Sexing the highway

“Dum hai to pass kar, nahin to bardaasht kar”

So I was coerced into going on our family road trip this summer to Uttarakhand. This was going to be the first time I would be driving through infamous UP. I had heard not-so-nice things about the condition of the roads, lawlessness, a strong patriarchal mentality and the Kumaon hills not as beautiful as the Himalayan in Himachal. Well, to a great extent all of the above are true. But since I went with very low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised, and admittedly had a good time.

I love driving – give me a decent car, good company, food and water, and I’ll be off. Of course, I have my pet issues, especially something most women experience on the road, and complain ad nauseum about – lack of adequate toilet facilities. Now, for all my pseudo-high maintenance, when I got to go I just find a place where there is at least a door and go (or bushes, sometimes rocks in the middle of a forest road). I know of many women who’d hold it in, get sick but just refuse to set foot into a petrol-pump or dhabha shelter. Men have it easier, and there can be no debate about this.

But this is beside the point. What I was made to feel explicitly aware on this road trip, was how uncommon it is for women drivers to zip across NH24 as brazenly and confidently as any man worth his salt. I was stared at, quite unabashedly, every time we stopped for directions or passed towns where it is not difficult for people to look closely into your car. There were occasions when I was not replied to when I sought directions, needing a suitable male family member to step in. And dare I overtake or outrun someone and they realise there’s a woman behind the wheel – they’d always come back to prove a point to this chit of a girl.

I’ve been told that in this land of manners, men do not engage with strange women in any way. Hah, I refuse to buy this argument. Men don’t want to be outdone, not at something they are supposed to be natural at. We paid a lot of attention to cars on the road, not just on the highway but through the hills from Kathgodam to Bhimtal to Nainital, and did not count women drivers to even raise the fingers of one hand. Moreover, at one juncture, someone passed a remark to the effect of calling my father and brother impotent. What shame – in the presence of two strong sikh men a woman was steering the wheel (maybe they didn’t notice that strong sikh-ness was running in the female gene of this family?).

Such is not the case around NH1 or NH8 where women drivers, sometimes in the most enviable of cars, are not an uncommon sight. The innumerable times that I have travelled through Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh, Himachal never have I been looked at with such trepidation. Sure, people look up to my father in surprise that he “lets” his daughter drive through all sorts of roads in the plains or the hills, not to mention at all sorts of speeds. But, I have to arrogantly admit, many do look at me with awe when I fearlessly take the road.

However, my hunch is that even if my expertise and instinct on the road is acknowledged, it is done within the patriarchal domain. I drive like a man, not like a (wimpy, careless, carefree) woman. My father isn’t blameless either – when I got my licence he admonished me to not “drive like a girl”. My learning curve has been inflected by two men and therefore, I am told I drive aggressively and instinctively, a natural “like most men”, not defensively and meekly. I do not have my mother’s fearful inability, something that translates into my brother’s clinical driving, a reason why I am trusted with difficult stretches or when we need to make good time.

I don’t know what my “correct” response to this should be. The feminist in me exults when people look at me astonished when I give seasoned drivers a run for their money. I like being a lone female driver for miles, yet the same feminist in me wishes that there were many more. We may have to wait for the female auto revolution to usher in the highway loo movement.