Puzzled, he asked, “Don’t you know how to drive?”
I answered no, and the two men looked at me strangely. “Is it a crime to buy a car and not know how to drive it?” I asked.
“Oh no, no,” they said. “We are sorry. We will be happy to drive it to your place.”
I couldn’t believe I actually owned a car. It was a 1951 DeSoto, a gray, two-door stick-shift with two and a half gears. Feeling good about my purchase, I couldn’t wait to share my excitement with someone who would support me and be happy about it. I called my former housemate Ravi Aggarwal, a native of Calcutta, who was working on his MBA at UT. The other Indian students I lived with advised me to not get too close to him. “He is a city-slicker,” they said. Ravi was fluent in English, came from an affluent family, and received his bachelor’s in commerce from Xavier University. Students knew him as a talkative and cunning person who easily took advantage of people. “Stay away from him,” they warned. “He is up to no good.”
“He may be the type of person you are describing,” I replied, “but I would like to know this person and have experience with him before I accept your impression of him.”
As time passed, Ravi Aggarwal and I became close friends. Even though he was from Calcutta, his parents were from Punjab, and he knew Punjabi culture, one of the reasons we became such close friends. When I told Ravi Aggarwal about the car, he said, “Oh no, Bedi. You did not.”
“Yes, I did,” I answered. “Come and see it.”
Ravi was glad to know I had bought a car, but he told me it was not considered good for foreign students to own cars. Americans figured that if foreign students owned cars, they could go on dates easily and have a good time instead of studying.
“Our advisor, Mr. Nelson Nee, is from China and is married to an American woman, and even he doesn’t own a car,” Ravi informed me. “He does not advise foreign students to own cars either.”
“Well, I didn’t ask Mr. Nee, did I?”
“It is great that you have a car. Just don’t publicize it.”
I finally persuaded him to come to my house and look at the car. “Get in and I’ll show you how it runs,” I said.
Ravi got in the car, and I pulled onto the street. I had driven half a block when Ravi asked if I had a driver’s license.
“No,” I answered, nonchalantly. “This is my first time driving.”
“You don’t know how to drive!” Ravi exclaimed. “You have to go back right now!”
Slowly, I drove back to my house and parked the car. Ravi sat stiffly in the front seat, praying I wouldn’t run over the curb or veer into oncoming traffic.
“Bedi,” Ravi said, once we were safe in the driveway. “You cannot drive this car until you take driving lessons and get a driver’s license.”
The next day, Ravi and I went to the DMV and brought home the driver’s education book so I could learn how to operate a car and memorize the rules of the road. Two weeks later, I passed the written test for a learner’s permit. As soon as Ravi gave me driving lessons, I could get my license.
When the fall quarter started, McDonald’s did not offer me a job for the rest of the year. I could only afford to take three courses, the minimum requirement. Ravi Sood suggested I offer parking spots to earn extra money. I could fit three extra cars in the driveway at Ravi’s rental house. On football game days, I made a sign that said, “Park–$3,” and stood by the side of the road for all the passing cars to see. Friends and classmates laughed at me standing there, holding my sign. But I made nine dollars almost every home game, and I didn’t care, even when the gossip was about Bedi standing on the street with a sign.
In the beginning of the fall quarter, I became friends with Sarbjeet Sandhu, a PhD student who had just moved from Punjab. Sandhu came to my apartment for lunch or hot tea several times a week. Four years older than I was, he had completed his Master’s in Agriculture in India and worked for several years. He had married an Indian woman a year earlier and missed her terribly since leaving her in Punjab. Sandhu was not adjusting well to the environment in America, and he found studying in the US not as easy as he had been led to believe.
One day, while we sat in the kitchen drinking tea, Sandhu mentioned that he needed to open a bank account.
“I have a car. I can take you!” I responded immediately.
Sandhu hesitated. “I don’t know, Bedi. You don’t have a driver’s license yet.”
“Don’t worry. Ravi Sood has given me lessons, and I can drive now.”
Sandhu didn’t look too convinced, but he agreed.
The next day, I drove to his apartment, but he was not outside yet. I honked the horn a couple of times, but he still did not come out. Deciding to park on the side street outside his house, I yanked the steering wheel too hard and could not straighten the car since it did not have power steering. My Desoto crashed into a parked car with a loud crunch. Panicking, I looked around to make sure no one had seen me before I drove away.
About twenty yards down the street, I came to a stop sign. In a hurry to get away from Sandhu’s house and the car I’d hit, I ran the stop sign, slamming into another car in the middle of the intersection. I climbed out of my car and approached the two ladies sitting in their dented car—a mother and daughter, I presumed—the latter
