HOMEBODY IS HIJACKED

Once I passed my driving test, I became heavily dependent on the Tom-Tom, GPS or SATNAVs as they are called here in the UK. Satellite navigation systems are a godsend for the directionally-challenged such as myself, but they only work if one lives in sunny areas of open fields and small trees. If it’s cloudy, or raining, or high buildings flank you on both sides, the Satnav gets confused.

So good luck driving down Central London or anywhere else in a country whose default weather is blustery, wet and windy.

I named my satellite navigation system Simone.

She sounds like a Simone: a high-coiffured, perky-breasted thirty-something woman-of-the-world wearing a red Gucci business dress patiently repeating driving instructions and talking down to you so that you end up feeling terribly incompetent and stupid. She is posh and sophisticated – calculating traffic-free routes and allowing you to customize your journey based on whether you want to drive through picturesque lanes, avoid motorways or have a preference for country roads. If I ask her to, she will hand over the reins to automatic driving and even get the car to parallel park while I sit with my hands folded in my lap. Her Received Pronunciation Accent lulls me into a false sense of confidence so that I usually don’t find out she’s messed up until I see a sign saying ‘500 miles to Scotland’ when really, I just need to go to Mill Hill twenty minutes away from home.

Yesterday – Simone made me go round the same roundabout thrice because she couldn’t figure out where we were. When I was finally merrily cruising along the M1 motorway as I was supposed to be doing, she suddenly asked me to TURN AROUND IF POSSIBLE. Now even I know that you don’t execute a U-Turn on a highway with cars going 70 miles per hour. My heart stopped beating and my head started pounding – I was hurtling along at great speed to an unknown destination, yet one which Simone had set me on in the first place.

She started beeping to further ease my apprehension. My knuckles went white and fingers went cold with every pinging alert. I was told to take the next exit, which I was assured was coming in 100 yards – except that I knew I had already passed it some time ago. I drove in abject terror for another twenty minutes, resenting her authoritative and confident tone despite her incompetence. Common sense kicked in and I decided to take the next exit to stop at a petrol station and gather my senses. But as soon as I did so, Simone became agitated:

RE-ROUTING. RE-ROUTING. TAKE THE THIRD EXIT FROM THE ROUNDABOUT. TAKE THE THIRD EXIT.

Which was all very well but there was no roundabout. I continued on, frustrated and panicking, when lo and behold, one did materialize eventually. However, the highlighted route on the screen indicated the 2nd exit, not the 3rd. I decided to follow the Simone instead of the screen – she put me back on the wrong motorway. And then turned impatient and insisted, in a gratingly emotionless voice, that I make a U-Turn.

As this was happening, my husband called and asked me how my day was going. Hyperventilating and very close to tears, I yelled into the speaker phone: ‘I DON’T THINK WE’LL EVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN! SIMONE HAS HIJACKED ME!’ He calmly asked me who Simone was, and then suggested I cancel route guidance and enter the destination address again.

Which I did.

Simone returned sounding fresh, patient and unruffled and informed me smartly to keep driving on – I was on the correct motorway after all and in fact, just 15 minutes away from where I needed to be.

You’d think this was a freak incident, but the other day I wanted to go to a hardware store and typed in the postcode. Simone took me to the town sink-hole that had swallowed three driveways in one morning. She wanted me to go into it before she could say, ‘YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION.’

I sometimes think Simone does this because she resents me since I’m the new woman in my husband’s life and have replaced her reign (or tyranny, whichever you prefer). I posited this theory to my husband who merely rolled his eyes and carried on watching his football match. However, I had my revenge last week when I changed the Satnav settings. Simone has now become a Sam and we are getting along famously, thank you very much!

Homebody Takes a Driving Test

I used to think that I knew how to drive; that it was a skill I had acquired when I braved the traffic of Shahrah-e-Faisal for 4 years in order to get to and from Karachi University. I was a hoyden on the road: racing buses and trucks and rickshaws – but studiously avoiding motorcycles. These last are a highway menace: swerving like broken pendulums on wheels as if the road was their little practice lane. If  you collided with one of them the class argument was sure to be whipped up:  YOU were the car owner and THEY weren’t, so naturally, everything was your fault.

So when I was told I’d have to pass the UK driving test and it was really hard, I pooh-poohed the notion. After all. How tough could it be? I was a Karachiite. I was a road demon. I laughed in the face of the UK highway code.

 The theory test was a breeze. I read a short booklet containing about 300 odd driving rules that were far easier to forget than comprehend; did some practice tests and then  passed the online test in 20 minutes. The examiner – a Pakistani Briton, said, ‘Ab Shazaf Shadaab ho gayee.’ I took a bow and headed off home, proud as can be.

