The Lady Driver

I had a plan, and I did not breathe a word of it to Karl. Guilt gnawed at me. Ever since we’ve known each other, we’ve shared everything. We celebrated our baby steps towards this invention that’s going to change the world. We dissected every tiny failure like it was a frog in a high school lab.   I funneled my dowry money to fund his research, two years before we even tied the knot.

I felt like a traitor as I watched him sleep. My brilliant yet utterly impractical husband! I often wondered how such a scientific genius could be so naive about the ways of the world. I had to practically threaten him with my life to get him to file a patent for the motorwagon, the first “horseless” carriage.

I just could not afford to wait any longer. This plan had been forming in my head for a while now, swelling up like a giant ocean wave and dying down when it hit the beach of practical wisdom. But yesterday evening, Karl said something that made up my mind. I just had to start executing my plan; practical wisdom could take a walk. Karl had said, “I’m not sure that my motorwagon has commercial viability.”

I had to show him and the rest of the world that this works, and that this motorwagon is going to be the future of the world.

I slipped a note under his pillow: “Going to Mama’s place with the boys. Will send a telegram once I reach.” I tiptoed out of the bedroom, closing the door behind me. Eugen and Richard, my boys, were all dressed and ready. We silently wheeled the motorwagon out of the shed and pushed it a good distance before firing up the engine, so as not to wake Karl.

We set off on our journey from Mannheim to my parents’ home in Pforzheim. Normally, it took two days by horse-drawn carriage. I wondered how long it would take in the motorwagon. I won’t lie, I was terrified. I was shaking as I sat in the driver’s seat, without a license, without my husband, and with my two teenage boys beside me.

The first part was easy; the roads were decent. But then came the unpaved roads, the uphill stretches where we had to push the motorwagon, and the little towns where people stared at me like I was a witch. It did tear at my resolve.

When the motorwagon suddenly rattled and stopped, I could not hold it in any longer. I told the boys to guard the motorwagon, found a lonely corner, and had a solid weeping session that could rival this year’s monsoon. What had I done? How would I get home with my boys?

As my sob-fest subsided to occasional hiccups, I cleared my eyes and head and returned to the motorwagon. Ah! The fuel line was blocked. I took out my hatpin (thank goodness I wear long ones) and cleared the line. I closed my eyes in prayer and fired up the engine. It started, and we set off again.

I kept stopping at water bodies to stock up on water to cool the engine when it got heated. I stopped at chemists to buy ligroin, the fuel that kept my motorwagon going. I stopped at shops to buy bread to feed myself and my boys. I stopped to ask for directions as I lost my way a few times.

I reached Mama’s house in thirteen hours, tired and sore from all the driving and repairing. But it was fun to see her eyes pop out of their sockets as she registered that I had driven alone with the boys in a “horseless” carriage. “Send a telegram to Karl that we’ve reached,” I shouted to her as I headed for the bath!

I poured all my learning from this journey into making our motorwagon better and better as the years rolled on. The third gear, brake pads, and so many more things came into the later versions of the motorwagon!

One day, I was just reading the newspaper when a news column in the foreign news page caught my eye. Delegates from around the globe had gathered at the first-ever Global Urban Planning Conference in New York to hammer out a solution to one of the greatest problems facing their cities. No, not crime, not infrastructure challenges, not even resource shortages. They were talking about a ton of shit. Horseshit, they predicted, would bury their flourishing towns and cities in less than half a century! But after three days of brainstorming and debate that went nowhere, attendees of the conference, frustrated and resigned, called it quits.

I laughed to myself as I put the paper down. Why are they debating a non-issue, I thought. Ten years and the news had not yet reached the other part of the world. News that in Germany, a lady named Bertha Benz had driven 60 miles and back with her two sons in a “horseless” carriage. In the motorwagon that would change the world!