Driving

To reiterate a point we have made before, we have a driver not for convenience, nor for luxury. We have a driver because we never mastered how to drive in the crazy traffic here. Knowing other people in our situation who do drive here, I believe we could have learned to drive in Indian traffic. But, we didn't.

So far, I have twice been asked about a driver in the US. Three of us share a great admin in the office. When I was traveling to the US once, she asked if I needed to have a driver for my rental car. Such an innocent question, to which I responded by explaining that only very affluent people in the US have drivers. The explanation seemed odd to her, I think, because I think she thinks I am one of those affluent Americans.

More recently, my driver asked if he could drive for me in the US. I explained that I drive myself in the US and we did not need a driver. It would have been especially interesting to tell him that I am primarily a bus rider back n Charlotte. With his images of what public buses are like based upon the Indian buses (as an example, they rarely come to a full stop in the act of dropping people off or picking them up) I figured it would be too long of a conversation.

We will miss Subu. After all this time, we finally got a great driver after more duds than we can count.

Of interest is that he and I have never spoken English to each other. Primarily because his English is pretty poor, per what Tara tells me, and I have enjoyed building my confidence in Hindi.