When the day of the practical test rolled around, I was the picture of confidence. My driving instructor told me I had it in the bag if I could just hold my nerve, and I was grabbing on with iron fists. The examiner was a short, bearded man who explained the rules, asked me to take the seat and told me to show him how the windscreen would be de-fogged. Easy-peasy. Then it came time to drive.

I cruised along merrily, chatting, waiting to be told to turn right or left, or keep straight. And I jabbered away: did  he know I had been doing this for a while – that I was from Pakistan where driving was far harder, that I was thinking of doing a PGCE and also, fun fact: the man who executed Saint Albans was purported to have gone blind once he beheaded him? My examiner – Brian, nodded politely and continued with his instructions.

 ‘No seriously, the executioner’s eyes popped out. There’s a depiction of the scene in several glass paintings in Verulamium Cathedral’ I insisted while expertly leaving a roundabout on the third exit, checking the mirrors and indicating at all the correct times. Brian nodded politely and made me reverse round a corner, go up a hill and down an underpass and eventually returned us to the driving school.

I switched the car off and beamed at him. He coughed, looked down and declared I had failed.

My face and heart plummeted to the ground.

Failed, had he said?

Yes. I had failed in the first 5 minutes of the test because I hadn’t seen a pedestrian on a zebra crossing and that is a major offence. A stupid woman walking a stupid Dalmatian had crossed the road and I hadn’t waited for her to get completely off before driving ahead. Plus a portion of the Dalmatian’s tail was still wagging above the white line.

I had failed by the tip of a canine’s tail. (But then all those stripes and spots were a hazard for any erstwhile test taker.)

I was driven home in utter humiliation. If I hadn’t talked so much, focused more on the road, if I’d just slowed down, I’d be with a license. But now here I was: waiting to take another test to go through the process again in three month’s time because the test centers in the UK are always busy. I imagined Brian going into the little driving examiner’s coffee room and saying, ‘Man this woman wouldn’t shut up, and she almost drove over a dog. Failed in the first five minutes. Kept referring to her Karachi driving – apparently they like to run each other over on a regular basis there.’

People were nice enough about my test. They all said everyone failed at least once, so not to worry. I gave myself a pep talk and continued to lug heavy grocery bags uphill – with decreasing patience and growing resentment.

By the time my second test rolled around – I was not keeping my cool. I was nervous and hysterical and my driving instructor – a lovely man named Haj told me I would be okay if I just breathed. I snapped out that it was all too much – walking and sitting and breathing and driving – there was a limit to multitasking. And then I saw my examiner – a smiling old man named Gregg who called me Shaz and told me it would be okay and that I should stop hyperventilating otherwise he wouldn’t be able to continue the test. I didn’t talk. I gulped and coughed and repeated and confirmed every instruction before executing it. And all was well until, in the last 5 minutes, I exited a roundabout and made the car ahead slow down.

Here’s the rule for learners – you can’t make another car slow down on a test. The Karachiite woman driver in me doesn’t get it – I slowed people down all the time and they seemed to expect it and gave way accordingly. But here, as a learner, slowing traffic down instead of waiting for it is a major offence. I failed. Gregg didn’t help matters much: he kept going ‘Shaz… Shaz…Shaz…you almost had it. The pity of it! The pity of it!’ By the time the test ended I was comforting him.

People weren’t so kind this time. ‘Second time fail? Haw hai. I passed in the first go.’ It didn’t help that it was mostly my in-laws who said this – they are all expert drivers. I clenched my teeth and said nothing and went back to walking around trying to figure out the suburban bus network – since I was obviously never going to drive in the near future.

There was no reason for me to fail my tests, really: I had the most ideal conditions – prime time of no traffic at 9 a.m., fine, sunny weather and good health. The third time – everything was a mess. There was after-school traffic and the roads were jammed. There were harried mums and irresponsible school children jay walking everywhere. I was sick with the flu and nauseous. The half hour test lasted for one hour because all routes were jammed. And I had my first examiner – Brian – again, though he didn’t recall who I was which was lucky because I had no desire to be remembered.

I gave way. I waited. I manoeuvred all the while trying to retain the contents of my stomach. As we turned into the driving center’s car park (one which I was beginning to hate) we stopped and Brian looked at me. I looked at him, waiting, preparing for the worst. Maybe there was some stroller flap the breeze of my passing car had whipped up at too high a velocity or something ridiculous like that.

He whispered conspiratorially – ‘You’ve passed.’

I screamed and promptly started crying. Haj, who’d been waiting outside, saw me break down, ran inside and shook my shoulders. Brian coughed and looked embarrassed and filled in my pass certificate. I was driven off – triumphant but exhausted. I had done it – I was a UK driver. Which was fabulous, because I would boldly go where everyone went all the time – but on a freaking car this time! Yeah man!

But then, when your car is a Mercedes and you have a navigation system out to kill you – driving can seem a much more daunting experience. But THAT is another blog post.

