My Trekker Story

I actually asked for the Trekker. Having learned to drive already at the age of 15 from my father (normally law-abiding but he had his priorities), I enrolled at the driving school—as everyone does—just to ease the road to getting a valid license. So, I figured I might as well have a good time while I was at it; I didn’t want to go on pointless sojourns at 5 kilometers an hour in an 800-cc hatchback. I was sitting in the tinted office of Philips Driving School, the turbines of bureaucracy humming drowsily, when it lumbered into the gravel RTO Complex parking lot outside in the white-hot afternoon. It didn’t look like any other roadworthy vehicle of our time (and indeed it wasn’t). It had a disproportionately small, sloping snout; small round headlights and a plain, slatted grille; and a high windshield at a steep angle, almost intentionally designed to fight aerodynamics. Its boxy, wide body was the same shade of grey as everything from the glory days of Doordarshan (Bajaj Chetaks, Godrej Almirahs, BDA flats, safari suits, et al.) No doors; just a vertical bar on either side that presumably held up the roof (i.e., a canvas flap with no sides.)
The instructor was about 87. He had watery grey eyes, a toothless smile, and a small quantity of wispy white hair on top of his head. He spoke to me in Kannada and he was fondly called ThaTha by everyone in Indiranagar. I think the driving school allotted an instructor per so-many-KG-body-weight of the car because everyone else had one and I had two. My other instructor was younger; his purpose was to sit in the back and chat with ThaTha and me, and I have always believed that his name was George.
The sounds and smells of driving hung all about the Trekker. But not like now. The smells were of diesel and hot Rexene upholstery, the sounds of the juddering and creaking engine and the rattling gear stick that rose storklike and naked from the floor, and various other loose body parts. You had to shout over it. I looked down at the bare metal sheets bolted together for a floor while driving and, in one spot somewhere in the region of my feet and the pedals, I noted with a touch of alarm that I could see the road zipping away under me. (I tried not to do that too often.)
The rule of Philips Driving School was that you don’t let the student handle the gears in the beginning; you operate them, along with your duplicate set of clutch and brake pedals, in a disconcertingly unpredictable fashion. ThaTha dispensed with this rule the second day out, and from then on it was all, “Haak’amma, fourth-u!” which I still hear his voice lifted up in joy when I’m doing 80 on Airport Road. He would guide me through the quiet streets of residential Indiranagar in the afternoons, lined with leafy trees and granite gutters. He made me reverse, park, parallel park, U-turn, “full cut maadi,” and then there was nothing more to teach, so we started working for Mr. Philips.
We would go to his white, Spanish villa in a quiet corner of Defense Colony, with the rounded tower-style frontage and the pink bougainvillea pouring down from the top of it, almost to the street. I would park in the middle of the deserted road in front of the roomy garage by the side of his house and ThaTha and George, bantering with Mr. Philips’s domestic staff, would make trips in and out carrying armfuls of plastic jerrycans, which they would load in the back of the Trekker. Some days, when the last one was loaded, they would go back in and bring me long slivers of cut cucumber sprinkled with salt and red chili powder. Then I would drive the bouncing, rattling empty jerrycans—so far down Old Madras Road that we could see the hanging bridge—to a suburban filling station that was, for reasons I thought it best not to inquire into, the favored watering hole of Philips Driving School. (The first day, the station employees smiled at me in the lofty driver’s seat and said, “Yen’amma, jeep wode’stia?” though this was fairly self-evident, and then they got used to it.) We would have all the jerrycans filled with petrol for the driving school cars and take them back to Indiranagar.
On days when we didn’t have to do this KR Puram moonshine run, ThaTha would let me go to the Outer Ring Road so I could let it rip. He and George would put their feet up, fire up Bristols, and chat while I drove. Some days they would make me park outside Srinidhi Upahar on 12th Main on the way back home and we would all have a cup of tea. Some days we would go up Old Madras Road into town—it was still shady and tree-lined—and drive around Ulsoor Lake, the Gipsy Kings playing in my head and an exciting monsoon wind just starting up in the late afternoon.
My driving test was scheduled for a Wednesday, but nobody could say what time. You showed up at the RTO when it opened and you took your chances. Standing in line for the forms, I bitterly noted that I was the only Keatsian 18-year-old “alone and palely loitering” and all around me people’s families had turned out in numbers to lovingly support them on their special day. (I particularly resented a certain Reena Hyacinth John who’d come with a passably attractive husband or boyfriend in tow; and a motorcycle helmet. Was the woman never satisfied?!)
After doing the paperwork I went out back to find the only family willing to take me in: the Trekker crew; my RTO family. Only one other boy was scheduled to test in the Trekker. He looked like the skinny, young truck drivers’ assistants you see on the highway, and rather unhappy on this day. The road behind the Complex was being used for the testing. The Regional Transport Officer was routinely humiliating people into forgetting basic traffic safety, starting with the bikes and gradually moving on to the Santros and Marutis. If it was in order of size, we would have a pretty long wait. I sat with ThaTha and George and other miscellaneous members of the driving school staff who came by to say hello and share their lunch with me as morning turned to afternoon. At some point, mumbling an explanation that I didn’t understand over his shoulder, the slip of a boy jumped down from the Trekker and scarpered. I asked ThaTha why and he said he got cold feet. This anecdote was shared with each successive visitor and each time, ThaTha and George hooted and guffawed at the memory, “Who gets cold feet for a driving test? Who?!”
The afternoon heat peaked and the examinees stalled, crashed gears, forgot their hand signals, drove on the right, and hit things. The RT Officer would be nicely prepped for me... My turn came last of all and so a large mixed audience of dejected failures and unconnected gawkers had gathered. ThaTha and George got in the back and the RT Officer next to me. I made a false start in my nervousness but quickly composed myself and set off in the direction the Officer grumpily indicated. He purposefully asked me to go the wrong way down a one-way street (it was not a trick question), which came out on CMH Road. Then he put out his hand and ushered me across the road, contrary to all traffic, and made me park in a no-parking zone on the other side. He got down and headed purposefully into a juice shop and barked at us to state our preferences. ThaTha and George went to assist with the glasses and someone thrust an ice cold mango juice at me. After he partook, it was like a weight was lifted off his shoulders and the RT Officer became positively cheerful. Everyone was upbeat as we turned back towards the Complex and the RT Officer took his leave, with a cryptic assurance that I had passed.
Random well-wishers from the driving school and RTO trickled by to congratulate us and ThaTha and George asked if I wasn’t going to buy them any sweets, but I figured I knew what they would really like. So I went across to the “condiment” store that also functioned as my Manipal bus terminus and asked for a 20-pack of Benson & Hedges and I didn’t care what Mr. Holla thought. They didn’t have any so I had to settle for Classic Milds. ThaTha and George only smoked Bristols and Scissors and he gasped at my extravagance and refused to accept them. He finally relented only on the condition that I smoked one with them before dropping me home. “I’ll drive today. You just sit back like a princess and relax.” So I did. ThaTha shook out a cigarette for me and gallantly gave me a light (benki) and I smoked my first cigarette, legs crossed elegantly in the passenger side while he drove me home (and George came along for the ride and to say goodbye). I was a princess; the princess of the RTO; riding shotgun in a 1977 Hindustan Trekker with no doors and missing it already.