{"id":232,"date":"2017-12-03T07:23:06","date_gmt":"2017-12-03T07:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/?p=232"},"modified":"2017-12-04T11:18:41","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T11:18:41","slug":"brigitte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/?p=232","title":{"rendered":"Brigitte"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Bespectaled
<\/a> Driving my first car home. “Do one thing each day that scares you.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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<\/a> for nothing.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Black
<\/a> At St. Lawrence Church, Mallundur, May 2016<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Black
<\/a> Driving to Panaji, June 2016<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.
\n

\"Brigitte
<\/a> Brigitte Bardot – 1962 (By MGM (ebay) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading Brigitte<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[24,5],"tags":[3,26,25,9,2],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/IMG_20160625_082243.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267,"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agnelkurian.com\/jest\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}