The Drive Diaries - Part II

 Ever since I learnt how to drive, I have felt how each drive is a microcosm of life itself or at least a slice of it. In this series of short stories, I shall purport to portray the parallels that I perceived.

I have noticed several times that when I drive, my speed and aggression on the road closely correlate to my emotional state. This is a story about driving under a great deal of stress.

Swati got into her car. She was shaking all over. She had no idea why. To be more exact, she had no idea exactly why.

It wasn’t rage. There was no anger, only resolve. To know the truth, one way or another.

As her car shot out of the basement parking, she was on autopilot and yet driving faster than she had ever done.

“What am I going to get from this?” she asked herself. Perhaps some peace of mind that she was not going crazy. That would be great after all she had been through in the past couple of weeks.

Her Red Suzuki Swift was deftly responding to her every move almost before she made it. It seemed it wanted a resolution too.

“But what’s the worst that can happen?” she wondered.

When Swati was just ten, during the long train journeys to visit her grandparents, her father had stepped out at a station for some chai. As the train started with no sign of her father, her fertile imagination had sprung to life.

“If he missed the train, what would I do? Should I pull the chain that I see when I go to the upper berth? But it says on the notice that I will have to pay Rs. 1000 as fine. I don’t even have Rs. 5! What about calling out for help and maybe one of the fellow passengers would know what to do? No, I don’t want to do that. I can take care of it myself! Perhaps, I could get off at the next station. But, then how would dad know I would be there? No, the best course would be to stay put and reach grandparents’ house. I know their phone number and the street. If I can somehow manage the fact that I don’t have any money till I contact them, it will be alright!”

As her frantic train of thoughts reached its final stop, her dad had reappeared carrying two cups of chai. Her smile would not betray an iota of what she had been thinking and planning for.

“Focus, Swati!”

She had braked hard to avoid crashing into the car in front of her. She had to pay attention to the oncoming traffic as well. After all this, missing to spot Sachin’s car was not an option.

She was speeding down the road connecting their home and Aparna’s apartment.

Just a few minutes back in their cozy two-bedroom apartment, she had a split-second decision to make after hanging up on Sachin.

For some reason, she just knew that Sachin was at Aparna’s place.

“You are crazy,” he had said on the call. “It is that overactive imagination of yours that is acting up. I am driving back from work and not at Aparna’s place!”

She had noted, with a thinly veiled note of accusation, that she could not hear traffic. But she could hear a bag being zipped up hurriedly. She had hung up before he could say another word.

And here she was on the road, hoping to catch him in the act.

“In the act of what?” she wondered as she stopped at a red light.

She had accused Sachin of having an affair a week back. Since then, every instinct of hers had proven to be true. She had found the deleted texts, the lies about late meetings and the resort bookings.

He had found a way to explain each of them. He was good at that. Explanations and making himself the victim. But she was buying none of it.

“What do I do even if I reach her apartment? I don’t even know her flat number. What if what I heard was not a zipper at all? How can I be sure of anything at this point? Perhaps, he is on his way back from work after all. Maybe there wasn’t much traffic on the road and that’s why I couldn’t hear it. Am I too late? What if he has already left her place and I just see him on the other side of the road alone? What does that prove? What if he has already gone past me and I haven’t noticed? What if there is no affair at all and it is all in my head?”

She knew she had to let her mind run through its course of thought.

As the only traffic light on the way to Aparna’s apartment turned green, she bit her lip and pressed the accelerator.

“Only a few hundred meters more,” she thought and swerved past a water tanker and then an auto-rickshaw.

As she turned the final corner and eased into a parking space, she saw Sachin’s black Honda Civic slowly pull out of Aparna’s apartment complex. As he looked around to make sure the way was clear, he caught her eye.

It was just for an instant, but Swati felt all the week’s anxiety, uncertainty and doubt peeling off her. This was it!

She watched him drive away through her rear-view mirror.

Suddenly, her confused state of wounded yet vindicated ego, was jolted by the phone. Sachin was calling.

“No doubt he has another explanation,” she thought.

She looked down the road. She could either go to her sister’s place and never come back or turn around and have a final confrontation.

Her eyes were stinging with tears, her ears were flaming embers and her heart felt like a ton of bricks had hit her chest.

But her mind had nothing left to imagine.

She shifted her Swift into gear and re-entered the amorphous flux of Bangalore traffic and the car inched its way forward.