It’s a long drive baby…

There is something about driving and drivers. Maybe it started in my philosophical head with the age old saying- “Life is a long drive…towards your ultimate destination.” So the way you drive, the way you shift gears…in fact even the way you hold the gear knob…all translates to what you really are in your life as well.

I like people who are chilled out at the wheel. Who hold the gear with an ease. Maybe sometimes just shift it while holding the rod and not the traditional way with the knob. Observing anything and everything around me has been a hobby. I have seen drivers ranging from a degree where one hand is on the horn and the other resting on the window and one foot on the accelerator and the other resting boldly; to the ones who would not drive but float you (I kind of admire such drivers). Who would make you feel like the government is doing a wonderful job at managing the infrastructure, by managing to avoid all the ditches and breakers on the road and will do that so effortlessly and charmingly. Then there are those who are interested in the events on the roadsides more than the lady crossing the road right in front of the car. Yeah! Have been in that too! There are some who are close to perfect. I mean, like they will be smooth, manage to talk to the fellow passengers while estimating the change of a traffic signal from go to stop and also slow down or stop if required (and not by pass) a pedestrian and not because it was some gorgeous babe but irrespective of who it was. It goes down to even- how much you love your car. Not because of how expensive it is but because it has a face. We hat I mean by that is you feel what it feels. I don’t mean that you get paranoid to the extent of the cliché- kissing your car a goodnight. But at least imagine the expression on its face when you try to drive it on a pedestrian-type-road on your left in order to get to the front of the rest of the traffic which is waiting for a red light to turn green. Of course, not forgetting how dangerous and unlawful it is.

In the present times of road rage and transformation of driving per say being converted to extended working hours, it’s become almost impossible to relish the seat behind the wheel. It becomes evident from what we see every day on the road when we travel to and fro from office. One car per person. Or if two- it’s the driver. As I have seen the other side of the world too, the country side I mean, where a person knows the other fellow drivers, maybe not by names or designations or offices, but may be by the style in which they say a gracious greeting to each other. Be it by the style of the horn or the number of seconds for which their headlights flashes.

And what’s with the woman drivers. If what I stated all this were to hold true what would it imply for us?!  That we live our lives dangerously? Or slowly? This is something that I have never been able to figure out.

Drive safe…drive willingly.