My first set of wheels was a rented cycle in my village in Tripunithura, Kerala. Buying a cycle was considered an achievement when we were growing up, so we depended on rented cycles.
I bought my first car as a 25-year-old. It was a silver Maruti 800, a non-air-conditioned model. It is the vehicle on which I learnt driving. It was my first experience on a vehicle with a clutch and gears. I learnt driving in Calicut and tested my skills on the roads leading from the city to the airport. The route was a real-life version of a video game, with buses, cars and bikes coming from all sides, in a dash to the ‘finish’. I remember that people living in the houses on the sides of the route would live in constant fear of waking up to a bus on their rooftop. Once I could complete that route without any major mishap, my instructor was confident that I could drive anywhere on the planet.
Today, I enjoy driving and love to go on long drives to Lonavala and down the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Like most sensible people, I hate driving in rush-hour traffic in the city.
I drive a Mercedes now, but it has not been able to match up to the joy and pride of buying that Maruti 800. Nothing has come close to beating that sense of achievement and pride of owning my first pair of wheels.
As told to Nikhil Varma
