“Is she a backseat driver?”
“No, she is more like a dashboard-driver.”
Hahahaha. We were having tea and I started telling a story about my wife’s driving.

Ah! She is an experience when it comes to driving a car. A once-in-a-lifetime experience. My daughter told my friend, “Papa is the most patient man in the world.” Truth be told, behind every patient man, there is a very impatient woman. It is a matter of survival. I’m digressing and I have only 10 min to tell you this story that happened a little over a year ago…

After 10 years of living in a super-efficient Singapore, we decided to indulge ourselves with a rather expensive extravaganza–a car! As fate would have it, my wife got her license ahead of me and we had to be driven around the first 3 months by her. This incident occured on the very first day of picking up Arushee from school. So imagine this, my wife is all geared up at the wheel–seat fully erect, drawn forward all the way to accommodate her rather diminutive frame, peering right over the steering wheel, hands white in a death grip, staring right ahead–and urgently seeking my permission at every signal “shall i go?”. To all this, I would set a calm facade, vacillating in between silent giggles and panic.

The drive, so far, free of any incident entered the final bend. The signal at this intersection was a little tricky for newly minted drivers. Without going into the intricate details, let’s say wifey just managed to take the turn at the last second and just as she crossed the line, the signal turned red. And the panic bells started clanging crazily for the next several hours and set off a series of escalations that are etched in our hearts and minds forever!

“Oh no, I broke the signal! I’m going to lose my license.”
“You did not break the signal Bujju. Relax.”
“No, I’m sure, I did. That’s it. My first day, I’m going to get 12 demerit points and they are going to take away my license.”

“Calm down.” I tried that line knowing fully well it was futile. She was obviously in distress despite all our efforts to calm her down. She parked in our basement and told us, “You guys go ahead, I will come back.” There was no point in trying to deter her. By this time, she was a force of nature that you could just acknowledge.

She ran all the way back to the intersection, a good one kilometer. She called me up and asked me if there were any cameras. So, I Googled it and before I could confirm, she sent me a picture of the cameras! And then stood there for the next one hour watching how other people navigated the intersection. She was fully convinced that she had overshot the red signal. She came back home completely dejected. I knew that story had not ended.

She took the number of the Singapore Traffic Police and called them up. An unsuspecting lady answered her call and my wife went something like this,
“Sorry ma’am, I wanted to know what the process is for breaking a red light rule.”
“What happened ma’am?”
“You see, I just got my license and I broke a red signal.”
(Silence from the other end)
“What should I do?”
(Still, no response from the other side)
After a full 10 second pause, the lady asked my wife,
“When did this happen ma’am?”
“Just 1 hour ago.”
“Madam, our system doesn’t show any violation. It takes 24 hours for the information to get updated.”
“But, I want to know now.”
“But madam, usually, people don’t call us to tell that they have broken the signal. We do that job. We will inform you, if there is any traffic violation. You will get it in the mail.”

I was still trying to maintain my calm expression and trying to be empathetic. Obviously, as I knew her, she wasn’t convinced a bit. She was determined to find out the truth.

“How does the traffic camera data sync with the central information system? I explained to her in detail about batch processing. I told her that all the camera data is stored locally and at a pre-determined interval, a software program syncs the data with the central server and updates the information. Blah, blah, blah.
“Does it not happen in real-time?”
“No. Not this system. They are not yet on the cloud.” I tried to explain. By this time it was 10pm. We patiently waited for another 2 hours and promptly, at the stroke of midnight, she logged into the Singapore traffic police website to find out if she had indeed committed the crime. It was very suspenseful, those 10 seconds, and to our relief, the page was blank. No violation. “Voila! There you go, no ticket. Let’s sleep,” I said. I did. She did not. She kept refreshing the page until 4am and then finally went to sleep.

That’s how our driving career began in Singapore. We tracked the website incessantly every hour for the next three days with increasing certainty that all was well with her license and that troops won’t storm into our home and confiscate her license and send her away to the gallows. That’s a normal day in our lives 🙂