Driving in India

There are miles to go before I sleep and there are miles to go before I sleep, these are one of the most memorable lines of Robert Frost. As with anything with modern art there are so many interpretations to everything (even the creator of the art becomes startled at times) there are many interpretations to Frost's memorable lines as well. Well if Robert Frost had been in India ,Chennai or Tnagar I can give it to you in writing that he wrote those words in sheer dread of having to travel miles in the treacherous roads. I have no doubts there.

So what / who makes our roads so treacherous? Well I have madea  small list of the demons who haunt my driving experience

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First and foremost happens to be the pedestrian.The average Indian pedestrian happens to be like the King of the Jungle. He is above all rules. He does not have to wait for a signal to cross the road, he does not have to use the pedestrian cross over bridges, he does not know the foot path. Btw the zebra crossing is not something in the zoo. The thing which makes our pedestrians above the law is the fact that if a police sargaent catches a pedestrian jumping asignal he cant exactly grab his license or RC book. This lack of vulnerability makes our common man an invincible super man whose only fear in life happens to be the Metro water lorry.

The next suspect happens to be the two wheeler drivers. I love Mani Rathnam movies, but you know he has created a nuisance with his opening sequence of his film Alaipayuthey. People think its cool to drive with music blaring from head phones. They are oblivious to the honking , shouting and cursing of their fellow pedestrians and are among the biggest headaches to the normal commuters. The other league of folks would be the ones who drive vehicles which have a displacement more than 150CC. these people think they are the direct cousins of Valentino Rossi and zip across the traffic giving many an innocent  driver a heart attack in the process.

The Comercial vehicle drivers which include call taxi wallahs , share autos and Tata ace wallahs. These men have the uncanny ability to make you feel claustrophobic, even if you are not travelling in their vehicle. See they try to squeeze through such ridiculously small spaces that people around get suffocated and give them the path to overtake.  The other really really irritating and BP raising habit of these men is their tendency to honk incessantly even when they know that there is not an inch of space to move forward.

The last but the least of the villains happen to be the Lorry drivers and bus drivers.First and foremost these people don’t have brakes. Trust me. And they never take their foot of the accelerator pedals. They are like the mad elephants. Their right of way is guaranteed. On top of it 90 pc of lorries and buses would  never passed a proper fitness inspection.

You might wonder if there is anything in the road which does not haunt me. There are 2 tyes of people who dont scare me at all. First being the folks who are new to driving (yours faithfully being one among them) . The moral degeneracy of the system is yet to catch with these people. Hence they are the absolutely law abiding citizens of the road. The other bunch of people who dont scare me happens to be the people with the ridiculously expensive limousines (Jaguars, Rolls & Bentley league).These people are mostly scared to death that someone will put a scratch on their cars. hence they are double extra careful when they drive. 

So these my friends are the villains which haunt my driving. I read a very interesting article last week in the Hindu which said that driving in india is not a test of ones driving skills, it’s a test of one’s foresight, intuition, astrology and fate. I dont think anyone can sum up driving in India in a better manner.