Food for Thought:

A few days back a a resident's car hit a  four year old child who was on his bicycle inside my apartment complex. He was dragged on the driveway, for a few meters, by the car with his bicycle handle firmly stuck in the front right side of the vehicle. If not for a very alert aunty (she was resting after a walk) who jumped on the car , the car would not have stopped and things could have become worse.The child escaped but with injuries on his stomach and elbow.

He was stuck right under the driver's nose and the driver of the vehicle claims he did not see the cycle or the child or even heard the sound of metal clashing. Gross mistake on the part of the driver who knows that he needs to keep his eyes on the road ahead all times..all times especially once inside the flats. My compound is always teeming with children in the evenings and it's when you need to be extra alert when you get in with your car.

It's very home hitting for me for two main reason..I have a four year old son and I drive in and out all the time. There are times when some child would dart right out of the blue in front of the car and at that time if I was driving with my head turned backwards, that's a horror situation waiting to happen!

I have just completed a year of driving. A feat, some say, for Chennai's traffic can drive you crazy. So from being real slow on the road and trying to remember which gear I am on , to comfortably cruising today ,without any hassles....I think I've come a long waaayyy!

These days when I drive (since there is no music system), I generally just hum tunes or sing songs to Arav.

But when I drive alone, it's all focus on jaywalkers ; that bus which overtook me in a "cycle's gap"!! ; that car with the loud music system and some words like kill machine or race car written on the outside, racing with me ; that two-wheeler who tries to weave his way in between a traffic snarl and ends up scratching my car and scooting from that place before I can open the windows and scream.

Earlier the most I would do is stop in front of them or go close to them and roll down my windows and sounding most vengeful, would loudly say something like .."" Are you mad/stupid?". But now I have no patience for all that..so I generally use all the bad language that I have learnt over the years from friends..family..well-wishers..not so well-wishers!! But then all this talking happens only inside my locked car with my windows rolled up! (for obvious reasons)

So there was an incident where an Innova overtook me by edging me out and cutting my car in a precarious angle. I looked directly at the driver in his rear view mirror and uttered all the terrible words I remembered and spoke of horrible things that would happen to him (and his wife)!. And then I realized the driver was looking at me through his mirror too, ( eyes sqinting) trying his best to read my lips. So I switched to song mode...!! And life goes on..

So yesterday we started off on an adventure to Annanagar. Not exactly it was for an Ultra sound scan for Arav's tummy , since he had stomach aches for the past couple of days especially after eating food. Our doctor had recommended this particular scan center. So our scan center was in Annanagar and from Valasaravakkam we had to take the Koyambedu road. The roads were filled with water and it was bumpy. It was like as if we were in a roller coaster ride. Arav was giggling and laughing. He was obviously enjoying the ride! Then the traffic stopped just like that..nothing moved for about half hour. I gave up the scan idea and after finding my way out of  Koyambedu like you find your way through a maze, I got home.

Today we completed the scan in the Royapettah center and we are looking forward to the test results. Hopefully the results come out normal and does not indicate anything else...

I have started to drive and Arav hates it..he wants to go by auto instead, coz he says he would trouble me in the car otherwise.made it to his school on nov 30th though..first time i drove that far alone.

We got our brand new car today...Honda City.

We took it for a ride to AA's house to celebrate Krishna Jayanthi.