This being compensation season, I had to get to work today despite the fact that today was a holiday!!

I gave the gym a miss, piling on the excuse that I’m not at my fittest best today. I left home a little beyond my standard time and was bracing myself up for the hour and a half ride to work.

As I passed the by-lanes to get to the main streets, I was greeted to lesser than usual traffic. WOW! What a pleasure it is to drive on days like this. Turning on my music, I started cruising, enjoying the great Bangalore weather and the pirated MP3.

There was a sense of nostalgia.

The not-so-crowded roads took me back to my teen days, when my cousin and I could go from one corner of the city to another, in pretty much no time. Bangalore used to be a blissful place to drive around – cool all through the year, disciplined drivers, an odd honk here or there and a lot of green.

How I wish this could last forever!!!  I went to the extent of proposing legislations that make governments declare two days a month as days when people have to stay home and I could get to work enjoying my drive, maybe IT organizations need to have everyone work from home and that can take the traffic away and then this screechy sound of metal touching metal!

A big blue BTS bus just went past touching my car, just enough to cause a blue scratch mark from the boot to the two doors! The damage in Bangalore terms, 3rd degree – something that is not carnage enough to cost you a bomb, but something that can cause a bit of carnage to the heart! The guy didn’t bother to stop – he just kept going on and on. I was game for a fight and said, let me chase him down and started racing! Within moments, I gave up. Not because my car didn’t have the vroom or the guy I was going to pick up an argument against was too powerful – I’ve seen many such non value adding fights on the streets before – they are a waste of your energy and poke a little hole to your pocket as the bus driver is not going to pay you any money!

I pulled up to the sides to look at my most recent addition, the big blue scratch in addition to the other dozens of scratch marks & dents that adorn the body of my car. I’m not alone here and I see this on every other car – The brand new Civics, the Audis that recently hit the road and the good old 800s – they are all there to give me company! I’m on that ever growing list of people who believe that these minor things are best left unattended to!

Five years ago, I’d bought a brand new Zen. The car had a few “medals” and I was off to the showroom in a hurry to fix this. I spent a good 8K change and got the car to the office – the car looked like mint and I walked up feeling good. In less than 5 minutes, a security guard called me at my desk to say that a stray dog entered the office car park and damaged a car – it just lifted its legs and scratched my car bumpers; thankfully, it couldn’t get higher. I came down running to check my damages and a migration manager who came along was laughing out loud, feeling sorry for me within (as he claims). So much for getting my car fixed. I’ve sworn since, never to fix these minor issues.

Back to today, I was wondering if I did something wrong. Like every other driver, I can swear and say that I was the best and never put a foot wrong. I continued driving to work and while driving, it dawned upon me that maybe the “extra space” was what caused the incident. There are days when I can drive in bumper to bumper traffic and still get home without anyone touching the car, but it’s the suddenly freely available extra space that make drivers lose control. Look at what driving in bumper to bumper traffic means to us!

Popularity: 11%

Do you really want to use this Do It Yourself kit to get a license?

Your experiments with vehicles will start at a relatively older age… you will be in your late single digit years of age. Usually your first drive will be achieved by flicking the key of your dad’s scooter or in better scenarios, your friend’s dad’s scooter. If you are lucky, both will return safely. If you are not, they will anyway find out sooner or later.

With constant persuasion, you will be fully qualified to drive a two wheeler independently with trust by the age of eleven or twelve. You would have completed approximately 2 to 5 minutes of learning, 20 to 120 kilometers of flying, 6 to 10 acts of stolen and returned vehicles and about 2 to 4 injuries requiring stitches; the more experienced ones a broken bone or two for their friends to envy on.

By this time you are a fully qualified and experienced driver who can be certified to take up to 4 people on the scooter and will be permitted to run small errands like getting vegetables and bags of rice or dropping people to the nearest bus stop. Such acts instill faith in your family members and you automatically get their buy-in to ride pillion (or pillions). You can safely assume that by now your whole neighborhood is obliged to ask you for any help that may involve moving people or objects on two-wheelers.

