with me to ensure I got into the vehicle. But finding no autorickshaws in the vicinity, when I decided to walk to the nearest stop to figure out a public transport to head home, he offered to drive me home. I refused. I was an independent woman and we were in 2001, it was perfectly safe for me to figure out a way to get back home on my own. And we weren’t even on a date! We were just a group of friends hanging out and I decided to head home early. He insisted and after almost 30 minutes of back and forth, discussions, and arguments while I waited to see if any autorickshaw would stop, I finally got into the car. This wasn’t my first car drive home. I had sat in several cars before this instance. But this was the first time, I met someone who offered to drop me home after the first meeting. He had no clue about where I lived. He had no clue about the route or the roads to take. Yet, there he was, driving me home at 7 pm on a weekend because it was my curfew.
The first road we took was the inner ring road, a road that did not exist when I came to this locality a few years earlier. This was one of the more obvious facelifts my hometown had undergone while I had been finishing my postgraduation in a different city. This inner ring road, extended around the city limits- my hometown had transformed from a small contained sleepy town, into a bustling metropolitan hub that was thriving and throbbing to a new beat. Back in the early 2000s traffic was just about picking up, so a drive at 7:30 pm was not as time-consuming as it would be today.
He was driving an early model Maruti 800 with a sports car steering wheel. The AC was questionable, but my hometown still lived up to its ‘hill station’ vibes and there was no real requirement for me to test it. With the windows rolled down, we were jauntily driving the car at a steady 70kmph clip.
The windows rolled down, just following the traffic signals that seemed to be tuned to my arrival, turning green as I reached the signal, listening to a random FM channel playing the top Hindi songs on the radio it was one of the longest drives I have been on. We were driving from a location close to the old airport to the south of my hometown, on a circuitous road- that drive lasted all of 55 minutes. Maybe it was the combination of one drink, the cool wind in my hair, and the most enjoyable music that I could sing at the top of my voice, but, this ended up being one of the most enjoyable 55 minutes of my life. It was also the 55 minutes that changed my life.
Until this drive, I did not care much for cars, owning them or driving them. But this drive changed my perspective of how enjoyable driving can be, especially if you have the music of your choice with you. Although I fell in love with driving that evening, I only learned to drive two years later. I went through the usual angst to sign up and then spent time trying to understand the logistics of everything I had to remember to get my license. The instructions given to my instructor and the extra sessions I had to sit through, the nails I chipped because of these special instructions are aspects of the story that I fondly recollect today. While this was almost a few decades ago when I relocated and had to resit for the licensing, I remembered the anxiety I felt earlier and only received my license after a few tries. The best part of this relicensing was that I got to drive again. The worst part was that I was driving to soccer classes.
I love driving, so I took the soccer classes as well as the grocery shopping excuses to get behind the wheel. We did a few drives around the city. I cannot explain the joy of driving in a location where there is a guarantee about the time estimates you provide to reach from Point A to Point B. I hit all the time estimates Google Maps provided that year. Wide empty roads. A 1.8-litre engine MUV. Amazing suspensions. A personal playlist blasting some amazing tunes on the speakers. Driving could not get better than this. We did a long drive for every school-prescribed vacation that year. And then school took over our lives as did soccer and cricket and my drives revolved around schedules and deadlines and arrivals and departures. And before we realized it, it was time to say goodbyes and relocate again.
Did you know that soccer classes get more frequent and last a lot longer as the kids grow older? When we relocated, the kid moved to a new team and this team met twice a week for the first 6 months, and then they started having matches and meetups and friendlies and before I could breathe again, I found my entire week blocked by soccer classes. I did a couple of months of these sessions booking cabs and accompanying the kid around. But this got old fast, and I did not bother to get licensed again. I did not want to drive to be a glorified Uber driver, I wanted to drive for the love of driving. Wide empty roads still beckon, but as long as there is soccer class, there will be no license. I don’t even want the temptation to drive to soccer class. Because driving for me is to feel the wind in my hair, with the window rolled down, listening to some tunes I fancy and a few that I can sing. That’s the emotion I want to experience again, not anger, angst, and frustration.
Just a little more 