Woe of the Wheel

I've always romanticized bus-rides. In fact bus-rides are an inseparable part of my existence, and it's always been so, not just because I love them, but more so owing to my fear of the steering wheel. 

I’d been harbouring the impression that mine was a unique case worthy of study until I came across Wikipedia gyaaning starkly on this grave but thankfully-not-unheard-of condition. 

"The fear of driving can be severe enough to be considered a phobia. It is often great enough that people will avoid driving at all costs, and instead find someone to drive them or use public transportation, regardless of how inconvenient or expensive it is. There is no Latin term for this fear, though it is comparable to hodophobia, the fear of traveling." 

And Good God! That sounded so very ‘me’ in a lot of places!

I’m certain that I’m not, as Wiki puts it, hodophobic. For I lurve… travelling. And perhaps the intensity of my love for travelling can be matched only by the intensity of my fear of driving! Just one of those ‘directly proportional’ fundas of simple living….

As of now my affair with the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) is going strong. No one can come between us. And mind you, this comes right after a seven year long affair with the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC). Scandalous! 

My better half, the Chief Logistics Manager of my otherwise gearless life is someone who drives his car with the sheer ease of peeling a banana... However when he is at his bugging best, which i must say is nearly-all-the-time, he turns quite generous and offers me the steering, (with an expression worthy of having offered a diamond ring) and that too while passing through the most insane of roads and during the craziest of hours. Though this might sound like a suicidal tendency of the worst kind in an otherwise sane human being, I know he does that only to see the expected just-licked-sour-lime-pickle expression whirl and ripple across my face in circles …like those obsolete MS Windows screen-saver special effects that haven’t seen daylight after Y2K… 

It's been quite a while since my driver’s license found its own parking slot in the cupboard and established its privileged position there amongst my most honoured degree certificates and list of acceptable documents for proof of identity. And for now I am just letting it R.I.P there.

I still cannot believe that there was a time when I used to drive around Trivandrum...giving nightmares to the Kerala Traffic Police Department…sigh… 

Well, who knows… maybe for their bad luck one fine morning I'll wake up with the will to drive again. (Hopefully in this birth itself!)…

Pic Courtesy:  www.behance.net &

es.wikihow.com