"If I were pregnant, I’d surely have a miscarriage", is the thought that I have everyday when I’m on my Kinetic Honda on Bangalore roads. The bumps and potholes on the road jiggle my fat enough that I never feel the need for a workout.
Coming back to Bangalore after five years provided a shock to my entire system. The place had changed! No more was it a sleepy town and when someone told me that Jayanagar still reminded them of OLD Bangalore, I chuckled away to myself.
I believe from the depths of my heart that you should not swear at people; that when someone else yells at you, you should leave it be, and move on. Oh did I do differently!! After two days of riding my scooter and dealing with the traffic, I swore at every guy (or girl) who overtook me, came too close to my bike or honked at me when there was a red signal.
I used to diligently stand and wait for the traffic signals to change and allow me to move forward. But, when one gentleman in a Tata Sumo actually tried to use his bumper to nudge me forward, I realised that you have to break some traffic rules to conform to society’s rules!
Huge lesson to be learnt from this- while you change your values to conform to society, you can also change society’s values to conform to you.
Responsibility comes with the game. I’ve now learnt to plan my ride home in such a way that I can do all my shopping on route. This did not come about because of any of those well written ‘Time Management’ books. It was actually a result of trying to avoid all those one ways and certain pot-holed filled roads.
The journey on the road makes you smart, teaches you to deal with bullies, keeps you alert all the time and shows you that when you sing at the hardest of times, they start dancing to your tune.
Every night, when I leave office and head homewards, the rain sloshes my body, hits my eyes and tries to dampen my resolution to go home. My that’s my mission. To beat the rain, beat the weather, beat the traffic. It is my goal to reach home and by God, I will!
I always tell Frost, try stopping by a Traffic Jam on a rainy evening, and you’ll agree with me when I say, "Just one more mile to go before I sleep, just one more mile to go before I sleep".
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I truly understand what you say.
However, I still belong to the small brigade who follows traffic signals and never cross until the green light shows up – never mind the honking bus behind me.
I can relate to what you have writen. I was once nudged by a tempo traveller at Silk board signal and the entire Janata of the bus pounced upon me when I locked horns with the tempo traveller. They were employees of Satyam being carried to work in Electronic city, and their frustration was related to me delaying their punch in time at their office for a so called nudge. I mean do they even realize that my right on the road has been violated and that it could have been more dangerous to do that in a busy traffic intersection. At the end of it even the cop who came to diffuse the situation ended up tell me ‘Adjust Maadi *@#%$@’ … It looks as if these drivers come form the Bullock cart age where you need to nudge the animal in front of you with out regards to the either the animal comfort or the requirement to move forward in traffic jam. I come from Mumbai a much more busier city than Bangalore and in my 16 year driving career, I have never been voilated this way. It is indeed dis-heartening.