From the time I was born, I have been surrounded by rally cars and bikes, watching uncles and older cousins drive and ride. My mum, who is an experienced driver (she learnt at 16) loved her Chevy Impala and Ford Mustang when she was abroad, and had driven all over the world. Back in the mid-80s, she had a white Maruti 800. She’d drop me at tennis class, and even when I was just eight or nine years old, would ask me to change the gear, which I’d do, with my right hand! In fact, she, along with a school friend and neighbour, taught me how to drive in my teens.
New version of Maruti Omni
So the first chance I got, when I was about 14 or 15, I was behind the wheel of our grey Maruti van. I remember there was a wedding at home and all the adults had left to go shopping. This friend was over three years older than me, suggested that we go driving in the yard behind our house — it was a large field. I readily agreed, imagining that we’d be doing doughnuts and drifts all over.
Instead, we got a lot of mud on the car. We realised we needed to clean up and washed down the whole car. Then the driveway got muddy, so we washed that down too! Naturally, when the adults took one look at it, they knew the car had been somewhere it was not supposed to be. So in the end, we did get caught! We were lectured about underage driving and about the whole thing being dangerous. My mum confessed that she’d been teaching me. Anyway, after that, the keys were locked up. While that wasn’t quite my first car, it was definitely the first car experience that I remember.
As told to Sunalini Mathew
