The Houdini behind the wheel…
I got my driver’s license more than a decade ago. Not sure how I managed the feat. Yeah, a feat because driving on Indian roads isn’t my forte. There are traffic rules, but even more traffic rule flouters.
When people say that they enjoy long drives and find it to be some sort of stress buster, I feel the polar opposite. I do enjoy long drives as long as somebody else is chauffeuring the vehicle. So, when one of my junior colleagues quipped cynically, “Ofcourse, you have a chauffeur.” That’s not because I am privileged. It is because I can’t drive and also hope to reach my destination intact.
So, it’s either that or hopping into public transport. Indian roads are terrible and that makes the drivers exceptional but with no regard for anyone else. Driving here is a test of your reflexes. It is like playing one of those video games where you are required to duck, hop, jump, maneuver, change lanes and avoid an oncoming collision at the same time. Except that the Indian version would have plenty of jaywalkers, sometimes cattle and no lane rules.
You could be driving at a snail’s pace in the extreme right lane or overtake someone at break neck speed via the left. A few expletives interspersed with angry gesticulation will necessitate the course correction, only for the scenario to play on loop on the next street. My previous Chauffer didn’t drive, he flew. So much that one of my colleagues had to one day tell him to slow down with “Bhai sambhalke chala na.”(Bro, drive carefully)
I once took an auto ride in Madras. Our own Schumacher decided not to use his break pedal for the entire 20 km ride. Any human, vehicle or cattle that attempted to slow him would be met with expletives in chaste Tamil. All this in the background of Tamil folklore. The vocalist being the man himself.
I always found driving overwhelming. The redundant vehicles with their obsolete 20th century gear box(one in which you are manually required to change gears) while dodging the vehicles in front of you and keeping a check in the rear view mirror kills the joy of driving. Having to change gears every few minutes because you can’t be driving at the same speed for more than a few meters is super annoying. In short that joystick is a killjoy. As my uncle says, “You have to be so good at it that it becomes a part of your reflex.”
Also where you drive in India matters. In a posh locality it is smoother and the roads are better. Once you venture into the outskirts, the more the cacophony. The Houdini’s with their bike stunts are worth a mention. They somehow manage to nozzle their way between two monstrous vehicles and at the same time maintaining their balance only to speed to the front of the traffic for their coveted place at the fore.
Reasons for not wanting to don a helmet are plenty. From it spoiling their hairline to the traffic cop not being in the vicinity or looking the part for that chick on the street. Everything except safety drives them onward.
Needless to mention a family on the scooter always gives me the shivers. Not sure how they manage 4 people on one scooter when I can barely hold my nerves riding pillion alone. Every time my cousin tries to pull a Houdini in traffic, I have to remind him that we aren’t in a real life version of road rash.
An ambulance on an Indian street is double the trouble for everybody involved including the patient gasping for air miles away with the red siren nowhere in sight. That’s because it it takes twice the time to get a patient to the hospital if waiting for an ambulance service at your doorstep. If it is not a dire situation, it is best to get the patient into a vehicle and rush to the medical care facility. During my Emergency posting I realized that making your way arduously through the maze of little gullies (lanes) and spotting that address is like playing treasure hunt, except where the stakes of losing is losing a person’s life.
I have always thought there should be one single lane left free at all times for Emergency Services and VIP vehicles instead of cordoning off entire streets for the same. Why do we have apps for Uber but not for ambulances? Why can’t we have ambulances in the nearest locality flashing on our screen and book it at a moment’s instance and be tracked by GPS? I think I am asking for a bit much here considering I have seen ambulances with drunk drivers and flat tires while transporting my own family member to a higher set up.
I don’t know how many of you have commuted on a cycle rickshaw. It is like a rickshaw, but it is just not motorized. So you will have the driver pedaling away with all his might. You may come across one in Old Delhi or Kolkata. I had a broken leg while in Kolkata because some dastard had decided to try running over it, and no transport. So, I waited with my plastered leg for a vehicle to show up that I could hail, when I saw my senior walking up to me.
He said he would hail a rickshaw for me and soon enough I saw a man panting, puffing and pedaling his way across the street towards me. I looked on in sheer disbelief. I had never sat in one before since I found it absolutely inhuman for one person to carry the weight of another few. With all respect, those cycle rickshaws belong to the museum. To my colleagues chagrin I refused to get into it. He not only got miffed that I refused help but also had to pay the rickshaw cycler to get rid of him :D
Take buses in Kerala for instance. They drive like they own the street. While any other driver would be calculating and recalculating how to make that turn on a hair pin bend, these red giants simply thunder around the same in a lightening flash. Both the passengers and the ones on the street with their hearts in their mouth thank their lucky stars that they made out of the ordeal alive.
Commuting in India is a risky affair if we think about it. People are so used to it by now that they nonchalantly hang across train doors, jaywalk, jump across railway lines playing Khatron ke khiladi( Fear factor) while living on the edge every single day. Even if you are to the max disciplined, in India if you step out, you become a part of the cacophony of the Matrix.
If you don’t have some of the Houdini moves yourself, you could be at the receiving end of someone else’s. And if someday your stars are not aligned, just like Houdini, you may find it incapable of extracting yourself out unscathed.
