Brigitte

On the 1st of March 2016 I bought my first car — a used black 2011 Maruti Suzuki Alto K10. The previous owner had preserved the car in pretty good condition except that the clutch seemed too hard.

This was the first time I was driving a car all by myself. I drove to my mother’s place completely petrified, constantly expecting the far side of the car to knock down a pedestrian or a parked bike. At one point I turned on the wipers and was too scared to figure out how to turn them off. I kept driving for about 15 minutes till I worked up the courage to park by the side of the ring road and turn them off.

This used car was supposed to be a temporary, sacrificial, practice machine to take all the fender benders of the learning stage. But given how quickly she was taking me from 1st gear to 4th gear, I decided to keep her for good. The folks over at Team-BHP don’t call this the Pocket Rocket for nothing.

I thought I’d be too scared to take the car out at first. But it turns out that driving to office everyday in peak Bangalore traffic can teach you a decent bit of driving very quickly. Each day I’d count how many times I stalled the engine. That count started at around 5 and as I got better at driving I had much nicer things to think about.

Being a stickler for safety I resolved that till I had a year’s driving experience under my belt I would take no passengers on board and would not drive out-of-station. But that’s just bullshit! I have been zipping all over the countryside since April 2016 itself and I often have Mom in tow. Here are some pics of my ride.

While learning to drive, there were two incidents which led me to name my car after a French film actress. The first was opposite the K R Puram Tin Factory where a red Maruti Suzuki Swift brushed past me as I tried to steer into traffic. The second incident was just outside Shivajinagar bus-stand where the left headlight was applied slowly but firmly against the rear of a BMTC bus. Now the front of the car had a blue patch on the left headlight and a red patch on the right of the bumper and knowing the colors of the French flag, I named my car after the only French actress whose name I could remember.

Who would have thought that one day there would be a page on the Internet with a picture of me and Brigitte Bardot on it. Heh.