HOMEBODY MISSES HER MOMMY

Back when I first started blogging, I often struggled with bitterness over how I had ended up fat, divorced and stuck. But when days got really terrible and positivity was elusive, I scoured my brain to figure out what I had that other people did not. And the answer I always came back to was the same: I had my Mommy. Arthritic, hypertensive and opinionated she may be, but always the light of my life.

Not that we were at peace with each other. We were too alike. You see, once you return home after you’ve been married – a struggle takes place. Your mother is ready to take care of you but you don’t need her in that capacity. You don’t need limits set on how to dress and where to go and what to say, you don’t need the ‘I told you sos’ and you  certainly don’t require the lectures on how to properly conduct yourself with modesty so as to best attract further proposals so that you can get married again as soon as possible. It didn’t help that my dad had died six months before I ended my first marriage – so my mum and I were two grieving women, suffering loss in different ways and not quite knowing how to grieve.

There were fights – unbelievably cruel accusations were hurled by both sides. I remember the worst night was when I physically pushed my mum out of my room and told her that she was miserable and hateful from behind my closed door. She yelled right back and told me that I was selfish and disobedient and deserved everything I was getting.  What followed was a deathly silent night before I went back to her room, crawled into her bed and hugged her in the early light of dawn. She hugged back because, like me, she too had spent a sleepless night regretting her words and anger.

We hated and loved in equal measures. What got us through it was the knowledge that come what may, we were in this together and if anyone tried to hurt us, we’d band together and forge a united front. But in the absence of a common enemy, we were lost.

This time, this horrible, fractious time changed something very basic between me and mum – we realized that to actually establish a genuine relationship, the struggle for power had to go away. I see many of my friends with their mums – chained to them – their approval, their scorn, their responsibility towards them. I see mothers guilting their sons and daughters into obedience; unthinkingly limiting their lives and opportunities because it is a widely perceived notion in sub continental culture that a daughter or son is a future investment for a parent: old age becomes a loan on which interest is owed whether the principle is available or not.

But that was not the case with my mother. She realized she no longer needed to ‘take care’ of me – three joint therapy sessions made her understand that. But that meant that I also had to accept her as a separate human being – with needs and wants that didn’t involve me. It was a joint separation into maturity.

Women, as Nancy Friday once said, can be each other’s greatest jailers and liberators. A relationship becomes free only when manipulation ends. Mothers manipulate their daughters into adulthood and daughters learn the same game in inverse – knowing which strings to pull and pressure points to press to hurt and guilt into getting what they want. But Ammi and I stopped becoming mum and daughter – we became friends. I was freed from all obligations to ‘take care’ of my mum in her old age – partly because it wasn’t needed, partly because I saw her as another individual who, like me, needed to make it on her own because I couldn’t possibly carry her weight and still live a full life. She took baby steps too:  letting me drive at night and go to strange places and meet strange men whom it was necessary to meet for the purposes of marketing my novel. She realized that her fears were her own and imposing them on me wasn’t parenting, it was smothering.

When I decided to get married and settle in London, I was gutted because it meant leaving a woman who had given birth to me, taken care of me and then gone through the very difficult process of letting me go (it is the last process that most parents can’t endure and therefore avoid).

And yet, she is the only woman in this world who is as interested in me as I am. My presence is her Eid, Diwali and Christmas all rolled into one. She prays for me, hurts for me and roots for me all the while telling me what’s wrong with me. The highlight of coming home to Karachi is to walk out of the arrival gates at Jinnah and see her, tasbeeh in hand and dupatta on head, anxiously waiting for me to walk out, beaming when I have done so and then immediately handing her cell phone to me to call the driver because when I am present, all mobile related duties will invariably fall on me and she no longer needs to bother with ufone and bad signals and the mystifying world of smart phones for a week or two.

By the same token, leaving Karachi means hugging her goodbye, watching her stand alone behind the railings, knowing that she will return to an empty house and feel empty for a while. To call her after immigration is to realize that she has regressed from being a physical presence to a voice on the phone. Returning to the UK, I skype her and am gutted when I realize, as the wonderful poet Noorulain Noor puts it, that her sky is different from mine.

It is a mini-death, this separation.

But Ammi has given me the gift of letting me know that she not only will she be fine without me, she’ll live life to the fullest and enjoy herself. And in the process, she has become a role model – someone comfortable with separation and loneliness and still managing to garner enthusiasm and joy in life. I can cry in the shower and miss the scent of her perfume and our chai sessions in her bed – but  I know that happiness – not residual but whole-hearted, full-throated laughter-kind,  is still possible. One just has to exert oneself, like she does.

Ammi is a woman comfortable with discomfort and she’s helping me become the same. And in being a strong woman, she has given me the greatest gift any mother can give to her daughter.