a common man ಸಂಜಯ

Category: traffic

  • mirror of relationship with an autorickshaw driver on bangalore roads

    Its not uncommon to see vehicles on Bangalore roads, typically autorickshaws, leaving a trail of billowing smoke, as if they were one of those sky-writing planes, road-writing some message on the road especially by the convoluted way they drive. Whenever feasible, I try to talk to them about it. I don’t have much of an expectation that something will change but anyway I want to atleast try bringing it to their attention. The easy way is to end up picking up a fight as they can become pretty self-defensive (and most people follow one of the Old Concrete Jungle sayings… offence is the best form of defence!). The hard way is to not end up picking up a fight, and atleast part with just conveying the message. Let me get this straight… I’m not some kind of missionary, I like doing this because I like interacting with people and find this experiment fun (most of the time!), whenever feasible.

    In the first place, feasibility of conveying any message to a speeding auto rickshaw driver flitting through traffic like a butterfly does through flowers (oh what a horrible analogy) is pretty hard without jeopardising one’s own safety which is the last thing I want to do, having already jeopardized it enough by the very fact that I’m driving on the road. In any case, there are occasional situations like traffic jams or signal lights when this actually becomes feasible. Probability is further reduced if its not easy to navigate my own vehicle alongside his (if its not easy then its not worth the trouble!)

    Then if all that works out, and I’m actually alongside the perpetuator of evil smoke, there’s the issue of communication. Ask an autorickshaw driver about directions to any place and he’ll kind heartedly all but draw a detailed road map for you. But talk to him about the pollution from his exhaust, and he might all but run you over with his three wheeled rattling contraption.

    One more factor – its usually just a few seconds gap that we get to talk, before the signal lights up or the traffic jam starts moving/crawling again. So there’s not much time for friendly introduction or light some small talk to get warned up 😉 One needs to get straight to the point. This is quite a challenge, without sounding unfriendly and aggressive – it has taken a continuos refinement of technique – sense of humor, gentleness in tone of voice, smile, creativity, and most importantly, a good deal of empathy for their situation that they might have been toiling in traffic all day (driving can be quite strenous) for a frustratingly meagre income – all these count.

    Eventually when I have talked to them, I have got a few replies like “then pull over to the side, don’t drive on the road!“, some “ok fine, you are right”  just to humor me, but some positive cases as well. This post is about one such positive case.

    I pulled alongside this guy – a prime candidate with real thick smoke – at a red light. A little ahead of us,was another auto with thick fumes emating from its exhaust as well. I spoke to this guy next to me – “look at that fellow, so much of smoke… so many diseases like asthma allergy etc he is freely distributing to everyone behind him“. This guy stared long and hard at the smoke with a concerned look, and sort of seemed to agree with me… And then I added “er… actually, your auto as well…” and he said “oh… I’ll definitely get it checked up”

    Btw reminded myself to ensure my own vehicle got serviced soon 😉 (Actually I prefer commuting by bus a lot of time. After I got over my apprehensions about it, found that its pretty cool else for longer distances and esp in the more recent range of buses, and esp during off-peak hours!)

    JK says…

    Most thoughtful people have the desire to help the world. They think of themselves as apart from the mass. They see so much exploitation, so much misery; they see scientific and technical achievements far in advance of human conduct, comprehension and intelligence. Seeing all this about them and desiring to change the conditions, they consider that the mass must first be awakened.

    Often this question is put to me: Why do you emphasize the individual and not consider the mass? From my point of view, there can be no such division as the mass and the individual. …

    So the mass is ourselves. You are the mass and I am the mass, and in each one of us there is the one and the many, the one being the conscious, and the many the unconscious. The conscious can be said to be the individual. So in each one of us we have the one and the many.

    The many, the unconscious, is composed of unquestioned values, values that are false to facts, values which through time and usage have become pleasant and acceptable; it is composed of ideals which give us security and comfort, without deep significance…. This I call the unconscious, the mass, of which each one of us is a part, whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not.

    If there is to be a clear reflection, the mirror must not be distorted, its surface must be even and clean. So must the mind-heart, which is an integrated whole, not two distinct and separate parts, be free from its self-created perversions before there can be discernment, comprehension, balance or intelligence. To live completely, experience must continually be brought into the conscious.

