When I got caught by the Police

December 30, 2019

In the rearview mirror!

This is a real-life story and I am sure many can relate to this. It used to be an embarrassing incident but since then has turned into a funny story and had inspired a few others in a similar situation. A number of us dealt with that initial anxiety caused by the thought of having to drive, specifically on highways. 

Do you know that driving on highways is one of the most common causes of anxiety? Its phobia version also has a name - Vehophobia.

I lived in California for about a year and a half without owning a car in the times when services like Uber and Lyft didn't exist. I relied on public transport to the extent that I was teased that I always needed to find a rental place next to the train station. After getting a valid license to drive, I finally bought a Car. 

It was 2011, a year after I had bought a red ferrari (aka car) and was actually driving everywhere but with a catch - I had not gone onto freeway alone ever. Every route would usually involve some highway in between, it was a bit tough for me to use it and not end up on the highway. To be my lazy self, I had turned the ‘Avoid highway’ option 'on' in the Garmin GPS device that I had, which meant that it’s going to show only the routes that go through internal city roads. Google Maps is smarter but these devices weren't.

Having survived two layoffs at Adobe during the downturn of 2009-2010, I was in the process of finding a new job. I was appearing for an onsite interview with a company in San Mateo, very close to my house. Almost all of us have some stress before interviews, presentations, etc. and I am no different. I took my car to get to the interview location. I was using my GPS navigator. There was a left turn that needed to be made to drive into the company's parking lot and I missed that!

The lane I was on became ‘Left only’ with a ‘No U-Turn’
 sign. Then the ‘Left only’ lane turned ‘Freeway only’. What more could I expect? It was like some conspiracy against me. My single shot ‘stresspresso’
 turned into a double shot one in no moment - the interview stress and the add-on of ‘I have no clue where am I supposed to go’. 

Remember my non-smart GPS device was on ‘avoid highway’ mode so it stopped telling me any route to get to my destination. The ‘stresspresso’ kicked in and I stopped my car on the side of the freeway entrance which had quite a lot of parking space but was neither a legal nor a safe place to park. 

Trying to find my route back through the dumb GPS device, I was just parked there when I saw the Police car behind me. The policeman came to my window and knocked. I rolled down the window and he said, “Mam, do not come out of the car. Why are you stopped here?”. I told him what had happened and that I was trying to find my way back and I was not comfortable going onto the highway.

We continued to talk through the window. Usually one won't be happy being interrogated by a Police officer but I was relieved that he came and asked. He understood my genuine concern and offered to help.

He said, “I will help you get onto the highway and take the exit”. He took out his loudspeaker and told me to follow him. 
“Look over your shoulder, merge with the traffic ….. take the next exit”, were the words before the man and his voice both disappeared. 

I got to the interview and also got the job offer, though I didn’t end up joining that company.

The 'No U-Turn' sign from that experience remained in my head. After that on a weekend, I decided that it’s going to be a do or die day. I will go onto the freeway and either will get rid of this limitation once and for all or won’t return home. I took the car, got on to Highway 101 and drove from San Mateo to Mountain View just to buy groceries at the Milk Pail Market. Since then I haven’t looked back. I also stopped relying on GPS and trust my mental map and navigation more than the smart maps now. 

Fear of missing the highway exits and not being able to find my way back was probably the primary cause of not wanting to drive on freeway. I dealt with the issue by using Google street view beforehand to familiarize myself with the route and exits. I left the other silent concern of 'who will be in trouble if I accidentally end up in a hospital?' aside.

I also reminded myself that the appearance of fear is a false evidence. Fear, after all, is False Evidence Appearing Real. 

Since then, this incident has become a fun story and every time I shared it, someone would quote either themselves or their friends who still don’t consider driving on the highway. Just recently, a coworker who had recently moved from another country and was in the process of learning to drive here and get a license mentioned that they are still learning and aren’t yet comfortable. Everyone else in that lunch group started sharing their embarrassing yet funny driving stories. 

Hopefully, this story will inspire someone to get past their fear of driving and not take it on themselves, it is a genuine and well known area of concern among many people. And I am glad that my so far the only encounter with the Police was a pleasant one. 

