bangalore driving – it can be different

With Bangalore traffic, some common sense is needed and its not really practical to blindly follow traffic rules every time, as long as it dosen’t put others to inconvenience or danger. The following is just an ad hoc incident, I don’t expect it to happen all the time.

Recently I was driving home late evening. There was a red light but no cops, road almost empty… but under such circumstances, as usual nobody was stopping.

However I stopped – probably looking ridiculously stupid as people kept going past me. It was somewhat embarrasing at first, but I just stuck on. A car behind me had stopped as well. Now I couldn’t help gloating about it a bit imagining that he’d stopped because of me, my wife pulled me down a peg by kidding that its probably because he wasn’t having space to manevoure around me. But several others did as well. Some others kept going, but we all remained, till the light became green. Unknown strangers in metal oxes… but somehow that instant I imagined that we’d all struck some kind of a bond with each other (though as ephermeral as a minute or so).

The next signal was more interesting. The signal was red, but the road was relatively clear. Everyone ahead of me was going, but I stopped. This time large number of vehicles stopped. These were people who were not just having a sheep-following mentality, they definitely seemed to be stopping using their independent thinking, because there were others still going ahead and getting away with it unobstructed.

It was great… the large number of people this time, following the rules inspite of completely unmonitored conditions! Though we were all strangers in our tin boxes, it felt as if somehow during those precious moments of the red light, we’d all formed a temporary invisible bond supporting each other.

Some others who were going ahead got into a bit of confusion with the vehicles which suddenly came in the perpendicular direction, almost met with an accident – it was a mess! Finally the light was almost green… well just 3 or 4 seconds 😉 and we all started off again on our own ways!