Page 34 - Masala Lite Issue 164 August 2024

34 MUSINGS OF AN AUNTY WHO IS TOO CHICKEN TO DRIVE

Sukhumvit Drivers Deserve Respect!

Dolly Koghar emphasises that driving isn’t just brakes and gears,
but staying alert and focused.

or squatting mid-road; marauding strays; I lose my bearings even walking; Siam Paragon
goats and sheep being herded to and CentralwOrld is, to me, a maze. It’s
the butcher around the corner; not that I’m going senile, this was
and in those early years, wild still the case way back in my
horses looking to scrounge early days shopping in the
food among the garbage hustle and bustle of Osaka.
piles. None of them were I’d find a public phone
confined in pens like Old and call hubby dear, and
Since people see me being chauffeured around by McDonald’s farm, but describe my current
hubby dear and my daughter to ‘Ladies’ Dos,’ I often they were here, there position in relation to
get asked whether I can drive at all. I’m irked that and everywhere. As for any significant building,
people equate white hair with helplessness. I wasn’t people, it’s an unspoken and he’d verbally navigate
always old, and as for driving, trust me when I say understood reality about me back to a familiar
that I’ve done a cabbie’s share during my Kobe years. I any road in any city across junction.
was a soccer mum, going-to-the-doctor-at-odd-hours India that everybody is taking
mum, party-drop-off/pick-up mum (pre-mobile phone the shortest route to wherever But with all is said and done,
era), and mum that grudgingly covered her PJs with an they’re going, no matter where it cuts across. But despite my awry inbuilt GPS and lack of parking
overcoat and hid haggard eyes behind shades to drop what nailed the end of my driving career was the and driving skills, I did manage life in Japan. That’s
the kids to a school just a short walk up the hill from threat that the driver of the car, if involved in an not to say I didn’t have brushes with the road cops.
home. Like all mums, I wasn’t only a soccer mum, accident with a pedestrian, can get mob-lynched. We Luckily, I was using my Thai international license
but also a ‘sucker mum;’ years upon years I waited for hired a driver! and so, when I got pulled over, and as a really young
any of the four to keep their promise to trudge up to foreigner, I conveniently acted dumb and feigned zero
school by themselves on the ‘morrow; one that never Then, back in Bangkok, where the traffic is as infamous understanding of Japanese, which was almost the
came. There was also dear hubby to be picked from the as it is amazing, there’s no way I was getting behind truth. Lucky for me, back in those early days of the
train station on the days he chose the train over the the wheel to navigate through those pesky, mosquito- 70s, the cops barely knew ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in English, so
45-minute drive to Osaka, especially with the rising like motorbikes that swerve by so heart-stoppingly thanks to this wide language chasm, I always got away
costs of parking, gasoline and the highway toll. close. I’d also never, ever, be able to get out of my lane, scot-free.
‘cause I’d be waiting for the right-of-way, which no taxi
The honest, embarrassing truth is I was never or car or motorbike, or even the tourist pedestrians, Subsequently, by relenting the wheel, I totally lost out
comfortable behind the wheel; I panic easy. Although would have afforded me. on the autonomy of going where and when I want. But
Kobe streets are narrow, but traffic is scant and on the flip side, it’s a blessing for those of you braving
everybody drives in an orderly manner. So, when we Additionally, I was and I guess will always be hopeless our chaotic, unruly traffic; with me off the road,
shifted to Bangalore, I couldn’t even contemplate at parking; and as to my sense of direction, the less there’s that one less menace; that one less maniac to
driving amidst the relentless honking; cows jaywalking said, the better. Losing my way driving was a given, but deal with.