Shanti Gooljar

Behind the wheel with the go-to driving instructor of the Gossip Girl set.

- MATTHEW SCHNEIER

ONA RECENT Thursday afternoon at the corner of 86th and Park, a 2021 Honda Accord is idling, kneepadded with bumper guards. Contained inside, barely, is a compact Guyanese woman of 60 with a hasty slash of pink lipstick wearing a Calvin Klein sweatshirt. This is Shanti Gooljar, and this is her fief. Shanti (she refers to herself by first name only, so I must too) has, over the past two decades, virtually cornered the market on driving instruction for the city's teen elite, commanding a privileged swath that stretches from Brearley and Spence on the East Side to Heschel and Columbia Prep on the West and north to Fieldston and Horace Mann. "I got them all locked down," Shanti says.

It's a truth often honked that Manhattan kids are the only ones in the nation who don't learn to drive by default. The subway goes everywhere, partner-hours parents are too busy, and instead of a nearby Walmart parking lot to practice in, there is parallel parking. But especially for teens raised by nannies and prodded into academic success by tutors, outsourcing is always an option. Shanti got to be the prep-school go-to by accident. She'd been teaching for a decade when around 2005 she happened to get a student from Trinity. That girl gave the whole Trinity class my phone number,’ she says. And my phone started blowing up.” In the years since, Shanti’s name has been passed from friend to friend. Learning how to drive in New York City is a rite of passage,’ Serena Kerrigan, a Fieldston grad turned social-media personality, tells me. But only if you use Shanti.”