From the old site: My favourite blog

Car aur Hum Tum...

If there's one place where you would positively squirm at being a lady driver, it would be at the mechanic's. Yours truly, has just got out of this horrible experience, unscathed, mind you and believe me, it's not a very nice situation to be in... It's not the grease and stale petrol smell that gets to you, it's the attitude.
My story starts on a Tuesday morning. My car clutch had been giving a problem for sometime now and a friend pointed out, "I think you should get that checked. It's not sounding very good."
Armed with this advice, I made a beeline to my friendly (?) neighbourhood mechanic, who is around 8 kms from my place. I had bought my car from there... so naturally was more comfortable there. Well! I sure wasn't ready for the surprise in store for me.
We reached there and the mechanic, wearing an expression of impending doom, took a look at the car (read... took it a couple of metres in front and then in reverse) before proclaiming... "Clutch plate change karna padega!"
I was just about to resign myself to parting with a fat sum of money when he said it, in what was meant to be a snide aside to my friend... "Ladies driver ka main problem hai yeh!"
Lady luck had definitely gone for a walk for him -- because I overheard the remark.
Pulling myself up to full height (which isn't much anyway) and keeping as much of dignity in my voice as I could, I just got into the car, swerved it out of the garage and went off.

True that I had been putting it off till the last moment, also true that I hadn’t expected the damage to be so bad, but blaming it on lady drivers in general? I wasn’t going to give in to him that easily… Finally I did go to another mechanic, who though was as incredulous did show some respect to lady drivers and I guess the respect only increased when I went there armed with all the spare parts that needed replacement.

I still can’t fathom this mental block that people have against lady drivers. Believe me, I have known some very bad male drivers, who just happen to get overshadowed by the reputation that lady drivers carry. It’s just not fair. I don’t say we’re perfect, but come on, I think it’s time the good ones among our lot start getting some respect for our driving skills and more importantly for our love for that complex machine called the automobile.