Category: india

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! 🙂