I Bought the Car Before getting the Licence
, 4 min read
How I failed to learn to drive three times, bought a Polo GT anyway, and have since put 1.6 lakh kilometres on two Volkswagens.
On 22 January 2016, Preethi and I took delivery of a Volkswagen Polo GT. We had gone in for an ordinary Polo and changed our minds at the showroom. A friend drove it through the evening traffic as far as the office, and Preethi, who drives better than I do, took it home from there. I did not have a licence.
I was still taking lessons. It was my fourth attempt.
The first was in school, in a Jeep. Not a Jeep Jeep, a Mahindra Jeep. The driver was paid to teach me and took me along on his day's transport work, with about six other learners in the vehicle. He shouted. I have never liked being shouted at, I hate crowds as much now as I did then, and I called it quits.
The second came after college. I was freelancing, a big project arrived, and I was hell-bent on turning it into a motorbike. I learned to ride with my cousin, took a learner's licence and had a few majestic falls. I worked hard on that build, and only when it was done did I work out that the man who brought me the project, a man I trusted, had no idea what to do with it. His plan was to sell it on once I had finished. No money ever reached me. There was no bike, so I let the learner's licence lapse and lost interest in driving anything at all. I was happy being the passenger.
After we got married I tried again, mostly because other people wanted me to drive. There was another learner's licence and another instructor who shouted, and this time I got as far as the test and failed it. I was doing my startup shenanigans then and could not have afforded a car, so there was nothing waiting on the other side of a pass. I left it there.
Looking back, the bike did more damage than the shouting. Every time I sat down to learn after that, some part of me asked what the licence was for.
All through those years I would sit in the passenger seat and think about what I would do if I were the one driving. Half the time I could not identify the turn and would have gone straight off the road. I had cycled through heavy traffic and believed a cycle was more in my control than a car could ever be. One slight press on the accelerator and I would be gracing someone's boot with my bonnet. Preethi said I was thinking like a non-driver imagining what driving felt like. Preethi was right.
We moved to Bangalore, there was a steady job, and for the first time we could afford a car. We were looking at options while I took lessons, so the licence finally had something to be for. The instructor did not shout, either. We bought the car, and the licence followed on 15 March 2016, two months after the GT.
A year and a half later the car had been through three services and was close to 45,000 kilometres. Preethi and I had driven to Goa twice and to Kerala a lot. And the Polo had been to Ladakh.
Eight of us went in two cars, the Polo and a friend's Vento, and we were on the road for eighteen days. A second Vento would have had more room, but it was a manual and I do not drive stick. The GT is an automatic, so I was bone-headed and the Polo went to Ladakh. Fitting everything into it each morning became a task of its own, and one my friend Anagh turned out to excel at.
The plan was more about driving to beautiful places than exploring them, and the drive was the hero. We went up Rohtang Pass and over what was then billed as the highest motorable pass in the world, Khardung La. The Polo went through rain, riverbeds and waterfalls, and across sand plains that looked straight out of Mad Max.
The solo drives came as well. I wanted to do the Mumbai to Goa drive that Dil Chahta Hai made famous, but I lived in Bangalore, so I had to drive to Mumbai first to start it. A long drive has also become what happens whenever I switch jobs. One of them went from Bangalore to Kerala, on to Pondicherry, Vizag and Hyderabad, and back to Bangalore.
The Virtus came in 2023 and is at 40,000 kilometres today. The Polo has crossed 1.2 lakh and is not going anywhere, because a GT TSI is a classic. Between them that is about four times round the Earth. I think I can say I did drive.
One person still shouts at me in the car, and she is the only one allowed to. When anyone else tries, I grin and say, "Only Preethi's allowed to shout at me in my car. Go shout at your own husbands or wives."