There is a huge debate going on in this part of the world on the subject whether women should be allowed to drive.
I don’t know why this is such a big deal because none of the women in my family ever sat behind the wheel and said: “Let’s go for a spin around town”.
It was the duty of the head of the household (as he was known then) to drive the women to the vegetable market or to the other side of my small suburban town, where you could feast on kebabs and kulcha (a soft hand-made round bread).
There were not many tiny cars on the streets as you find today on many Indian streets. Only two-wheelers, rickshaws or bicycles. For some reason, two-wheelers such as the Vespa scooter were the common mode of transport and it seemed as if you were in Italy, not in an Indian town. I presume these were popular because of the great mileage you got out of a litre of petrol in the tank.
Still, not many fathers gave their daughters the key to the Vespa because of a special breed of men that waited at street corners just for such an occasion — a woman or a girl riding a bike or a scooter. Unlike Rome, where these guys would follow the women and snatch their handbags, here it was a dangerous game called “eve teasing”.
For many other women, the most popular mode of transport was the bus. You had to be much faster on your feet than a man, or have sharper elbows and a determination of an athlete to ride on public transportation.
As you waited at the bus stop, you could see the bus approaching from the distance and from the door there would be a bunch of people, hanging out of and holding on to the door handle for dear life. Still, that didn’t deter many people from boarding the bus. The people hanging on would get down politely and the women would then get in and the bunch of people formed at the door again.
So, it didn’t come as much of a surprise to me when I moved out of my country to Saudi Arabia for a job and saw that there were no women motorists on the streets. In fact, there were hardly any women on the streets, only construction workers or men driving Mercs. Then the Gulf War happened.
(I am sure that when Henry Ford invented the “car for the great multitude,” he did not envisage that women also would be driving. If you don’t believe me then here are some sexist jokes: “My wife says she is a careful driver — she always slows down when going through a red light.” Here is another: “We bumped into some old friends yesterday ... my wife was driving.”)
To jump a few years ahead, I then left for Canada and applied for my driving licence. It took me four tries to get that license. It must be because of the way I had learned to drive in Jeddah.
My wife, on the other hand, got her licence on the first try and I always tell her it is because she learned how to drive watching me manoeuvre around the fast and furious streets of that Saudi city.
Finally, when I got the licence, I was informed that driving on Canadian roads was a privilege not a right. They told that to my wife too.
After having relocated to the UAE, my wife now refuses to drive in Dubai, saying it is her right not to drive. So, it’s back to me as the head of the household (as I tend to call myself despite her protestations) to drive everyone to the corner grocery every weekend.
