Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Rant of a Transgressor

I do not follow some traffic rules. There, I said it. I do not follow the speed limits; I like speeding. I do not follow the lane discipline; as far as I am concerned, every lane is my lane. I overtake other people on the road indiscriminately; be it the left or right, if there is space I am going to use it. So there you go, guilty as charged. But before you reach for that phone to inform the friendly neighborhood cop about me, let me finish. There are rules that I do manage to follow. Like stopping at a red light. Wearing a helmet. Hmmm, give me some more time and I will come up with more such rules that I do follow.

Given that I manage to follow some pretty easy rules while on the road, why do you think I break a few others which, going by face value, are equally easy to follow? I will tell you why. There are lots of reasons but I should be able to cover most of them by dividing them into the following few categories:
First category: Introducing to you, slow-mo on two wheels. These are the 'slow-motion-in-real-time' artists, mostly found on two legs or two wheels (and this includes everythings from man-power cycles to horse-power bikes of all shapes and sizes). For them being on the road is when they go into a state of trance where they are one with the universe. The traffic doesn't bother them, the heat and the smoke doesn't bother them, the time going past doesn't bother them and, best of all, you honking loudly in their ears won't bother them. Wherever they are at that given moment in time is theirs and they are the only ones who will decide when they will budge from there. Get caught behind them and you might as well join them because you don't have any other option.
Second category: Introducing to you, the all too ubiquitous "rapier on three wheels", the auto rickshaw. This sounds like a cross between a not so smooth electric razor and a very very pissed off hornet. And its with a reason that I call this contraption a rapier. It literally scythes through any kind of traffic around it.If you hear it coming up behind, better stop your vehicle in that nearby no-parking zone and wait for it to pass because there's a better chance that you can get away free with parking violation. And if you find youself behind one and you are in a hurry, just follow it. It will take you through the traffic in ways you never would have imagined (this is probably the only entity in the known physical universe which can put itself into spaces meant for something less than half its size and make it to the other end with not a scratch on it!).
Now the Third Category: Introducing to you, the once upon-a-time status differentiators. We also know them as cars. Generally these don't do much on the road other than occupy too much space! So just make sure you aren't caught behind these. Because once behind them, always behind them and you are not an auto rickshaw to conjure up a way past these slightly infuriating denizens of the road.
This brings us to the Fourth and the last category: Introducing to you the behemoths of these bad roads. If the roads are the lawn, these are your lawn mowers. The SUVs, trucks and buses that make up this category are actually a law all unto themselves. They intimidate by their sheer size and I am yet to see a traffic cop pull up one of these guys for any traffic infraction! Make sure you are either far in front or quite a distance behind these guys because one of the privileges they enjoy is not being able to see traffic in their immediate vicinity. So you can imagine your fate if you are close to these and invisible. Remember, you are grass, they are the lawn mower!

So, in the process of making sure that I don't fall prey to road rage and I don't become road kill, all I manage to do is break traffic rules. Those are my reasons. Now go tell the cops.

1 comment:

Jason h said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.