I am, it must be confessed, a great source of shame in my circle of friends. Why, you ask? Well, said circle of friends includes six men who routinely create a new definition for the words "Maximum Speed Limit" (including one mad Parsi who insists on performing ridiculously dangerous stunts on a bike) and a woman who takes great pleasure in sticking her head out the car window to scream obscenities at police officers, before she zooms smartly away while they scratch their heads in consternation. These friends of mine can look at a car and rattle off the make, year, top speed and other details that I'm told aren't at all impressive, but Greek and Latin always sounded impressive to me. And they regularly spend their time drooling over Porsches and Lamborghinis and the latest BMW Z-something-or- the-other. Me? I think most cars look like a variation of the Esteem (I'll pause now for the gasps of shock and outrage). The most I can tell you about a car at one glance is its colour (apparently, when someone says "Check out that sweet ride", they do NOT appreciate a response like "Um, Yes. Nice shade of red."). Oh, and I can't drive.

Well, alright, that's not entirely true. i mean, I do have a license. Somewhere. And I went for driving lessons.

And almost had a nervous breakdown in the process.

No, really. At the ripe old age of 19, I decided, what the hell. it's about time I learned to be mobile. And I'm sure the confidence will come once I've motored around a bit with a licensed driver in the front passenger seat. Hence the signing on the dotted line at 'Good Luck Driving Lessons.' The name should've been a sign. Now, do keep in mind, this is good old Bombay. There were no brochures on road rules, no instructors in classrooms; just a yellow-toothed, vaguely-decomposing-smelling old man with bloodshot eyes who steered me towards a beat-up old Santro (that's a Hyundai, right? Or a Honda? I always get those two mixed up) and said "Drive." To which my response was a very eloquent "Huh?" Evidently, they followed the rule of thumb: where there's a will, there's a way. In this case, my will to live causing me to get out of the way as a double-decker bus bore down on me. And thence it began: my life-long (for the past 4 years, anyway) fear of driving. From various incidents including buses and trucks zooming by at unnatural speeds and me shrieking inside the car, to a taxi (miserable buggers) ramming into me, my driving lessons were a nightmare. In fact, even though I don't drive, I still cringe when a bus gets too close to the car. As for taxis, I nurture torrid fantasies of having every last one of them taken to a high-tech dump and put into the crusher, one by one, till they're nothing but a glorious heap of scrap.

The moment I was declared legally able to terrorize the streets (I'm still a little foggy on how that happened...might've been a liiiiittle hopped up on painkillers from the cab accident...guess it improved my driving skills), I vowed never to drive again. Only to find that I had to drive home. Of course, since nothing in my life can go right, I managed to stall the car at a busy intersection, causing a sweet-grandmotherly-looking old lady to roll down her window, show me the middle finger and scream something that suspiciously rhymed with "bucking fitch." Needless to say, my license has forevermore remained in some forgotten drawer.

So while my friends are jetting around at what I honestly feel are insane speeds (I mean, just because it's the highway, do you HAVE to go at 120??), I am more often to be found snugly buckled and cringing in the passenger seat, or dozing in the backseat (even during a ten-minute drive. Must get checked up for narcolepsy). And when the discussion turns to dream cars and sunroofs and canvas-top convertibles and awesome tyres and customized rides, I stick to what I know and say "I like that shade of red."

Really, it's a wonder they're still my friends.