A Long & Winding Road

This is slightly long, but bear with me… this process was tortuously long and I am only sharing the highlights. So stay with me till the end!

It’s hot in September. 
30th September to be precise. The last of the freak rains have wreaked havoc last week and have been with proportionate vengefulness replaced by reasonably hot temperatures. October heat, the day before October should be welcomed I guess. I’m not welcoming it. (In hindsight, the last of the freak rains were not the last! Those happened in October!) But do read on.

I’m here at the RTO, the Regional Transport Office, for my driving test.

You read that right. It’s a driving test, considering I’ve only been driving for about four decades, so a driving test thanks to a lapsed driving licence is possibly the best thing to do.

Meanwhile let me confess, leaving my large ego aside, there’s nothing as humbling as a total knee replacement(TKR) surgery to bring you down to your (figurative) knees. It’s not the surgery of course, it’s learning to walk after that. If you’ve done it when you were roughly one year old, surely you can do better a good six decades later. Right? Wrong.

It’s six decades more difficult
And possibly six times less acceptable to those around you. In plain-speak, it’s not a happy situation as you limp back to normalcy- if at all. But, you say, what’s that got to do with the driving licence. Patience, as I slowly put one foot in front of the other! 

There was a thing, a phase called Covid.
Then post-Covid. And then I had the luxury of a devoted chauffeur. Add to that parking issues in the city. Finally Uber. I drove less and less and in the bargain my license retreated into a dark window in my wallet. Then came the TKR surgery. Basic math, physics and common sense will tell you that if you cannot walk and specifically, cannot bend your knee, you cannot drive. (These are not excuses, mind you.) Just building up to the fact that when the time came, when I thought I could, would and should drive, I realised, with considerable dismay, that I had survived an expired license. (Guess, better the license).

And hence, dear reader, I started the lengthy, arduous and downright frustrating process of renewing my license. 

The process started in the month of July. You don’t want to go down that winding road (or up, for that matter). I was told that since my driving licence was quite dead, way past rigor mortis, not even fit for post mortem, I was to revive it from the very beginning. Renewing a licence in these circumstances meant a NEW licence altogether.

And that entailed a driving test. Oh well!

Much documentation and the grudging granting of a learner’s licence later, I got the express permission of ‘the authorities’ that I was allowed to drive with an L-plate, accompanied by someone who had a valid driver’s license, but.. not on busy roads, not on any main or empty roads , not on arterial roads or highways, not on… the list went on. 

I realised that all I could or was supposed to do was gently ease my car a few inches out of its parking space and reverse it back into place again. I’m not much of a fan of reversing, so I dropped the idea altogether. If you’ve driven for four decades – and we are talking quantity here not quality of driving- I guess you still can get behind the wheel, smartly pull down your (albeit, numbered) sunglasses and push off into the mindless traffic of today. 

Armed with that confidence, and of course, an insane quantity of documents (including my third standard report card – just in case), I went for the scheduled driving test on a hot September Monday morning.

The RTO officials are smart.

The tests apparently begin only at 12 noon in the full light of a fierce midday sun. Nothing like the overhead sun for anxious little people wanting a driving lesson. In their favour,  no one knows whether the beads of sweat on their foreheads, or the rivulets running down their sides, or large wet patches on the underarms of their attire is because of the heat or nervousness. And standing out in the sun helps with a healthy tan and an unhealthy amount of UV, not sure about the Vitamin D, but who needs a doctor here. (On second thoughts, this may be a joint venture with doctors, possibly the dermats!) 

But I digress from the driving test

The process, or lack thereof, was simple. A motley crowd stood in a somewhat unformed fashion – I think it was supposed to be a queue  but it was more in the shape of the letter Q! The driving test involved a nervous newbie getting into a driving school car – the one where the instructor has controls on his side, in case the said nervous noob gives into his jitters and presses the accelerator instead of the brake – and driving roughly 100 metres before taking a really wide U-turn that seemed more like a letter in a strange language rather than the said U, thanks to utter lack of experience. Once that new letter was formed, the noob proceeded to come back and take another U-or-whatever-turn to end up back where the nervous crowd stood waiting their turn.