    Reminds me of a scene from the brilliant movie Finding Nemo. In the fishtank, Nemo meets the different fish in the tank… one of them is Deb. Deb feels that her own reflection inside the tank which looks like another fish to her, is her sister, and says to Nemo…

    Kid, if there’s anything you need, just ask your auntie Deb, that’s me. Or if I’m not around, you can always talk to my sister Flo. [turns to Flo] Hi,how are you? [Whispers to Nemo] Don’t listen to anything my sister says, she’s nuts! Ha ha ha ha!

  • a casuality without an accident

    I’d speculated earlier that in a way, humanity is gasping for breath being swept around in a tsunami everyday (just a metaphor), but of course that’s probably not very easy to digest.

    Most of us would hardly ever admit that there really is any real problem, esp if we have accumulated the opinion over age that “I’ve seen a lot of life, and there’s nothing more to learn”. Except maybe once in a way after some disaster when a dozen people die, or we lose someone very close to us… it exposes our real vulnerability. And even then, within a day or a week even that becomes a mere emotional memory having made no real difference to the way we live.

    Though once in a way, I can see all this clearly, yet I’m so so helpless. Because you see, I myself am merely an amateur swimmer – a common man, there’s not much of a question of me helping anybody else!

    ——

    Was returning home this evening in the company van. There was some mishap, and an altercation started between the driver and the other person. Usually these things last for a few seconds and they get on with it, but this time it seemed to go on for a couple of minutes.

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  • 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.

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  • survival of the fittest?

    Recently watched the movie A Beatiful Mind (Russel Crowe) for the second time, following it more closely. There’s an interesting scene of a blonde girl, where they’re discussing about famous economist Adam Smith’s theory that “individual ambition is for the common good”.  When a blonde girl enters the scene, Nash comes up with a thesis that is different, and is eventually accepted in the university saying that his theory flew in the face of 150 years of economics…

    (more…)

  • the reluctant autorickshaw

    The following is something I’d written a while ago in a “learn kannada” forum… Real life incidents though not exactly verbatim…

    Auto-rickshaw drivers of Bangalore nowadays have become more selective than infy in ‘choosing’ their ‘projects’! They usually refuse to go wherever a passenger wants to go, and drive off, and one has to stop several autos before getting a ride 😈 All these are unrelated incidents…

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  • good, bad and ugly about bangalore

    After seeing this website bangalorepothole – one might as well consider a PhD in potholology 😉 Seriously speaking, its pretty interesting and unexpectedly informative wrt potholes! But it does make one realise that some roads on Bangalore would make the moon’s surface look like a skating rink in comparison!

    (more…)

  • corporate drivers

    [disclaimer: this is only within limits of my current understanding, any corrections/clarifications welcome]

    Actually we say that software and BPO is also producing jobs for others, eg for countless drivers of company shuttles and cabs. This is true, there is no doubt that they are better off employed than looking around aimlessly for jobs. However perhaps their circumstances could be a bit better.

    Whenever I chat with drivers, inspite of some discount for exaggeration or pessimisism, I find that their lives are actually very very tough. Sometimes they’re demanded to work non stop for days together. Why not employ more people and split the shifts? This decision is typically not with the company itself, but the decision of the contractors to whom transportation is outsourced to. And I suppose they have their own reasons and financial model which works for them – in any case they wouldn’t be too happy paying more
    salaries to more number of drivers so try to “optimize” on the number available.

    At times I’ve noticed that they drivers are quite worn out. And for them, there’s no concept of overtime – no matter how hard they work, the pay is flat per month. They sometimes are quite tense, which reflects in occasional brief outbursts of road rage or arguments with cops or even their boss. Occasional and very brief, because they know that such things could cost them their job – this happens inspite of being careful.

    Consider the idea of driving in the Bangalore traffic itself. A private car owner driving in dense traffic if he is even slightly attached to his car (there are only a handful who aren’t) is paranoid every moment some vehicle comes close – oh no… my car might get dented or scratched! The stakes are the pain of going through the insurance paperwork or the expenses of the repair or so on. Hence for those who cannot take all this impersonally, car driving almost becomes a traumatic affair – best avoided as far as possible. But imagine the stakes for the driver – the stakes of any minor accident could be a very significant fraction of his income to the loss of his very livelihood.

    And just to help, on some occasions employees complain that they are rude (or can’t speak English properly), or that they’re late for a pickup (road and traffic conditions dosen’t matter) Of course on the other hand there are a lot of other employees who are really quite friendly to them as well.

