HORN-NOT-OK PLEASE

‘Blow Horn’ painted at the back of our trucks is there for a reason. Our highways are pathetic, the trucks horribly maintained, and our driving is senseless. That’s why flashing lights alone won’t help. But, in the city, can we not at least attempt To check on our compulsive honking?

Everyone’s going on-and-on about Global Warming, and that we must do something to save our planet. Mostly, no one has a clue of what that ‘something’ should actually be. Green Peace asks you for money every year. You then pay them, and go back to your bed thinking that ‘you’ve made a difference.’ I sincerely wish that paying some moolah for every wrong-doing would solve all the issues facing mankind. The quality of life would become so much better, wouldn’t it? Speaking of which, I’m alarmed at how insensitive and ignorant we are about matters that are much more important than this, and affect us directly every single day.

At the start of every New Year, you make resolutions of a varying nature. At the start of this year, I spoke to my friends and everyone had life-enhancing resolutions – but in a superficial way. There was not one resolve – not one – that revolved around the betterment of society.

And I’d actually been practicing my resolution from a few months before New Year ’s Eve – just to get in the habit. I promised myself that I wouldn’t sound the horn as much as those less learned folks around me – and I got some impressive results. There were days when I could go without blowing the horn even once from home to office, and back – during peak traffic hours! So, this was an achievable feat I thought to myself.

Needless to say, you get a little wary when you look at our metros. Delhi is full of mad and aggressive people with no traffic sense whatsoever – which is not too different from Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore for that matter. And Kolkata is the worst city that I’ve ever driven around. Our roads are full of colourful events – office goers cross the road by stopping traffic with one gesture of their hand. They simply refuse to use the foot-over bridge. There are naked kids who hit the window of your car hard (multiple times), until you give them some money to feed their dad’s drug addiction. Then, there’s the Holy Cow (literally speaking, not metaphorically), stray dogs, and the odd auto rickshaw guy who thinks that the entire road is his ancestral property. Sometimes, he just comes up with the weirdest ways imaginable to block traffic – for his amusement I feel.

And these events give rise to traffic slow-downs and jams. Of course, when people are stuck in jams, they get this weird pleasure by blowing the horn – despite realizing that there’s no way they can alter the flow of traffic or inch ahead of others. It could even be a social experiment, because you can experience the mindlessness of the human race in the most irritating way if you’re a part of such a jam – which you will be since there’s no getting away from it. So, try being patient, have a calm head, and don’t honk. You’ll notice that your days will become better. You’ll enjoy the music on FM a lot more, and be a lot more at ease throughout the day.

So, my only resolution for 2012 is that I’m going to drive as far as possible without sounding the horn – period! It’s possible, and I know it. I’ve done it. Can you do it too, or am I hoping for the impossible?