License.

I recently met a person who'd cleared his CA driver's license the 5Th time around. That was one time higher than me. I thought I'd blog about the nightmare I called "acquiring a license to drive"
People who know me know that I am a girly girl. I never really bothered to learn to ride a bicycle or a bike. Let alone driving a two wheeler, I was paranoid about crossing the road. Now I am talking about the good old Indian roads where you just walk past all those lorries and city buses madly honking at you (and those honks fall into a bedlam of a gazillion honks that flood your ears while your eyes look at the expanse of a jam like traffic moving at a pace possible only in action movies!)and wish for a miracle to reach the other side of the road in a single piece.
I heard people quote intelligent sounding sentences. "you are a handicap if you cannot drive here" an older man opined. "except that no one will pity you"
Well, I think he was right.
I was bent upon getting a license more to get rid of the people who haunted me in my dreams asking "do you have a license yet?" than to get rid of the "handicap - no pity" situation.
Sarat didn't want to teach me. yeah, the cliche of the first quarrel with the spouse. We'd actually had our first quarrel already but he didn't agree anyway.
I scheduled for an instructor to come and teach me by patiently calling all the numbers I found in the yellow pages, zeroing on the most friendly sounding fellow.
The D day dawned and I got out for my first lesson, and the second and the third till I found the guts to drive all by myself. I'd taken a good 8 months and three instructors in the process of "learning" to drive and already flunked a test one of my instructors took me to in Hayward.
Then came the time when Sarat thought that I could do the driving all by myself.
My second test was a miserable failure that lasted a good three minutes. I drove out of the DMV and heard a guy honk from behind, before I reached the signal. The examiner thought I was too slow and the rest was history.
My third time was pretty cool I though. At least till the time we completed the whole test and got out of the car (which meant that there were no critical errors) but the anti climax was that I was too fast. The instructor, a young Asia woman, called my husband and told him about the escapade of a driving test and refused the license as she thought I'd not drive in the stipulated speed limits.
It was time for a new written test that was more like one of those reading comprehension tests in CAT. The questions started pouring. Every time a person saw a car in eye shot, they would ask me the million dollar question. "Sp do you have your license yet?"
God knows how I tried to avoid any and all conversations and people that had a potential to ask me THE question. I spent quiet a few sleepless nights, virtually driving in my dreams that I dreamt with my eyes wide opened while on my back, staring at the ceiling and trying to sleep.
"It has just two controls, the gas and the steering" a well meaning friend tried to cheer me up. "It is not rocket science" a relative observed.
I had to take it opon me to prove that I am not "fine motor skill" deprived. I tried for the fourth time, which, surprisingly turned out to be the final time, the lucky time, the celebrating time.
This was four years ago. I never go on long drives. My driving destinations on a regular basis are the Bart station, the mall, the grocery store, the library or a few places that fall under the jurisdiction of the city of Dublin and Pleasanton.
It is a relief to have a Driver license when a store manager asks for an identity, it is a blessing to have on those days when you want that Quiznos sandwich bad and there is no one around to drive you there. It is a privilege to have when you want to hit that store that has the most happening sale before the bargain queens hit it. Most of all it is a boon to have when someone asks "Can you drive?"