'Rainy Day' in Nizwa

I was talking to my teammates in the afternoon about my driving in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. I took lot of time and attempts to pass out the driving test. I had no mind set to learn at all!

Finally I got the license and started driving.

It was fun in the Capital City. I was traveling for about 100 km every day of the week. Oh, yes, even on Fridays used to go somewhere or the other. The flat where we were staying had a lock for the door on the ground floor,

We all had one key each. On Thursday our returning time to home was almost 2 am! No asker, no teller!

But during 2004 November, when my colleague Mr.  M G Pai went to India, I was asked to take over the Lighting showroom.

I had an assistant Jeevan Prakash. He used to cook for me. We stayed together.

I used to get up early and leave at 8 am in the car towards a place called Ibri. The trunk of the car (Mine was a Mazda 323) would be filled with electric materials ordered by the customers in Ibri.

It was a tedious but fun travel. The tape recorder used to play my favourite Carnatic classical and old Hindi songs. I used to like a few new songs in Hindi as well.

The road would be very lonely but for a few goats and camels. I was strictly warned by my colleagues not to cross path of a camel. If the car hits a camel, it stays hit. There is very little chance of survival of the driver.

The road side had mountains on both sides. Sometimes the road would have many vehicles. It was a single track. The last vehicle would get impatient and try to come to my lane, overtake all the cars on the other side and try to lead the fleet of cars without hitting me! It is actually precision driving I should say!

The places visited were Ibri about 200 km up and down, Izki about 60 km and Sumail about 100 up and down.

Since the city was full of sunshine and there were no signs of rains, I was happy.

One day I was going to Sumail. The sky was quite clear. After talking to two of the customers I retraced my path. Then I found sheets of rains in front of me. I was totally scared. I did not know how to operate the wiper!

I knew that if I press the button in the wiper, there would be some water getting sprayed on the front glass.

I did that and put on the hazard lights, head lights and travelled with my heart in my mouth.

I could not see anything in the front and my speaker was singing Nazar aa rahaa hai saaf yeh… (every thing is been seen clearly)

Anyway, the nightmare was over after a short time.

Well, this is just one incident which I remember always!