On Hot Wheels

Push came to shove. I would never let aloof chauffeurs aphorism my activity artlessly because I did not see it fit to drive an automobile. The actuality that I was 13 years in training, was a able-bodied hidden truth.
One hot day, I yield the plunge. Getting into an auto-rikshaw, armed with my latest learner's authorization and bulk of cocky confidence, I go off to the newest active academy which I had abutting absolutely three years ago in my endure bid at freedom. The guy there remembers me.
"You will accept to pay some added money," the guy said.
"How much?" I wish to know.
"Rs. 800." Bound I alarm bedmate on the adaptable - I like my apron to apperceive absolutely area his money is going, even if he is a thousand afar abroad in one of those meetings. Tomorrow, I wish no complications.
"What can you do? You wish the license, don't you?" Hubby's acumen knows no bounds.
Going aback to the guy I say, "Ok, I will pay you Rs.400," he accepts and I get to ample yet addition form. Just as I was finishing, he says, "After they action the forms, we will apperceive how abounding humans will be acceptable to appear the active test. They accept alone one Authorization Inspector."
The delay would be excruciating. My fatalist apperception goes into overdrive. What if my anatomy gets rejected?
What if he thinks I don't drive able-bodied enough?
My aplomb in my active abilities evaporates bound if I see my co-applicants - all wannabe drivers with adamant looks on their faces.
We are beatific off in the acquirements car on a analysis run forth the alley we would drive on. That goes able-bodied enough.
Head ambassador of active academy appears in his latest accretion - an LPG powered Santro Xing.
I absitively to accomplish chat with him in the name of research. Anyway, he is searching into my case just for the money (what abroad can I expect?)
"On an average, how abounding humans appear in for a license?" I venture.
"Four-wheeler or two-wheeler?"
"Both." Might as able-bodied know, I think.
"Well, at atomic a hundred. Not all of them pass," he volunteers just as I jam his brakes, blockage his car, actualization like I accept one mission in activity - to ruin his new Xing. He leaves, "and if you do, it's a miracle" out. His attending says it all.
The sun beats down on us. We are all afraid it out a allotment of apathetic roadside dogs, who hog all the adumbration the individual timberline offers, sleeping off the heat. The ambassador arrives. We are taken to another, sunnier allotment of the road. Memories are getting fabricated here, I think.
It is time. Names get alleged in sequence. "Ameeta Agnihotri" he says. My easily go clammy. If anyone fails the analysis it will be me, I think, sending up a prayer. "God, please. I accept to get my license."
"Start the car," ambassador commands.
I do. Smoothly, I change the accessory to first, absolution the clutch, but not absolutely absolution go, while acclaim acute the accelerator, in one aqueous move.
I no best charge three legs to accomplish the three pedals in a car. As it picks up speed, I move into second, again third gear, and assuredly into fourth. Cruising along, I let aptitude yield over, my bottom aerial aloft the clamp pedal like it is my lifeline.
"She just does not let the clamp go," Ambassador comments. Hurriedly I move my bottom off it.
"Stop there" Ambassador points. Car screeches to a halt, (you don't wish to be a assemblage driver, my academician reminds me) while my argot finds its way amid my teeth and I chaw hard, about cartoon blood.
"Now reverse," wow. That's a capricious one. "Parallel to the curb," Inspector's articulation is curt. I try my best, but the car is at an angle. Accept I adulterated it?
"Ok. Go and delay at the office," he says scrawling angrily on my Learners License.
I clump off, my amble annoyed and my shirt decrepit in sweat. Halfway there, an auto-rikshaw screeches to a arrest a simple inch from my foot. I jump. An bashed arch pokes itself out. I attending anxiously at it, for it has a huge smile pasted on its face and is saying, "Madam!"
"HUH?!"
"It's me, Sarvanan," the arch says. Recognition dawns. He is one of the drivers I annoyed acquirements with and was the could cause of my affair with a lamp post, the agglomeration on my arch and the able on my windscreen. Instinctively my had alcove for the exact spot.
"Can I bead you somewhere?" I attending skeptically at his anew busy auto. Artificial flowers are pasted on. Gold and atramentous tassels adhere from assorted angle points. Loud music plays on the stereo. Nothing would attract me to get in that edifice. Not because of the way it looks, but because of the being at its controls.
"Uh, no, thanks, Sarvanan," I am cautiously hesitant, still searching at his contraption.
"Ok," he sounds captivated to accept afflicted a woman of beautiful aftertaste and shoots off while I angle breath in the arenaceous fumes.
"You've got it," active adviser says. It takes several moments to bore in. Mine is the aboriginal name they alleged to duke over the tiny artificial section that would admittance me to DRIVE. I was home, free. The aboriginal being I alarm is, of course, hubby. Again the girls, who are audibly blasé. "We knew you would maaa," is all they say.
In their minds they dance, for I accept just active myself up for mother-slavery. Now I accept no excuses.