Hasn’t the weather been gorgeous? The only problem of course, is that when it starts raining, the roads get mucky, the ricks totally disappear and the cabbies take ages to appear. Or so I found out this Saturday when I had a dinner invitation in the evening. I called about 3 city taxi services to be told (rather rudely) that there were no vehicles in my area. One of them even hung up on me, when I was mid-way into the call! Finally, I got someone who was ready to accept my money in exchange for a ride! Boy, was I relieved. For a moment, I thought money had gone out of fashion and no one cared about it anymore.

I’ve been having rather bad traveling experiences lately. My colleague dropped me off at Fab India one evening after work. I did my shopping. Walked out and looked around for a rick. Waited. Looked around. Of course, there was absolutely not one that was empty or wanted to go in the direction I was going! Finally, I had to walk home.

Another time, a rick driver abused me because I didn’t tell him I was going off the main road. He raved and ranted and though I didn’t understand what he was saying; the part I understood was that wanted more money because he had to do a detour of 2 minutes from the main road. I’ve noticed that the majority of drivers are here are pretty unfriendly and never have change. Arggh. Or maybe they just see an invisible sign saying ‘non-Kannada speaking alien’ across my forehead.

My friend used to crib about the really bad traffic rules in Bangalore and I never believed it. I thought this was an ideal city where no one breaks traffic rules and people are polite and everyone gives way. Boy, was I wrong as I’ve discovered within one month here!

Anyway, I had a really funny experience at the learner’s license test centre on Saturday. They put 20 of us in a room, where we had these buzzers with three colours on them (red, yellow, green), making us feel like Kaun Banega Crorepati contestants, when actually it was like, Who is going to get a learner’s license today test. They had really hard questions like, What do you in a silent zone a) Blow your horn, b) Don’t blow your horn; c) Blow your horn at your own discretion.

And another beauty. Which side of the road do you drive while taking a left turn? a) Left hand side, b) Right hand side, c) centre. The reason I am calling it hard is because there were people who failed the test with marks with 6 and 7 out of 15 questions. Thus making it quite clear why Bangalore has so many rash and non-traffic abiding drivers!

This was also the first time I actually gave an ‘automated’ test. Last time I had gotten a license, it was through other means. I won’t divulge the location where I got it, since I don’t want to get anyone into trouble. So anyway, I didn’t have to answer any questions or for any test. And you’d also be relieved to know that I never drove using that license.

I was also rather pleased when the test scores were announced and I had scored full marks. Making it the only one in my life. And considering how hard it was, I celebrated well through Sunday!