‘I was quite adventurous’

I started driving when I was really young. Back home, in Udupi, I would tag along with my father everywhere he went, trying to drive the tractor on our fields, along with the people working on the farm. I was in Class III and I still recall handling the steering, sitting on the driver’s lap. What fun it was, even though I was strictly monitored. That is my first memory of wheels.

When I came to Class VI, my classes would start at 10 am, so I would accompany my driver to drop my sister at her school. I tried my hand again at driving, and by the time I was 14, I was pretty comfortable driving a car. Soon, I started picking up and dropping my sister from her classes.

I drove the Jeep and was quite adventurous. My family was not very happy about it. There were days when I would sneak out without their knowledge and try a 360-degree turn. I would take off with my friends to a particular spot in Manipal and try out various stunts in our family vehicle. One day, I lost control of the vehicle and crashed into an electricity pole. The pole fell and the car was damaged. There was no one in sight, so we quickly turned and drove back home.

Now, I was faced with the task of explaining what had happened to the car. I built a story that I had parked it on a slope with the hand brakes and the vehicle in gear. Yet, when I came back, I found it had crashed into a tree. My father did not reprimand me.

My first accident happened after I entered the film industry. Once, after a shoot, I was driving back and hit a parked vehicle. It was parked on a dark road and I had no indication that it was parked there. I ended up with a broken hand.

Initially, when I came to Bengaluru in 2005, I enjoyed driving in the city as the traffic was not very heavy. Soon, I got fed up of the traffic and now I hardly drive.

As told to Shilpa Sebastian R