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Today I am goint to write about my driving expereince in India. I have recently returned from US after having stayed there for close to 5 years. US is the first place where I learned driving and there I used to drive a nice brand new silver colored Toyota corolla. As many of you know Cars in US are automatic. Secondly roads are too good and driving rules are followed by all. Also there is a Cop everywhere in case you break any traffic rule. To summarize driving in US is easy and organized.

On returning to India I was initially scared to drive. Especially to drive a manual gear car. I had taken driving classes in April 2007 just before leaving for US but couldn't learn it. I started off by driving my father's Maruti Alto in my hometown Ranchi for sometime. Anytime any big vehicle came in front I used to get very nervous. Also engine of my car used to get stopped several times due to me not using clutch and gears properly. That was very embarassing. Especially if you had lot of cars behined you honking at you. I did search internet to see how feasible is driving Automatic car in India and what options are available. It think i10 has one automatic car. At the end I decided to go the tough way to learn true indian style of driving on manual car as I wanted to get a feel of it. In Jan 2012 I moved to Pune and started driving school classes in March 1st week. I took only 4 classes. During those classes I had most trouble during taking turns and merging with traffic. Unlike US you don't wait for anyone in India - you just jump in.

On 14th March I got my Honda Brio and my driving in India kicked off. My biggest huddles to start with were [1] Stopping car from going back on a slope [2] Preventing my engine from shutting down when too slow This 2 items took me a while to get grip Also it takes time to learn when to use which gear. If you make one wrong choice your engine grunts at you. Driving in India is truly multiasking involving all your limbs. Two hands on wheel or 1 hand on wheel and another on gear stick. Though slowly I have become comfortable to drive with one hand on Wheel. Your one leg needs to switch between gear and brake. You can never ever afford to make a wrong switch as the results will be sure sort accident. Luckily I never went wrong on those two. Your other leg needs to be on clutch pedal and it does have to do lot of work. I sometimes get tired just changing gears in a slow moving traffic and in such cases you make 1 wrong choice and your engine might either grunt or stop all together.

Most annoying things at start of my driving [1] I used to keep some space bwetween my and front car which other people used to push there car in to gain 1-2 sec. [2] Cars suddenly coming in front overtaking me. [3] Cars suddenly stopping. [4] Pedestrians taking walk leisurly on road. Even not responding to horn. Forget responding people don't even turn to look at the honking car.

My car is just 2 months old but has already got it's own share of scratch and dents. First dent and scratch I got was when I was entering Pune Central on Baner Road. The end of this parking lot is too narrow and I hit left side of my car's body to a concrete getting it a dent at the bottom of back door. Second was when going to office when a two wheeler crossing the road perpendicularly left a small scar on front of my car. Though it was hardly visible. Third one was when returning from office close to my home a truck's tyre had got puntured and the truck guy had parked his truck right on road leaving very little space for a car to cross. At first I was hesistant and started taking back gear. But then I saw another car who made it through the narrow space. Looking at that I too decided to go that way. But unlucky for me my left side mirror got hit and I had to back off and also while backing off my car's left handside body got a scratch. 4th and the last one was when going to Life republic when my left window got hit and broken. I have placed a order for it and it is going to cost Rs 3000. That is too much! Hope this incidents turn out to be the last ones and I am able to drive peacefully and safely on indian roads.