driving lessons

so i am a licensed driver now.... after two near misses and lots of frayed nerves...i earned my driving license on saturday.....little credit to me....most of it due to this person we shall call 'V'....consider this...despite driving a two wheeler for a good 12 years, i never naturally transited to the four....for various reasons....multiple attempts (with brother and later husband in the teacher's seat) ended in tears and cursing (of the Screw it...i will never get into your damned car again...variety)....it was something that intrigued me....something that intimidated me...and made me resolve last year, that learn i would....so i did the sensible thing and joined a driving school....imagine my expression when at the appointed time, i was picked up in a run down car that had definitely seen better days and was on its death bed....and the instructor was something close to one of those archetypal "road romeos" ...... i soon reprimanded myself for judging too quickly....and submitted myself to sincere tutelage.... now for an eon i have been going for classes.....am sure i'd have earned my stripes earlier, had i heeded to regularity....couple of classes...then a couple of weeks break....so that saga which began in dec, finally ended last saturday.....

S my partner in crime and i would exchange glances at the antics of V.....he in all earnest, would try to decipher some of the conversation we'd be having in tamil....many times i would hardly understand what he was trying to say....imagine being told to "fush the clutch" and don't get tensed when there is "troffic" ...there were other gems too "tones" as in stones and some weird hand gestures which i didn't know what to make of.....this all apart, V managed to give me what everyone else so far had failed in "confidence" with a nonchalant expression, regardless of how much i was doing the wrong thing, he never failed to encourage and tell me i was doing better than the previous day, when he sensed i was apprehensive on the road, he would say with a smirk "kuch nahi hota madam, aage jao....dara do usko"......i never once saw him flinch when i veered too close to another vehicle, or even change his expression when i was really screwing it up.... he just kept boosting my confidence...and there in lies his competence....i will never know if he was just humouring me, or doing his job really well....the fact of the matter is , that after all these years, and after much apprehension, i had the confidence to take the car out on my own with just 7 days of classes, in chaotic hyderabad traffic....and not sweat....so today when i walk towards my perfectly parallel parked car, with a spring in my step and the keys hanging on my fingers, i thank V, and if i were to appraise him, i'd give him an far exceeds expectation