It is peak traffic hour and the Gurugram road is choked with vehicles, but Supriya Deverkonda who is in her car driving to work, is at ease. The 45-year-old who works in the corporate sector used to be flustered in such situations earlier, and it didn’t help that she has a hearing impairment. The thing is, she had always wanted to drive. She enrolled in a driving school at 18. Her father’s friends also tried to teach her but she couldn’t pick it up. She had kept off the roads for the longest time until she met driving coach Seema Sinha last November. “I have driven for over 6,000 kilometers after that,” says Deverkonda proudly.
Sinha, 50, who lives in Gurugram, has been a godsend for many women like Deverkonda who wanted to be behind the wheels but were unable to, for various reasons. In the past year, she has taught more than 80 in Delhi NCR. And the numbers are only growing, as Sinha has classes lined up for months ahead.
Sinha has had a successful corporate career.
However, life changed with the birth of her daughters as she decided to leave her job to be a stay-at-home mother. She is a mother to three girls. But after being at home for over two decades, she was faced with an existential crisis. “The children had grown up and I knew I had done a good job raising them. Now I had to do something meaningful with the rest of my life”. She decided to change her life around. And “give back” to society.
Her journey as a driving coach began when she connected over Facebook with Vandana Suri, founder of the Bangalore-based startup, Taxshe, which offers women-driven cabs and driving classes for women. Sinha was intrigued by an employment opportunity Suri had put out on Facebook regarding women drivers and driving coaches. She started as a driving coach with the startup. She “found her calling”, she says. She is currently a partner with Taxshe.
Born and brought up in Lucknow, Sinha is, to the surprise of many, an entirely self-taught driver herself. “I grew up being driven around on the busy roads of Lucknow by my brothers”, she says and would observe them keenly. “I would imagine myself in the driver’s seat”, she says. For her, it symbolised something greater. “When you are behind the steering, you take control of your life.” After marriage, she moved to Delhi and began driving around in the locality. And one day, to test herself, she took off from Delhi to Gurugram, in peak traffic hour, and managed to do so successfully.
‘Never say never’
This fearlessness and “never-say-never attitude” drives her teaching as well. Her method guarantees to help clients navigate the “madness” of Indian roads. “She could have gone easy on me because of my hearing impairment. But she treated me like she would any other client—that gave me the confidence to drive in the most difficult situations”, says Deverkonda of how Sinha trained her to work around her handicap. Sinha has trained 18-year-olds to 70-year-olds. She customises her classes according to the requirements of each client, whom she gets to know before the lessons begin.
In the driver’s seat
“A lot of women do not drive due to fear”, says Sinha. Or buy into the man-made narrative of women being ‘bad drivers’. “When you gain confidence, half the battle is won. The technicalities can be taught in five or six days,” adds Sinha.“What Sinha does is a kind of mindgame with us. She makes driving sound so easy and then trains you to find that out for yourself,” says Rita Rao, a 67-year-old Gurugram resident who was trained by Sinha. Rao did not want to depend on anyone for moving around and hence decided to learn driving. Sinha trains clients on their own cars, which leaves her with no controls like those in the cars in driving schools. But she believes that it is crucial to the process as it builds trust and confidence.
Independence lessons
What sets Sinha apart from other driving coaches, among other things, is the glamour she brings to the game. Sinha, a former Mrs India runner up, makes sure her students can drive perfectly well in a lehenga and high heels. “People expect driving lessons to be boring and stressful. It doesn’t have to be so. You should be having fun”, says Sinha, who is also a kathak dancer and a sports woman.
The number of women drivers on the road is depressingly low, Sinha notes. She is planning to do her bit in making roads safer for women. “There is no parallel to women empowering women”, she says. She plans to reach out to NGOs and corporate companies to facilitate driving classes and employment opportunities for girls growing up in orphanages and children’s homes.
For Sinha, driving is like living. There are lessons to be learnt from life on the road. “Sometimes in life there are sudden turns, somebody crosses your path and you have to make quick decisions, sometimes people shout at you for no fault of yours, sometimes you realise you are on the wrong road and have to make a U turn,” she says.