A Good Woman Driver
Yesterday as usual around 8PM I think I was driving home from office. The roads I drive are quite dangerous, there are lots and lots of potholes, now someone has filled some of them with sand and seems to have compacted them a bit well, plus you have got these people, Chennai people who do not give a damn about traffic rules. To add to that the street lighting would be awful, most of them would have their headlights turned high beam, sometimes against those bright headlights it would be difficult to see the roads.
Driving in Chennai is not just looking at the road and driving. None follows rules here, some one would cut before you. Overtake you without warning, from the opposite side a scooter or a fast car would over take a tanker despite knowing that it would cause a lot of discomfort to you. You must look at the road, you must look at the eyes, hands, wheels of other vehicles too to determine their next move and drive by it.
To add to the woes you have this Road Transport Officers who are perverts, they make it difficult for men to get license, so there are men who bribe them and get their license and being a pervert they grant license to woman just like that. Because of this people who go in car’s like me, when we spot a woman driver on bike we tend to keep distance. Their driving seems shit, their vehicle could change direction any time, sway from one side of the road to other, brake and so on. You need to get a man drunk to do that feat, woman do it just like that.
To make the matters worst, if you hit a woman, or a bike with a kid on it, or even a bike with a family driven by man, you will be blamed for it no matter who has made the mistake. Woman, kids and family are like cows in India, they can do what ever they want. Cows here shit and urinate on roads, drop their dung, stand on the road unmoving and obstructing traffic and none bothers about them or even complain. If you hit them or shoo away, our priminsters Hindu men, will come out drag you out and beat you, because you have abused the Hindu Goddess Lakshmi. These people of so found of cows, one of their favorite drink is cows urine, it like Coca-Cola here.
Okay with all these in mind, yesterday I was driving behind a woman who was on a blue scooter. Definitely I thought she was a crap driver. She was wearing a red saree, black border with golden silk threads in the black woven into intricate pattern. If she did something stupid and I hit her, possibly she was having an auspicious occasion, and hence she was wearing a rich dress, the people would gather around and blame me like hell. I tried to over take and clear her off my mind, but the bad roads and opposing traffic did not permit that. I maintained my distance from her.
After sometime I notices something strange. Unlike many woman on road, she did not make a mistake, she was driving perfect. She had a blue helmet too that matched her color of her bike. ‘Woman thinking about road safety? Wow!’ I thought. But I persisted, after nearly 5 minutes and 3 kilometers of this tense follow up I was able to over take her. Thank fucking God, I raced away, and no more woman scooterist I saw ahead of me from then on.
With roads filled with crap woman driver, I must clap for this one.