Originally written on Dec 28 2015
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Appearances are deceptive! I have always known that! All that glitters is not gold, knew this as well… Most of the times, I don’t form an opinion or come to a conclusion about a person in the first meeting, I take time to form that first opinion.. I am always 50-50 on first impressions! However, though I didn’t seem to have practiced it this time, it still managed to prove the same thing all over again!!
Our last minute planned trip that I had blogged about yesterday led us to look for available drivers(given that it was Christmas long weekend, we knew it would be tough) for the trip…As expected, none of the drivers who we already knew were available.. so we reached out to a known travel agent contact to locate one for us & he did so too, almost immediately.. It was a huge relief but little did we know what was in store for us the next day…
The next morning when the driver arrived – our deepest fears began! I feel bad for even feeling so, but the first thought that sprang to my mind was, OMG, he looks wayyyyyyyyyyyy toooooooooooo creepyyyyyyyyyyyyy! His demeanor was not that great as well.. I stole a quick glance at my mom and rolled my eyes to check if it was some kind of miscommunication, so mom made those quick calls to the travel agent just to confirm that it was really him that the travel agent had suggested after which we handed over our car keys! He fiddled with the car keys and once in the car, he fiddled with couple of controls as well.. basically he looked unfamiliar with the car controls..I began to panic! We asked him if he had driven a swift or a similar model before, for which he replied in negative, but then went on to add that he owned an ambassador and so knows how to drive a car.. We were naturally confused & appalled
Now, we know the travel agent very well and he wouldn’t send any person, just like that, we were pretty sure of that….. So, even though there were red flags rising everywhere, we just said a quick prayer and went ahead with the trip!
I was literally sitting at the edge of my seat for the first 45 minutes of the drive, where he kept fiddling with the automatic car lock – controls, the AC, the rear view mirrors and what not…On the highway, when he fastened his seat belt all wrong, I got damn damn damn scared and couldn’t help but mutter another silent prayer for all of us! So much so, that I decided that come what may we are returning home after Aanegudde temple visit.
We reached Aanegudde and as we were discussing to return back, we thought why not go till Hattiangadi to see if he turns out ok.. After all, other than the fiddling with controls, his driving was not that bad.. So we gave him another chance, and well, by then, he had familiarized himself with the car controls and he turned out to be just fine.. a little eccentric, but still fine… Along the way, though we were not brave enough to initiate any small talk (which we tend to do normally with anyone else), he himself initiated conversations and told us a lot about himself, few of the stuff he shared pained us to even imagine that he had gone through so many hardships(no wonder he has turned into a creepy-first-impression fellow).. At the end, apart from the initial fear, we enjoyed the trip & even paid him more than what his expectation was! The innocent glint at the higher income received at the end of the day was just plain visible to see even through those steely creepy eyes!
Oh, I also do want to add, of the whole trip, the one person who remained unbiased of his appearance was my daughter.. which also probably means that we adults as we grow up, along the way, due to someone or something, get conditioned to form opinions based on appearances, which is so so wrong.. As I had already mentioned in one of oldest posts, may be we become parents so we develop the habit of unlearning a few stuff, looking at how our kids behave – Yes, we definitely grow older, but its the kids who probably make us a bit wiser!
So, this was a special trip, that way!
I did see many parents clicking pictures/recording the performances even after repeated announcements made by the school authorities and well, for a few seconds, when I was equally overwhelmed as others, I did try to click one pic of the performance with my supposedly good (per pixel and zoom specs) phone camera, but, well, it came out really bad.. my blurred vision probably affected the phone camera too 
