The first motorized vehicle I learned driving (after learning Bicycle) was my father’s Bajaj Scooter with Gear. This was a Vespa style scooter with the engine on one side and gears on the left-hand steering bar. The trick to learning to ride one of these was to keep only your left feet on the ground whenever you are stopping – as the right feet is needed all the time near the brake (the brake is near right feet). This should have been 15 years before and I was driving it for just a few years before I moved to other vehicles. This is one of the most dangerous two-wheelers on the planet, as even in medium speeds it is impossible to control it from skidding especially because of the engine (and hence the weight) on one side.
So why I am writing about this here?. I became nostalgic about this today when I rode my Uncle’s scooter (it was the same Bajaj Chetak model that my father had) for a short distance from my home to a restaurant to have my breakfast. I was left marvelling at how our human brain works – for almost 10 years I have never ridden a geared scooter (for that matter hardly I drive a two-wheeler nowadays) and when I got on to one today it was easy. Instantly I remembered how to operate one and I was up and running. If only computers and software applications worked like this (human being) we all would be better off…