Hello, reader.
As the year closes, I’ve been feeling this urge to tell you something, some story. I’ve been writing bits and pieces, but been dissatisfied with them; none of them seemed fit for this space. Even as I wonder why I self-censor to this extent, a story occurred to me this afternoon, just as I parked the car after a drive that involved three stops.
If you’re wondering why this merits a piece of writing, I urge you to read Gaadi Chalaana Seekhein which I wrote in late 2022.
TL;DR: I’d only just learnt to drive, and as a cautious, Indian-road-hating person, it wasn’t easy.
I wasn’t one of those smart kids who learnt to drive at 18 and comfortably got a license, something I’m annoyed with myself for now; all those long college breaks were spent having fun and going around Chennai and Bangalore without a thought for the future.
In the last year, if you think I managed to get a license, at least now, as a 37-year-old, I have to say, unfortunately, no.
Not for lack of trying, though; I attempted the test and failed.
Before you judge me for failing the test – for Indian car driving license tests are usually ridiculously easy; often you’re asked by the examiner sitting next to you to drive straight, turn left, reverse, and so on, in an empty road, and then you hand over to the next person waiting in the back set to take their test – I want to tell you about the Delhi license test that is a curse from hell.
A corporate took over the driving test process as a Corporate Social Responsibility initiative to promote safe driving and reduce corruption by removing middle men – including the examiner – but in the process made it so difficult that people who have been driving for decades fail the test.
The Indian driving-learning ecosystem is a fascinating case study for someone who wishes to understand this country. Driving schools are littered across the city, but they have next-to-zero connection to the driving test that will eventually give you the license. My driving instructor did a stellar job teaching a novice like me how to hold my own in the Delhi traffic, its narrow roads, the cows, the people, the crows, and the other drivers who will not yield an inch on the road. But he did not prepare me for the dreaded driving test. He did, however, offer to get me a license if I paid him a pretty large sum of money – the very aspect of corruption that the corporate was trying to stem. Upstanding citizen that I am, I refused and said I would go the honest route.
I watched dozens of YouTube videos to understand the test. It is completely automated in that no human being sits next to you to tell you what to do. You’re on your own, getting through one test to the next, all the while being watched by examiners, panopticon style, through cameras placed all over. You’re given little room for mistakes such as crossing the yellow line or grazing the orange traffic pole, and you must pass each test to go to the next one. The tests are a mix of simple and horrifying: you have to trace the letter S in reverse, following a shockingly narrow track; then you trace the number 8, which is reasonably easy; then you parallel park; then you drive up a slope, wait for a few seconds and restart driving, but without letting your car slide back more than a foot. Each of these tests has to be passed within a specific amount of time and by not reversing/”adjusting” your car more than twice or thrice.
The tests were getting mixed feedback from the public and media; I learnt that 85% of those who took them failed, and there were multiple news reports dismissing the test’s inadequacy in testing the driver’s preparedness for driving on Indian roads. A woman who had driven for over 20 years failed the test multiple times while trying to renew her license, one story reported. Others talked about how they reduced corruption and therefore put only properly trained drivers on Indian roads (never mind that the driving training system hasn’t caught up on training learner drivers for these tests).
Even as I read up on all of this, I tried to convince myself that I would be in the lucky, no, prepared, 15% that passed the test. I feverishly watched videos to learn “tricks” to pass. I drove around the locality regularly to practice, VK sitting next to me, and even found a roundabout around which to practice the dreaded reverse ‘S’. I tried to learn how to use my automatic-gear car to my benefit, grateful for its hill assist feature and the reverse camera. Practically everyone I spoke to regularly knew about the tests and what I was worried about but also how I was prepared.
The d-day arrived. Mother wished me luck. I asked her to pray for me. VK and I drove to the test centre, and at the entrance they asked him to leave. He watched me drive away on my own like a parent seeing off their child on the first day of preschool. After I got into the waiting area, I saw others take the test, and panic slowly bubbled within me. The track seemed really narrow, and my fear reached an all-time high when a woman froze at the beginning of the reverse S and was asked to leave soon after, because she had taken a long time. She had barely driven a few inches! The woman looked crestfallen. She pleaded with them to try once more, but the group of examiners – three or four men in their 20s, looking so “Delhi” with their cropped beards and sunglasses – did not budge. I repeatedly whispered to myself that I’d be okay, I’d practiced so well.