    One thing I realise is that I actually owe these drivers some gratitude for conveying me successfully to and from office everyday. On the one hand, we can say its “just their job” and they better do it else they get replaced. On the other hand, its the job of a software professional to produce high quality software, but still there are bugs, largely due to a certain amount of negligience. But in the software industry, bug-fixing is an almost inevitable and well-known part of the lifecycle of a project itself.

    But in their case, any negligence from them in their job – and my limbs if not my very life is at stake! So I believe I certainly owe them my gratitude every single day for having taking any liberty.

    Not that I’m some kind of activist that I want to take up any kind of cause for them – not even sure if thats necessary at all in the first place 🙂 – but I think one thing that least one could do that does not involve any
    special effort is to smile and be friendly to them. Not a blind rule for every day which may well become yet another mechanical routine, but once in a way if and when one really feels like it… to try and see the fellow
    human being in them.

  • truly enjoyable TT and driving

    There are countless applications of meditation, and I note some of them here.

    As an avid computer user, I used to be quite severely afflicted by this common problem called repetitive stress injury (RSI). It causes severe sharp pain in the wrists due to one out of various very vague reasons – tendons wearing out, constricted blood vessels, etc – different doctors give different reasons. I had also recorded my RSI story where I’d explored a lot of short term solutions.

    In the first place, I’m able to maintain a better posture more consistently. I am able to judge when its necessary to give my wrists rest when they need it, instead of being absentminded and going on typing/using mouse till it gets very much worse. With a relatively increased (compared to myself a few years ago) of awareness, I have been able to overcome this problem since I am able to not react and make it worse – just observe the nature of its impermanence. For quite a while its become totally negligible.

    —————–

    I find that even while playing table tennis there are really interesting observations. TT can become an extremely fast game after some practice.

    Its interesting to see most players of TT playing with the idea of having fun and recreation, but actually get tensed and frustrated every time they miss a shot or hit a bad shot. What is supposed to be entertainment, becomes yet another form of misery! [Not that I expect anybody to easily accept such a strange opinion, this is only a private opinion that I share here.]

    When I play, I can experience this fluctuation myself – whenever I hit a smash or return a difficult shot, I feel the exhilaration of it – and whenever I miss, I feel the frustration of it.

    Another thing is, I find that after every time I dispatch a shot, I am hoping that the opponent will miss it!

    This I see as a major yet very very subtle pitfall of a competitive game, that the players, even if they are the very best of friends otherwise, are constantly having bad intentions about each other. [And imagine this extrapolated to international matches… entire nations!! …but let me leave it at that ;-)]

    Anyway I find that after a while, I am able to establish a reasonable degree of equanimity. The strange thing is that once this happens, I find the quality of my game has increased drastically.

    This might seem a very strange sentence:

    I find that usually the reason I miss any shot, is, because I’m trying to hit it.

    The more I’m able to “step out of my own way” the better my game improves. I find the learning curve increasing almost exponentially (though not consistently).

    I also find that I feel more like helping my opponent improve as well, and bring up the level of his game by pinpointing his mistakes, getting him to practice specific kinds of shots for a particular amount of time, in a more structured way. And when he hits an excellent shot that I miss, I no longer feel disappointment, instead I praise him and motivate him.

    And I find that he too starts cultivating a similar cheerful attitude – not that he was not like that earlier, but it merely reminds him and me as well, that that was the whole point behind playing in the first place! 😀

    —————–

    In car driving, I find the urge to speed up whenever the roads are empty, the mild annoyance at traffic jams or when somebody is blocking the road or being inconsiderate. I find the same principle applies there too, once equanimity is restored, I am able to drive a lot more holistically… taking into consideration the fuel consumption (minimising clutch usage), well-being of the car (avoiding sudden braking or acceleration), compassion to all on the street (no cutting off people, allowing people who want to go to go, minimal honking, not even a trace of road rage). People might argue that such concepts would make me take forever to reach the destination, but nobody who has actually sat with me in the car has complained so far 🙂

  • lessons from nature| ಪ್ರಕೃತಿಯ ಪಾಠ

    The leading story in this morning’s newspaper is quite strange. (more…)

  • Beauty in Chaos – Bangalore Traffic

    When I first returned from a Western country (a few years ago), I went through the same process as most other people… I was aghast seeing people driving so haphazardly as if I was seeing it for the first time in my life. Everybody seemed to be suffering from sheer madness and desperation to get wherever they wanted to go! I felt that riding my scooter to work was next to suicide and had decided to migrate to a Western country asap since I was under the impression that I surely deserved a better quality of life than this!

