When I was 12, I noticed that my 10-year-old brother Ravi already had a passion for driving. We had an Ambassador those days.
One day, when my father was away, my brother took the car keys and started it. God knows what he did — the car went in reverse at full speed! I was playing nearby and screamed. Simultaneously, the car too screeched to a halt. He missed crashing it into a tree by a split second. That incident instilled a fear of cars in me. I developed a fear for driving ever since.
It was only when I was 25 that I tried to get a licence and bought my first car — a Tata Estate. I did manage to learn to drive. Those days, Bengaluru roads were almost empty, so I could manoeuvre the car around the city easily. But today, I just don’t drive at all. We now have an Ertiga, Santro and a Swift, that my daughter uses. I prefer to see others at the wheel.
Sometimes though, when I’m shooting for a film, certain scenes require me to drive. It is a terrifying experience. I have to not just drive, but also emote and deliver my dialogue. I also have to make the right eye contact with the characters.
So, with my director’s permission, I drive only in first gear and refuse to change gears. I also apply the brakes real slow. Then I beg for the shooting to be done on empty roads. The crew members laugh, but that doesn’t spur me on to change gears.
I am disastrous at driving on slopes. Have you heard of something called a half-clutch? Never do I want to be involved in such miserable road situations!
My husband is a good driver. But even when he is driving on slopes, I start sweating and my hands and feet go cold. I start advising him on how to manoeuvre the car. He’ll tell me to relax, but I am terrified of half-clutches and slopes.
The other thing that makes me go bonkers is two-wheelers. They just dart across your path, without following a single traffic rule.
In such moments, I just go blank. Two-wheelers are crazy in Bengaluru. Once I had to learn to ride a two-wheeler for a film. I was riding a scooter, and a vegetable vendor saw me, got excited and screamed in excitement. The next thing I knew, he had banged into an oncoming lorry. What a frightful moment that was — seeing him down with his toppled cart of vegetables, head hurt, but still grinning wide with his eyes fixed on me. I felt sad for him, as he had hurt his head real bad. As you can tell, I am not comfortable on wheels of any kind!
As told to Shilpa Sebastian Romeles