Over the weekend, a video of Biju neatly parking an Innova onto a narrow concrete slab over a culvert on the side of a highway went viral, eliciting a wide range of reactions on social media.

PJ Biju, a driver by profession from Kerala’s Wayanad district, doesn’t think too much about his driving skills, but social media users have already dubbed him the king of parallel parking.

Over the weekend, a video of Biju neatly parking an Innova onto a narrow concrete slab over a culvert on the side of a highway went viral, eliciting a wide range of reactions on social media. For many, it looked plain dangerous. Others complimented him on the perfect use of the steering wheel and the brakes because even a minor jerk could have resulted in an accident.

That’s Malayalee confidence for you. #Parking pic.twitter.com/3NF4aah83m

— Nandagopal Rajan (@nandu79) September 6, 2020

Once it became known that Biju was in the driving seat, he has been flooded with calls and messages, forcing him to even switch off his phone for a while.

On the phone from Mahe, where he works as an office staff and driver for a wholesale liquor firm, Biju explained the video. “The Innova belongs to my friend and I often borrow it when I go home to Wayanad. I usually park my Alto in that space by the side of the highway because there’s nowhere else to park. With the Innova, I had an assumption in my head about the length and size of the car. I knew if I turned the car at the right angle, I would be able to park it. That day, as I was parking, my wife, unknown to me, took a video to send to her sister. I think her sister shared it with her college friends and that’s how it became viral.”

“Now I am getting so much attention as if I have become famous,” he laughed.

Biju said his first tryst with heavy vehicles was when he was in the 7th grade. In his neighbourhood, there were two buses which he would regularly wash and often even sit in the driving seat. “In fact, it was the steering wheel of the bus that I touched for the first time. So from childhood onwards, I have been familiar with heavy vehicles and their length and size. I have never been scared,” he said.

Biju turned into a professional driver in 1996, driving jeeps for the milk cooperative firm Milma in Wayanad. Then he moved onto driving buses on long routes for UFO Travels in Kochi in 2003. He moved to Mahe in 2008 to drive and do office work for the firm he’s currently employed with.