There are some amazing skills that come along with the art of balancing the two wheelers. Your visual range is automatically enhanced to spot the policeman at every corner. You obtain the power of NOX (once restricted to NASCAR racing) to suddenly boost your speed when there is a possibility of being checked for a license. Similarly, girls all of a sudden seem to want a lift and you begin to spend more money on petrol than on cinemas, chai and samosas. Of course with time, these will become regular features.

Depending on how lucky and talented you are, you can manage to drive with this ‘Do It Yourself’ driving license for several years. Of course it’s a different thing that you can get a genuine driving license for a few dollars more through your friendly neighborhood RTA agent. This usually means you will automatically be upgraded to drive a four wheeler as well! It’s so simple – if you can drive two two-wheelers, it’s but normal that you know how to drive a four-wheeler.

There are those unlucky few who believe that honesty is the best policy. They actually take time out to pay several visits to the local RTA and go through endless chains of tests, photographs, practical drives and identification of hieroglyphic geometrical signs (I think they are called road signs), not to mention computerized tests of late. Once they have the learner’s license, they follow all guidelines and learn to drive. Then after several rounds of visits, torture and insomnia, they obtain a precious card that entitles them to drive on the road. It is a lesser known fact that such drivers have very little practical experience and are not ‘community endorsed drivers’. Of course it’s but natural that such people are responsible for all the accidents that happen here… they don’t have the experience – that’s why!

Let me know if you took the Do It Yourself approach or the honest driver approach for your license…

Ah, and if you are still driving without a license, you can mention that too… without you where would we ever be!

PS: Yes, I do have a valid driving license

Popularity: 10%

When was the last time you saw a bus or a truck stalled on the road? Within minutes it immediately grows some branches and leaves… and the driver faithfully places a few stones (and an occasional rock) to mark the perimeter of ‘safety’. Amusing as it may seem, the leaves indicate the immobility of the problem and the stones a marking of territory.

The situation is greatly enhanced when the patient is a government vehicle… especially something of larger proportions – like a city bus. When the drivers of these vehicles join for work, they seem to sign a secret contract. Something that says – all such vehicles, when stalled, will always be placed in such a spot as to create maximum obstruction and discomfort to other road users. This is done to gently remind our citizens that there is actually a government in place and it takes care of road safety.

For the past few years there has been a secret road war. There is the segment of drivers that wants to make us another America – drive on the right side … always. And there is this growing percentage of secret vehicles with no lights whatsoever – right from the petit Lunas to the gigantic Tatas and Leylands. We have always relied on brain-mapping… that’s the reason a majority of the vehicles don’t need any working indicators. Even if they work, the drivers expect the vehicles to understand their movement and turn these on and off.

It’s always good to carry more. Right from our manufacturers, all vehicles are designed and tested every day to withstand three to four times of its rated capacity. To ensure that these tests are carried out to the highest possible standards, the government ensures that the roads meet universal standards prescribed for craters on Mars. It is indeed heartening to know that in 500 years, we will use all this data to compile a set of standards and roll out the world’s best vehicles.

Guided missile carriers are not new on the road either. Every two-wheeler and rider combo is a machinery of precision to test speed, flexibility and endurance of Man and Machine. They can put the famed Kamikaze to shame. Wherever available, there are larger combos of highly unstabilized moving mines marked in black and yellow, popularly known as auto rickshaws. Of late in the so called IT cities, we have also seen a rage of a white Ninja force – always in a hurry, manned by a force that doesn’t get enough sleep; they are otherwise called the call-center cabs.

If it were not for the roads, our vocabulary would be so limited. There are so many words we would have perhaps never learnt. And if not for the lives lost on the roads, our population would grow out of control. Safety is never an issue…we are the safest place to drive. Everyone is at their wits end and is so much cautious.

That leaves me, the pedestrian, cursing them all. But as soon as I get into my car, I get transformed and curse the pedestrian.

After all, it’s he who reaches his destination that wins.

Popularity: 8%