Until next year... 

Listen! Don't try everything in English

I mentor a young schoolgirl in India. We do video calls once a week and during that time I can either help her with anything that she needs help with or I will make her do some exercises. I was told she needs help with English so I focus on English. Frankly speaking, I was a bit conflicted inside that do I want to teach English. I was also told that these kids don't have people in their family who can help them. A whispering voice came from inside, "can you keep your ideologies aside and focus on the need of the hour?". Often we don’t realize that the little time we give to someone can mean so much to them. Let’s call this girl ‘Radhika’ for our conversation. She is in 10th std.

Radhika would ping me on our defined day with a WhatsApp message ‘Hi mam, today is my skype’ which often makes me laugh as I am not used to hearing mam and we don’t end up using skype. My initial impressions about Radhika was that she is a smart and fearless girl. Initially, I was supposed to talk to her in English so that she gets comfortable conversing in English but I decided not to do that and since she understands decent Hindi, we communicate in Hindi. 

In one of our chats, I asked Radhika if she had any specific topic she would like help with. She did come up with a topic - direct and indirect speech. I don't remember learning anything in school since it had been so many years. I explained to her how to convert direct to indirect speech in Hindi. I wanted to avoid just telling the general grammar rules as her teacher might have already done that. Imagine explaining direct and indirect speech in English when your explanation itself will have those. We did a few examples and then she had to rush to school. Before we hung up, I asked her if this was helpful to her. She said, “this was very helpful”. Since then I have seen her improve in the homework.

The next time I asked Radhika the same question, “do you have any specific topics you need help with today?”. "No", she said so I had to come up with a task for her. I made her read a story of a few pages from her textbook to see her level of comprehension. While she had a regional accent, her comprehension was good. I noticed that she has a habit of eating words. She would eat some of the articles (‘a’, ‘the’), interchange them or twist and make new words while in a hurry. I stopped and corrected her every time she did that. Then there was a phrase in one of the sentences - ‘part and parcel’. I asked her if she understood what that means. She read it as ‘part’ and ate ‘the parcel’. I said, "can you explain the meaning of the phrase to me?". To my surprise, instead of coming up with a verbose explanation in English she said ‘अविभाज्य अंग’. Next, there was the phrase ‘new dimension’. And she was quick to say ‘दृष्टिकोण’. Her textbook has English meanings of these phrases. I was so happy as she reminded me of myself during school and my love for the तत्सम words. By now I had guessed that Radhika is strong in Hindi. I was curious if she studies Sanskrit as a subject in school as Hindi isn’t her mother tongue. She smiled and said, “no”. I asked her why she smiled. I thought she might say what will one do with Sanskrit. But she said, “Sanskrit is hard to learn”. I didn’t say much and we moved on to reading the next paragraph. 

Why am I writing about her? Of course, she reminded me of my old days and brought a smile. But more than that I wanted to write about the overly hyped need for English speaking. There are other more dangerous things than not being able to speak in English, like making it mandatory to speak in English in schools, teaching in English when the kids don't know that language, thinking that getting educated in English medium is the only way to get a job, taking English fluency to be a sign of intelligence. Humans are born with a sense of inadequacy and if one is made to feel inadequate because one isn't proficient in a foreign language, it can't be anything other than a disaster.

While the listening, speaking, reading, writing order is probably good for learning one's mother tongue, it seems the reading, writing, comprehending, speaking may be better suited for learning a second language that English is. There is a fundamental difference when one learns something in their mother tongue versus when it is taught in a language that isn't their first language. It is much easier to learn a concept if it's explained in one’s mother tongue or a language close to that. It's also not important to fluently speak in English to feel confident. As long as one can read, write, comprehend it, that fulfills the purpose of learning English for most kids in India. One can get used to converse over time. It would be a bit worrisome to not be able to speak in your mother tongue but that doesn’t apply to other languages.

I don’t know where this girl will go but I do see the potential and the confidence in her. I hope I would be able to influence her fluency in the subtleties of life more than her fluency in English.

Laugh at your own risk

(scene from an Indian Railway compartment, people who don't like middle berth sometimes occupy someone else's berth and don't want to give it to the actual ticket holder)