We were then taken on a tour of the track to familiarise ourselves with the test. The examiner told us several times to wear the seat belt. I jumped in with questions with every set of instructions: “is it compulsory to switch on the indicator every time we turn?” (no, it wasn’t); “please repeat the instructions”; “we have to wait here (pointing) or there (pointing) for the signal to turn green?” and so on.
Finally, we were at the test track. I was the second, and watched the first guy go through the first couple of tests before it was my turn. I can do this, I told myself.
I confidently drove in and positioned the car at the beginning of the reverse S. Suddenly, I realised that my car was too big for this track. I couldn’t see the front: was I at the right point before the yellow line? Or had I crossed it? I was asked to start driving. I had three minutes to complete the first test.
I started reversing, going through the first few metres confidently, before I had to turn. At that point, my mind blanked out. I’m a very visual person, someone who remembers directions based on images than on actual north-south-east-west or left-right. I couldn’t figure out which way to turn to trace the reverse S, and the track itself was unhelpful as there were yellow lines everywhere. I took a deep breath and mentally traced the reverse S in my mind, and realised that I had to reverse to my left. I plodded along slowly – the speed limit was 15 kmh, not that any sane driver can reverse in an S shape any faster. I was going along just fine, when I heard a scrape on the left. I carried along without paying it any attention, confident that I had imagined it, but also scared to give it any thought lest it distract me. I inched towards the edge of the damned S, when the examiner came up to me.
“You hit the orange pole,” he said.
Damn. So I hadn’t imagined the scraping sound.
“Are you sure?” I asked him.
“Yes, and anyway you’ve spent more than three minutes on this test”.
He asked me to drive out of the testing area and then to meet him. I dutifully did so, passing every other test that I would have had to complete had I passed the first test. Even the slope test that I had dreaded was so simple that I wanted to scream out of frustration.
I parked the car outside the test area and called VK.
“I failed,” I told him, my frustration beginning to give way to angry tears. He sat next to me in the passenger seat, and I recounted what had happened, crying and cursing.
I then composed myself and went to meet the examiner, seated (traumatically for me) at the beginning of the reverse S test track. Another driver had begun the test, and I watched, a little jealous, as he slowly but surely navigated the curves of the reverse S. As he passed us, the examiner stopped him.
“What’s your name?” he asked the driver. I looked on, surprised that the examiner was interrupting the test.
The driver mentioned his name.
The examiner repeated the name, and said “How did you forget to wear your seatbelt?”
Despite my rage and sadness, it was all I could do to not burst out laughing. What an idiot! I thought. How could he forget this most basic rule of driving?!
As the examiner turned away the begging and pleading learner driver, though, my rage returned: I was in the same category as an idiotic driver who hadn’t worn his seatbelt. Both of us had failed. I was mollified when an uncle who had driven for over 20 years also failed. So had a jaunty barely-out-of-his-teens guy who had parallel parked with an inch of the tyre outside the yellow line (or some such thing).
The examiner soon returned my papers with a “FAIL” stamped on it in big, blue letters. I bristled with indignation; I had been a “good student” all my life.
Having spent the previous few months training exclusively for this test, VK and I decided that my time would be better spent learning to drive around the city and get confident, rather than focusing on the test itself. The very next day, I drove to meet my friend, in my own way trying to get over the test failure. This was way more fun than license test practice, and I progressed steadily over four months, including a highlight of driving my parents to a temple in Delhi. A bad pain in the shoulder and right arm put a screeching halt to this progress, though, and for the last couple of months, I didn’t drive at all. Between physiotherapy and exercises and work, driving had to take a pause.
This afternoon, reader, I resumed driving. I was worried that I’d forgotten, that I’d be scared of the roads again, and I was, but within minutes the familiar pleasure of driving, gauging distances, muttering at other drivers, and so on, was back. I managed it.
And so, dear reader, this seemed to be a fitting story to tell you as the year ends. 2023 was a mixed bag in many ways, but to finally own a car and be able to drive it has been an absolute joy.
Happy New Year, and I hope to have more stories for you in 2024.