    Anyway something compelled me to stay on, I dont know what exactly, I guess I can never pinpoint it to one reason (though not any idealistic patriotism). Over time I came to some conclusions (based on usual Indian driving scenes witnessed every day, not any extreme rash drivers causing accidents).

    At first glance, there is total chaos on the streets. But if you look at it with a quiet mind, some amazing things reveal themselves. The very first miracle is that nobody is having an accident even though many situations look to an outsider, esp a foreigner, that vehicles are surelygoing to collide.

    People cross the streets with a calm attitude, though vehicles are zipping around them. Even vehicles see the pedestrians standing in the middle of the street, and unhesitantly bypass them. [If such a thing were to happen in UK, people will just not know how to handle it at all. They will surely just collide, or swere off straight into a footpath or a tree]. But here people just move on. I wondered how it was possible, was it just a matter of getting used to it or was it that everybody was blessed with some kind of brilliant reflexes?

    Once I was once standing on the pedestrian overbridge near Majestic and looking at the crowd of traffic below. The road was jam packed with vehicles all moving at an average pace, and still people were crossing it. Any random 10 minutes footage of the vehicles and pedestrians moving in perpendicular directions in the same space would’ve probably qualified for “Worlds most amazing videos”. I wondered if Hollywood could possibly reenact such a scene – it seemed to be a flawless choreography !

    After having driven a scooter for well over a decade I have come to one conclusion. That a fundamental concept behind surviving on Indian roads is communication.

    This communication is in the form of indicators, honks, a flicker of brake lights, a slight turn of the front wheel, vague gestures some which are supposedly hand signals, a slight tilt of the head or a flick of the wrist saying “you go ahead” or “wait a sec”,  a glance at each others eyes, facial expression… these things are so subtle that we take them for granted. Yet I find them incredibly beautiful , I have never seen such delicate communication in any other country’s traffic (based on what little I have seen of the rest of the world).

    With the example of pedestrians, when one is driving and sees a person crossing the road, the eyes of the driver and the pedestrian meet, both of them estimate each other’s speed and direction and most importantly – intention – all in a split second. The driver “senses ” that the person is going to walk ahead, he turns slightly and drives on passing the person from behind. Or he senses the person is stopping, he turns  slightly in the other direction and drives on passing the person  from the front.

    Wrt driving itself: There is a certain “flow ” of traffic on the streets, and a new vehicle which enters the street and joins the traffic kind of just merges with this flow. Understanding this flow means driving like you are playing chess… guessing the intent of every person around you in advance. With more and more practice, this becomes second nature, no extra effort is needed. It becomes part of driving itself just like you dont need to “think” to release the clutch or  change a gear. And driving this way atleast for me has meant that it is the safest way. One aspect of driving this way in a highly aware state… attentively observing every person/vehicle all around you, is that sudden acceleration and braking is virtually eliminated. It becomes a very very smooth drive.

    Accidents (or even close encounters – ‘almost’ accidents which I personally regard as bad as an accident) happen when either one or more of the concerned parties misses out on this communication, or breaks out of the flow. This usually happens when the intent is too  random beyond what people around can guess, sudden braking, sudden turns… etc. This especially happens when a person panics, or is indecisive, or is extremely inconsiderate (actually there are fewer inconsiderate people than we think).

    Needless to say, none of what I have written implies that we should disregard traffic rules, etc. Its merely one possible perspective of the situation. Till the day comes when laws are strictly enforced, hopefully this perspective will help in safer and more peaceful driving.

    So to summarize:

    • Before doing anything (turning/stopping, etc), let people around you know in some way.
    • Sense what other people are going to do, not just depending on their explicit signals, but on more subtle ones. For eg, an auto going slowly wanting to stop: If you are lucky, he might care to stick a finger out  for a fleeting moment to indicate his intention. At other times, the very presence of a pedestrian standing idly on the pavement could imply that he is going to stop suddenly. This is just one example, there are infinite others and can never be formulated, because they are entirely situation dependent.

    Wish you a safe drive! 🙂