When I was a teenager growing up in Calcutta (Kolkata now) in the late ’80s and the early ’90s, all I wanted to do was get behind the wheel and drive. My dad gave me a white Maruti Gypsy when I turned 18. I altered the vehicle, putting in flashy lights, taking apart the silencer to hear the engine scream and replacing the regular horn with an air horn!
I had a lot of fun learning to drive on that machine. Kolkata is the best place to learn driving. Pedestrians flit in and out as they wish on the roads, the traffic moves haphazardly, and no one cares much about driving in lanes. It was an adventure every day. My friends and I began the Swachh Bharat campaign much earlier. I remember driving on empty streets of Calcutta late at night, hunting for people relieving themselves on streets. We would close in on our unsuspecting victim, blare the airhorn and put on all the lights in the car, scaring the poor chaps away.
During my stint in the UK, I took classes to get a licence there. I was amused at the driving instructor who explained the basic driving rules and was grinning in my head. I wondered if I should ask him whether he could follow all these rules and drive without any problem in Kolkata. In the United Kingdom, I also ended up performing for police officers at a police station, after friends and I were pulled up by the cops, as the driver was drunk.
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Today, I am a safe driver and no longer stalk random folk peeing on the street. Nor do I use airhorns and flashy lights to scare anyone.
As told to Nikhil Varma