My 50 year old classmate!

I have an Indian driving license — something which continues to shock me to this very day. Needless to say, I never touched, let alone ride, a car after getting the license; that is, if occasional rides in male classmates' dad's cars do not not fall under this category. Anyway, when I applied for classes here, the registrar asked me whether I have a valid Indian license. Like the climax of some action-flick, I took out my license, (mind you, all in slow motion!), and showed it to her, while having the cheshire cat grin. One look at the license, and ... " Sorry, but your license is not valid. You should have had a license for at least two years. Your's is only a year old so ..." The sudden flashes of images of me waking up earlier than the stray dogs in my colony for my driving classes, fighting to stay awake while behind the wheel, the actual test and all those terrible arduous formalities did nothing to stifle my mental cries. Well, I didn't actually wanna scream out loud and be denied of the right to register on the grounds of being of 'unstable mind'.

Anyway, now I have to attend 40 classes while a two year old Indian license would have granted me the priviledge of attending only 20 and hence get the license faster. Here, the traumatic experiences of getting a license have inspired people to write their memoirs and dedicate a chunk of the book to it! As a part of the entire process, we have to attend four lecture classes — lectures that would include some interesting stuff about first aid, emergencies, traffic signals etc etc. I walked into the lecture class and was faintly reminded of my college days. Those arm chairs, which I so detested back in college, were back and while taking my seat and generally chatting with my 'benchmate', the rest of the students slowly started piling in. There were all sorts of people — young 'studs' with hurricane like hairdos, corporate executives, young brides and ... much to my amazement ... 50 year olds! What struck me was, here we all are, back in a college-like, albeit artifical, atmosphere, complete with sling bags, classrooms and projector. But for those four hours, age really didn't matter coz we all were students and some were determined to have some fun of their own.

Some habits die hard. They need not be bad ones, just habits. While listening to the lecture, there were some cheeky guys (er, men) who were playing games in their mobile phones. There were some who were diligently listening and taking down notes, all the while trying to ward of its chatterbox neighbour, in the fear of irking the 30 something ( also, may I add, good looking) lecturer. Of course, there some naughty, who bordered on irritating, ones who changed their mobile ringtones to 'Who let the dogs out' and allowed it to ring when the lecture got a tad boring. I could not help but think " Now, this is what I call reliving college!"

But all it took was the ring of the last bell, which symbolised the end of the lecture. As they came out of their building, I saw very young men and women waiting for them, who were probably their children. As, the old men handed their sling bags over to them ( which in all probablity had been borrowed from them for the day), they seemed to have relished the lecture classes for other reasons than having crossed a milestone to get the license.