A car of one’s own

I learnt how to drive when I was 18,but I’m capable of driving to the extent that a few simulator sessions equip you for flight. Traffic throws me off,I tell people,or that I lack the hand-eye coordination and observation it takes to survive Delhi roads,or that I have a sub-par sense of direction. And now that I think of it,it has constricted my life for years in hugely unnecessary ways — from having to make nice to people who pick me up and drop me,to not pulling my weight on road trips,rarely going to inconvenient locations,leaving early,and generally living a more hemmed-in,dependent existence than I’d like.

There are several kinds of women who can drive,but don’t. The Nation columnist and activist Katha Pollitt wrote a wonderfully frank essay,Learning to Drive,about slowly picking up the pieces in middle age after her longtime lover leaves her. She was then a 52-year-old feminist who didn’t believe that being ferried about was a female prerogative,unlike her mother,who was the more traditional kind of non-driver — the kind who looks sadly at jars that won’t open,and enlists help for everything after some initial resistance. Then there are those women who,after years of schlepping their shiftless friends and boyfriends and then children all over town,finally give up and refuse to get behind the wheel. A recent survey revealed that even in American households that identify as feminist,men do most of the driving. Maybe it’s part of the sad phenomenon that psychotherapist Colette Dowling identified as the Cinderella complex — how some women still have an ambivalent relationship with independence — wanting it and shrinking from it,privately just wanting to be rescued and taken care of. Maybe that’s what unites us non-drivers,a readiness to accept confines and shrunken habitats because being a free agent is too scary. It’s easier to just go along.

In the West,after the small excursions permitted by horses or hobby-horses (early bicycles),cars were credited with abruptly expanding a woman’s world — as cultural historian Gerald Silk has noted — getting her out of the home,“providing opportunities to increase outside social contacts”. Yet,automobile advertisements determinedly cast women as a car accessory rather than driver — the smiling,grateful wife or the sexy conquest or glamorous companion. Even as a 1915 Scribner’s Magazine article marveled at the sight of “women driving motor-cars for all the world as if they belonged at the wheel”,it admitted unease at the “idea of a speeding career for mother and the girls”. But wheels remain vivid symbols of personal freedom,impulse,the open road,loose abandon. Think of the Bihar welfare scheme that gives young girls bicycles,stretching their sense of limits.

Roads,though,remain terribly sexist spaces. Women have been driving for decades now,arguably more competently than men,who drive more rashly,but those worn-out women-driver jokes refuse to be killed off; “hilarious” crash videos still go viral. Both men and women are more likely to impatiently honk at women drivers. When cars are pitched at female buyers,the car’s appearance is talked of rather than its technical chops or value for money.

But either way,in my very implicated opinion,female driving refuseniks of the world need to grow up. Embrace the tedium,the rage,the parallel parking and reversing on slopes,fail and persevere,but learn to start steering. I’ll make a start.

amulya.gopalakrishnan@expressindia.com