Rajiv Gandhi, Vehicles and I - Part 2

I do not know whether you have learnt to drive a car in India.

It is an experience in itself.

Firstly, you approach a driving school and ask them for lessons.

Indians are kings of packages. For everything there is a package. More about that some other time.

The driving school package consists of the following:

• Allowing you into the driving school premises
• Giving you approximately ten hours of on-road practice
• Test fees etc.
• Ensuring the relevant paper-work gets completed at the RTO (Regional Transport Office) and the test goes on smoothly
  

In the last point, both 'Ensuring' and 'smoothly' are euphemisms which every Indian understands; if no, then please watch the Tamil movie 'Indian' :-))

About five years ago, I was in India on a slightly longish vacation. Since driving cars was not one of my core skills, I had decided to acquire the same. Now, if I was really serious about it, I would have gone about learning to drive a car in Singapore itself - where it costs about $3000 and anything between 3-6 months to achieve the same. [I have heard of people hosting parties after they get a driving licence; I can understand that!]

Well, I was more interested in the shortcuts and decided to give it a go in Chennai at a fraction of the cost of doing it in Singapore.

Onward march!

Step 1: Approach the driving school. Tick.
Step 2: Learn to drive. Half-Tick.
(I was learning to drive on the ubiquitous Maruti 800; whenever there was a turn or change of fictitious-lane, I used the indicators, much to the chagrin of my instructor; he kept chastising me saying that it will confuse other drivers if I use the indicator signals instead of hand signals!!!! I was having self-doubts on whether it was a right decision to have chosen to learn driving in India. But then hind-sight is 20/20)
Step 3: Go for testing.

Here my second tryst with Rajiv Gandhi unfolded. If you know what happens on a testing day, jump to the section titled BLISS below ;-)




The testing scene goes something like this...

• You reach the RTO in the morning of the designated day with a few butterflies in the stomach.
• Then you wait until noon or sometimes till the evening.
• Your driving school agent will be waiting with a bundle of applications belonging to various 'students' who are to undergo the test that day.
• The testing inspector will condescend to test the students according to his whim and fancy.

There will be several such officers and when they appear at the testing site, there will be a group of agents running after them to impress upon them to get their students tested first. Well, the testing site is nothing but a secluded street or a discarded ground. Don't even think of any traffic signs at the test site. If the normal roads do not have any proper signs, why should the test sites have them???

Eventually, four students and the tester will get into a car - provided by the driving school where you 'learnt' from. Typically, each student will be asked to drive for about 50m on a straight road. If you are unlucky, you might have to do a right turn or a left turn - only hand signals, no indicators, please. At the end of this charade, the tester will get down and utter some loud banalities such as 'None of the students know how to drive' or 'What did you teach them? To drive a bullock-cart, perhaps?', to the agent.

Immediately, the agent will go on the defensive and will assume a very suppliant role and try to suffix each word with a 'Sir'.

After about an hour of such agony, the agent will vanish into the cavernous RTO building and will not return until it is late in the evening.



He will then beckon each student and get us to take photograps, sign documents and at the end of it all, hand you a small credit-card sized laminated photo ID called driving licence!

BLISS!!

Everything went well until the start of the testing.

As soon as the tester saw me, he pulled the agent aside and whispered something into his ears. I looked down at myself and was convinced that I did not show any signs of being a Non-Resident Indian. Regular tee-shirt, regular trousers, bathroom slippers - probably that was a mistake; other students had shoes on! But then that must be fine, I was thinking.

The agent after a reasonably long discussion with the tester, came back diffidently and asked me what the problem was with my left eye. That is it! Am I going to be rejected because of a stupid physical deformity which has no bearing on my seeing ability?

I told the agent that there was nothing wrong with my eye and I could see as well as others although with the help of very mildly powered glasses. I decided that it will be better to talk to the main guy himself and approached the tester and asked him what the problem was. For a tall and well-built man, he was acting mildly, almost as if he was afraid of me. He requested me kindly to go and get a certificate from a registered medical practitioner (that is a doctor from the Government hospital, you see) saying that my eyes are good.

Now this is a bombshell! This is not the established process at the RTO! There is something wrong here. I spoke to the agent and even offered a generous tip to ensure smoothness of transaction. His eyes gleamed a bit and he went into another conference with the tester. I could snatch a few words like 'IT', 'Singapore' etc. I was reasonably confident that things could be handled now.

Presently the agent returned and he was not a happy man. The tester insists on the certificate !!!&(@*&#(

I had no choice but to rush out and spend another half-a-day to get the required certificate, only to be told that I could be tested only the next day.
Bad karma? Perhaps.

Next day, the tester scrutinized my certificate thoroughly and again looked at my face and eyes for a long time, before agreeing to test me reluctantly. And like how he tested?!!
Instead of the 50m course, I was made to drive almost a kilometre with various gear changes, right and left turns, reverses - almost everything except the three-point turn (Thank God! That would have killed me.)

When we returned to our starting point, the agent was a completely lost man. He was twisting with anxiety and asked me to give the details. When I told him about what happened, he was absolutely incredulous. He kept repeating, 'He is not like that at all!'.

To cut a long story short, I got the driver's licence in the evening, one day late and with the additional knowledge that I well and truly passed the test!

Later in the evening, when I was buttonholing the agent about the fact that he has to pay me some money, now that I really (!) passed the test and that the entire operation was nothing but smooth, he shared a piece of news which he had evidently gleaned from the RTO grapevine:

Apparently, the testing inspector assigned to me was the same guy, who in 1990/91 had 'tested' and 'approved' the driving licence of Sivarasan - the One-Eyed Jack.
Advantages (?) of having one bad eye!!!  
Bad karma? Indeed.

In the investigations that ensued after Rajiv's death, he had to go through hell of an inquiry and just escaped a conviction!

I understood the guy's problem. As soon as he saw me, all the ghosts (no pun intended) of the past would have danced in front of his two good eyes. Hence his request for the certificate, additional testing [so that nobody can blame him for dereliction of duty later] etc. CYA at its best!

I am not sure whether the grape-vine was true or not. But I did go through the experience.

P.S. Incidentally, I have not driven any car for any distance, however small since that day. All the trouble for nothing!!!