Talk about turns and turning.
Each time the car came back for the second turn it almost ploughed into the driving-licence-hopefuls! Each time the crowd stepped back allowing the car to be within a few millimetre distance from their toes, before the car lurched to a stop. The driving noob would then step out looking visibly relieved. I’m not quite sure whether the relief was because the test was over or because they had not mowed down the waiting crowd. Then the next perspiring noob got in to the driver’s seat and the loopy lurchy driving test would start again. The waiting crowd would surge forward only to be pushed back once again by yet another wide U-ish turn that could pretty much end not just the test but also threaten a serious loss of limb, or at least a toe.

I know I’m sounding judgy. 

Well, I am watching all this from the safety of my car. My test – as an experienced-lapsed-driver-wanting-a-licence-candidate – allows me to drive my own car for the test (after a requisite amount of form-filling and a boot-full of unwieldy documentation, of course). As I watch I’m thinking whether I’d succeed in mowing down the waiting crowd or should I leave that for another day when the ‘right’ people are in the crowd. My homicidal tendencies surge as I wait my turn in the heat.

The car ac doesn’t seem to be doing its job. The midday sun is.
Then I am told I am next. I am asked to go – as in disembark from my car and walk – to the driving school car. I am about to protest but don’t. I don’t want to spend one more minute arguing. I do as I am bid. In the car, established on the back seat is a young woman inspector (a big yay for women here!) who tells me to get back into my car, drive straight and left and leave the RTO driving test grounds. 

How wonderful, I thought. 
Too good to be true I thought. 
Surely I am mistaken, I thought. 

I double-checked. All the ‘nervous noobs were doing their misshapen rounds by going right and right, coming right back to mow down the crowd. She wanted me – an experienced driver – to not threaten the crowds? To drive out towards the exit and leave? Just double-checking.
She said yes. Waved me in the direction – of several ditches, uneven ground, puddles et al – the consequences of the September showers and thunderstorms, and of course, the RTO grounds expertly surfaced to match the potholed roads of the city during and after the rains.

So I did just that. I got into the car, and with customary aplomb drove off.
Straight.
Left.
Past the puzzled noobs.
Past a few others gaping.
Past a random bus that met me head on.
And past some onlookers who were trying to tell me I was wrong. (So what’s new!) I reached the busy road. And waited. And sure enough, I was told I had done wrong. And I should go back. Seriously? I mean, seriously?

The road was busy. Traffic piling up.
Taking a turn back to get back into the uneven, muddy grounds would take me time. Amongst honking taxis, errant autos, unbalanced cyclists and few brave pedestrians, there was no way I could even reverse. But now I was in the driver’s seat wasn’t I? So I told them this would take me some time. 
Some time later, I was told, I needn’t go back and I had passed the test!

Yessss! I thought. Someone knew how to do this. 
And I thought it was over. 
Was it? No. 
The next day I was told I had to reappear in the RTO to do some kind of bio something. Mainly because my data was missing. 

Have you heard of data leaks?
In this day and age of major data selling, data theft and data misuse… how in the name of the Traffic Gods was my data missing? Did I not exist as a driver all these four decades that I was driving? Where was I then? If a driver who is driving is not present in the data annals of the RTO, does the driver exist? Such philosophical questions whirred around my head causing a near-storm, and a colossal cerebral traffic jam!

But I gave into the demands of authority.
And after 10 days (due to extenuating circumstances) reappeared at the RTO where some biographical evidence of my existence was taken by a very friendly portly lady who commiserated with me at the size of my handbag and the fact that there was no place there for me to set it down. (We women eh!) Anyway. That was that. Now I had to wait. Weeks later, I was told that SpeedPost had my licence. And I would get it. 

Now I have no idea why I thought SpeedPost would be fast.
Do you have a clue why it made me think that way? I think my thinking is warped, downright wrong. But it took a long week of major spam messages of lost parcels, parcels confiscated by the customs, and subtle threats of being digitally arrested till… On a November morning, someone from SpeedPost delivered my licence to me! In my safe hands! 
Woohoo!

The  whole process had taken only approximately 14 weeks, 2 days and a couple of hours. 
Not that I am counting. Just saying. Approximately. (At some point when I had complained this was taking too long, I was reproached saying it was my fault I had not renewed in time.)

In any case, I have renewed it now.
I am renewed.
And I am now the renewed menace on the roads!
Of course, the chances of us meeting at some crossroads is if you have your driving licence!

A word of caution

At this moment I am not in a mood to listen to advice on how I should have done it differently. So spare yourself the trouble.

Besides, I now have a licence to…