Kishore Singh: Just another lady driver

PEOPLE LIKE US

A colleague was kind enough to drop me off to the service station where I'd given my car for servicing, and we were on our way when my mobile rang.

"Papa," wailed my son, not normally prone to wailing, but speaking plaintively enough now, "I've had an accident." Considering he was in Pune and I in Delhi, there was little I could do except react as any father would. "Are you," I asked him, "hurt?"

"Forget hurt," said my son, "my ego is shattered." "Er, why?" I asked. "It's these lady drivers," he said, "they're really bad." "Have you been hurt by a lady driver?" I asked, glancing at the lady driver beside me. "Of course," said my son, "they just don't know how to drive." "I think son," I said, "lady drivers drive just fine."

"What's this about lady drivers?" asked the lady driver next to me. "One of them caused my son to have an accident," I said to her.

"Who are you talking to?" asked my son. "A lady driver," I said to him. "You tell your son, lady drivers are the best," said the one driving the car and causing a motorcyclist to swerve off the road. Luckily he didn't fall off "" like my son evidently had.

A few curses later, I was dropped off at my destination, and once the lady driver had set off scaring other motorcyclists away from the road, I called back my son to ask the condition of his motorcycle, which he had already given for repairs, and himself repaired to a doctor to attend to his wounds. "You must," I advised him as fathers do, "drive carefully." "But I was," protested my son, "it was all the lady driver's fault."

Fortunately we were slated to meet the next day in Jaipur, and once I had established that he was all right, I rang off. The following day, when we met up "" somewhat late at night "" I could make out his arm was hurting where he had taken the brunt of the fall. And learned in the bargain that he was not alone on the bike but had his college friend riding pillion, both of whom seemed to have become victims of the lady driver.

But how did he come to such a pass? "We were riding out of college," he explained sheepishly, "when we saw this car come by with this very attractive girl at the wheel." "So?" I asked. "So I said 'hot chick' to my friend," he mumbled. "And?" I probed further.

"And my friend agreed that she was a hot chick," said my son. "But how did the accident happen?" I asked. "She might have been a hot chick," said my son, "but she was also a lady driver and just swerved towards us, and hit us, so both of us went flying and lay sprawled on the road."

"That must have been some sight," I commiserated with my son. "It was that all right," he said. "But didn't you tell her that she had caused the accident because of her driving?" I asked my son. "No," he said regretfully, "I didn't." "Why," I asked him, "because she was a 'hot chick'?" "Very funny," replied my son with a hangdog expression, "and the reason I couldn't tell her she was a bad lady driver was because, like all bad lady drivers, she hit us and even though my friend and I both fell off, she simply drove off without even bothering to see whether we were hurt or not." "Tut-tut," I sympathised with him. "True," he said, "I thought she was a hot chick, but she was just another lady driver."