Philip Thomas is Assistant Vice President, Sita. He often admits daydreaming about his backpacking round the world tour he is planning when he’s done with serving happy clients! Determined to put on his boots, when others have hung up theirs, he lives by his wits and gut feel and looks for the funny side of things. Says it helps him feel light. He loves to laugh a lot, mostly at himself. In between he also seeks solace within and cannot stop learning from new experiences everyday! He usually points to his ample waistline when talking about the “middle path” he advocates!! He lives and lets live.
Most first time visitors to India return disappointed that the level of the petrifaction they expected while driving in their chauffer driven vehicles turns out to be a damp squib after their initial awe at the orderly chaos we create everyday on our roads. Much as things are “different” here, it’s actually much safer than it looks. One of the reasons is that we drive “fast” only at 80 kilometers (around 50 miles) an hour. Other reasons include our determination not to bid adieu to life so beautiful while on a Golden Triangle Tour (most of us prefer to die in Varanasi or other holier places), a mutual respect for size (the meaner and bigger and fatter the oncoming truck, the meeker we have to become) and a generous dose of patience that most of us share, all add up to making road travel in India hellish, but not nightmarish!
It does not take long for us to catch up and eventually overtake the ubiquitous Trucks, usually gaily painted, that lead the highways of India with a “Please Horn” painted, largely at eye level, if you are in a popular small car. Some truck owners want to stand out of the crowd and they prefer painting “Horn Please” instead. The fact is no matter how hard you press the horn; the trucks won’t budge an inch. Why paint Please Horn, one wonders and therein, in the cacophony of sound, lies our Indian panache to fix our vehicle horns before we fix the brakes!! Ok so I am not being too serious here but hey where in the world can you find a medium of communication so “honking”. There’s a horn or honk for most emotions. One for anger, one for “move or Ill try and squash you” another for “Hi there”: some plaintive like “pleaaaase move” some screaming “don’t don’t don’t don’t you dare” (usually reserved for pedestrians the moment they take crouching positions to start their sprint across the road). And lest I forget you must know that more bicycle bells are rung in India each day than are done in the rest of the world and you now know why. Yes we too thank God that they don’t ring all at the same time and place!
Pride of place are the horns belting the latest Bollywood instrumental versions of our own Top of the Charts numbers. Impressive but less effective we think than the normal ones, which can be cajoled, pushed, punched, and tapped to express so many kinds of emotions. Wont if be boring if the horn of your car only belted out Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” all the time???Boring.
Heck we are noisy but so what. If there is a horn we must use it well. Remember the” if you don’t use it you’ll lose it” rule? Though this logic does not apply for other parts of our vehicles( most us will delay putting on the headlights until it is pitch dark and one cant see one’s nose between one’s brow leave alone the lone Tusker plodding home after a hard days outing. That’s because we were probably the original conservationists and instinctively want to “save” everything (hoard too)...in this case the “battery”. Most of us are astounded that even motorbikes in Europe and America have to have their headlights on even in broad daylight!!
We also have a knack of being a “sharing” society. Cars are usually made for 4 passengers, buses for about 60, trains for about a 1000. Yet it is common to see heavily laden vehicles everywhere. 10 in a 900 cc small car? No problem...100 in a bus meant for 60...no problem. Trains with rooftop traveler’s coz 1500 have already boarded comfortably… no prob………..sorry...had to duck….no problem. Now if that isn’t a positive outlook to life what is? Accidents do occur sometimes but more people die of choking on chicken legs (or is it breasts?) than on Indian roads. Some newer highways are trying to keep out two wheel drive vehicles but that’s proving hard to implement. We’ve all shared the same roads since the wheel was invented, Cows, Bulls, chicken, camels, sheep, elephants, camels again, goats, trucks, bicycles, cars, sedans, delivery vans, donkeys, 24 wheelers carrying unpronounceable parts of a hydroelectric dam’s main control console and gleefully crawling on the fastest lane , rickshaws, pedestrians et all. As everyone does not go in the same direction, our reflexes are usually sharp and if nothing else works, we always have our “horns”!
You must by now, believe that understanding the traffic sense on your India visit is a futile exercise. Just enjoy the ride, even with your eyes shut wide!! Let me add, on behalf of over half a billion of my citizens, that we are not always proud of what we do (or don’t do) while we drive. The one thing I can reassure you, is that we love to reach our destination safely as much as you do!!
Horn Please you are in India!
