Time can come to a standstill but traffic will never be! Can anyone dare to contest (no nomination required!) this statement? Consider the typical traffic scenario on a “normal” day: A swirl to the left and a turn towards right, cutting lanes at the wink of your eye with regular “predictable” screeching halts , the Indian motorists (number of wheels and size of the vehicles do not matter!) have perfected the art & science of driving and riding. They have the knack of crisscrossing the lanes and by-lanes, with occasional slip ups of course! It is easy to predict a politician’s jump from one party to another, but it is well-nigh impossible to predict the motorists’ intended path! Of course, some motorists are “kind” enough to use the indicator… till they choose to take the “path less travelled”…i.e. the opposite direction… leaving the motorists following them “Frost” bitten! It needs no reiteration that most of the motorists revel in the belief that “roads are their fiefdom” and they always have a right of way and a right to park their vehicles near the “No Parking” sign! Blaring the horns (louder than a vuvuzela!!) in the “No Horn” zone is the “past time” of the motorists who consider that only their “time” flies “past” faster than others! Every change from red to green signal (it’s a different matter that the colour does not matter to most of them!) will be followed by a road race (rage?) that will put even the F1 legends like Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna to shame! In the recent past, motorists have also mastered the art of balancing “life and death” (in addition to the work-life balance!!), by keeping their mobiles in between their heads, which lean at 90° angle, and their shoulders! Even the Tower of Pisa never “leaned” beyond 5.5°!!! The two wheelers are like the sweet kheer (payasam) that is taken at the end of full meals: they find space even if the road is jam packed! However, there is still room (err…house!) for four-legged mammals with and without “horns” (unmindful of the urgency of the motorists!) that jostle with the motorists and pedestrians alike for the remaining space. The mammals with horns are the only ones that follow the traffic signage “No horn please” to the core: they do not honk their “horns” on the road! The ubiquitous cycles and rickshaws, which were part of the city landscape (if not, at least a portrait?) a few decades ago, are dwindling in numbers and will soon be confined to the museums! Can the Discovery channel make a special feature about these Dodos? The headgear… helmet… supposed to protect the hardware (..head) and software (…brain) will play its role only if the motorists sight an approaching traffic policeman! A recent (not so?) innovation is the zooming and vrooming of two wheelers on the already constricted footpath, “originally” meant for pedestrians; invented by the Delhiites, of late “citi”zens of other cities have taken the invention with a missionary zeal (as it was left unpatented!!!), leaving the hapless pedestrians with no option… except to learn to fly! This action of two-wheeler riders leaves the four-wheeler drivers exasperated, as they can’t perform a similar stunt on the platforms with their bloated vehicles! Do you think the four wheelers are left behind in this discussion? They give a “spirit”ed challenge to their two-wheeler counterparts, literally! They are never short of “spirits” even if a State is declared “dry”! The four wheelers, which come in various hues, sizes, and brands, will not even leave the platform dwellers to “sleep in peace”; if permitted, they will even conduct memorial service to their victims’ souls to “rest in peace” and escape the long arm of the law… with impunity! Many of these modern-day machines resemble the “combo” of lord of death… Yama… and his vehicle… the buffalo!! Do you know? Before the invention of these “wonderful machines”, the word “mowing” was used only in the context of lawn or grass! Now, this word has been used liberally to denote killing as in “mowing down of victims”! What an etymological transformation? Pedestrians, the two-legged creatures that dominated the road scenery for a long time, are not to be underestimated! In spite of being without any heavy armour in their kitty, most of them are like Biblical Moses’. Do you know how? Just by waving their hands towards the approaching vehicles, they try to stop the vehicles and cross the road, not necessarily in the Zebra crossings! Some pedestrians (motorists too!) have “head in the sand” attitude, i.e. they don’t even bother to look at the approaching traffic… as they are under the “delirious” feeling that traffic will become nonexistent while they cross the road! Even if the civic agencies are “generous” enough to construct skywalks and underpasses, it will remain a “ghost town” as the pedestrians give them the cold shoulder! Do you think at least the road conditions will keep the motorists happy? Potholes and humps compete with each other in the narrow roads; some potholes are so deep that you can reach the other side of the earth! Some potholes resemble the craters formed due to the impact of asteroids! With potholes so deep, will the motorists at least get over the humps without any hiccups? A big “No”! Some humps need a pole vault to cross it! Like the advertisements “buy one, get one”, for every ride, the motorists get backache free! The two-wheeler riders will proclaim: Every small step (jump) into the pothole/hump is a great leap to a hospital! Even if the motorists escape these humps/potholes, they will be welcomed by the presence of open manholes, which can swallow them with ease than the predatory man-eaters! If the motorists heave a sigh of relief due to less traffic in an area, they will have to undergo double the pain subsequently as rallies and underconstruction works in other places will slow down the traffic! The bumpy roads have an “unlikely” advantage too: it avoids the costly medical bills for pregnant women who are on the cusp of delivery… with some help from autorickshaws. It is only for the ever romantic, a ride along the city roads is like swaying to the tunes of Bollywood music… Zindagi Ek Safar Hai Suhana! ! If you think only medians are meant for dividing the road, please reconsider it! In many places, the median is replaced by a place of worship; it might be reminding us that we require God’s blessings in keeping us safe during our travails err… travels. There are surprises galore: A 2-way will transform into a 1-way overnight, some roads will be shut without any advance warning, some roads will be widened by cutting down trees and pulling down buildings (thanks to the civic agencies!), but still “snails” move faster than a traffic “snarl”! Cometh the rain, traffic will go hay“wire” with trees and lampposts “uprooted” from its “appointed” places, and potholes turning to swimming pools, thrown around for a good measure! This brings out the “child” in every motorist alive, as they merrily splash the water on their fellow road users! With the aftermath of every rain, the civic agencies will find it easier to stitch/darn the road than to relay it! If an agency shows “mercy” by re-laying a road (beware: the joy will be short lived!), within a few days some other agency will dig the road for laying pipelines, wires, etc. All the civic agencies have an official motto: Digging (graves?) is our birthright! This “perfect” coordination among the civic agencies may never be “matched” by similar agencies in any other part of the world! While in other countries, civic agencies provide “solutions to the problems”; in India, the agencies create “problems to the solutions” ! Oops, the hapless “men in uniform” are not to be forgotten! In addition to the never-ending traffic, the “overworked, underpaid” traffic policemen are always kept on their toes as arguments and counterarguments of motorists are the order of the day, with foul mouths and fisticuffs coming to the fore at the slightest provocation and pollution thrown as a bonus! Signing off in the hope that you enjoyed the bumpy ride … err… reading!!!! A different version was published in Citizen Matters and the link is The travails of city dwellers! – Citizen Matters, Bengaluru