Monday, November 9, 2009

Your choice.....

Stage - Nagar road, near Aga khan palace, time 8:30am

Just look around yourself either standing at a signal or if you are been driven then outside the window, as if you are having vaccum in your head or simpler just look around as if you are an alien in your own land (i would have said infants but even a 13 year old are father figure's now)

Scene- Road leading from Aga Khan palace to Shastri Nagar chowk...

There is a truck going (crawling) in the right lane, emitting loads of black smoke, in the bikers face behind, the cycle is almost overtaking the truck from the left. You are trying to figure the way ahead, tactically anticipating the intention of the truck, just as you too get tempted to peep from the left of the truck, there comes a biker from your left hand side swaying his way straight in front of your car bonnet, deciding to brake suddenly as he is also caught unaware of the truck ahead,(he may be a devil who has ) just come to check how efficient your car brakes are, in case they are weak, god help and in case they are over efficient then god definitely help you from the speeding truck coming from behind. Please imagine the scene and please also pray not to get in situations like these.

As you negotiate all this and arrive at the signal (Shastri nagar chowk bang opposite the Yervada police station) the road ahead is one going straight, one to the right and it is also a "U" turn. you have somehow managed to place yourself in the center lane with right indicator on, the signal turns green and as you press the accelerator, there is a car which comes from your left full swing and takes a "U" turn without even noticing your existence on the road, you franticly brake again to save the collision, and perhaps look at that driver in dismay, the looks you get from that car taking "U" turn is, "Chal aage dekh ke chala". Well this is just the "tip" of the "tip" of the iceberg of our grave traffic situation on the road going to work.

If you now look back, as an alien at the whole episode, what is that truck doing at morning 8:30am in the highly crowded road emitting black smoke at that crawling speed? Why is the cycle overtaking the truck? Why did the biker overtake from the left? Why did a car take a full "U" turn without any signal and completely against the rule of driving.

I am usually amazed with such insane incidents on road, even difficult to analyze the reason for this but only one thing that comes to mind is the impatience which the people have.

It definitely is not funny, let me share an incident witnessed the earlier morning (sunday) on the same road near Ramwadi.

There is this democratically created "U" turn by sidelining the road divider's. People merrily take "U" turn from there right in the face of upcoming high speed traffic. I happen to witness that a big car was taking a "U" turn and as usual and rightly so, I saw this driver watching the up coming speeding traffic, specially the biker who was racing in, suddenly the car brakes, and there are two big bang sounds, one i saw the biker coming and crashing the rear of this car, and while i was wondering where the second sound came from, I saw a mob running toward front of the car, an another biker was trying to cross the road from the wrong side, who has had a head on collision with the same car.

I tried to analyze and i thought that we live by the theory of probability. The car driver, probably he may take a turn before the biker reaches the spot, the biker did not reduce the speed, thinking probably the car will pass through before he reached the spot. The third unseen angle, the wrong side local biker thought probably he will pass through between both of them to cross the road. But they all failed in the law of physics of time, speed and distance.

We do this so often on road ask yourself dont we? well this is only because we are impaitient and make our way through, now we have this two bikers and the car driver who were nursing their wounds at the local hospital. You may ask why the car driver, well we had these onlookers, who decided to help the bikers on the road by letting their frustration on the car driver who probably had very little role in this mayhem. before they even got these bikers and their bikes of the road.

I wonder at time where are we headed too, i understand every one is equally hard pressed for time, every one wants to be the first, but do we realize that impatience can lead us to self destruction.

I just remembered a small saying on the back of the truck i read years ago, While driving of the road please decide if you want to be -----Mr/ Ms. Late or Late Mr/ Ms choice is yours.

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