The Drive

Well I dunno if my readers are aware but I’m something of a Roadwarrior. Yes Yes I see your raised eyebrows n all that over the fancy title but I daresay it’s kinda true. I drive around 70kms each day, more when I have meetings which are 2 to 3 times a week at least. So let’s do the math here – 365 days – 88 days for the Sundays and 3 Saturdays in a month that I have a leave = 277 – 15 for holidays (those given by the company plus those taken by me) = 262*2 for 2 years = 524*70 = 36680kms. A large number if I say so myself. I’m guessing I’d in all eventualities be well over 40000kms if I add the travel for meetings over two years, but nevermind that for now. There’s a lot of wisdom I’ve acquired over these kilometers and here I am very selflessly sharing the same with you. –


Trucks –

I’m sure all of you at some point or other would’ve found yourself staring at the big ugly rear end of a slow moving truck. And if lady luck is in half a playful mood with you as she generally is with me that would probably be a truck full of mud with the fine sand blowing smoothly onto your face; if that hasn’t happened to you then at least you would’ve been victim to the wet sticky projectile mud spray from the wheels of the truck onto your shirt on a rainy morning; No!? Then you must at least have been caught in the midst of traffic surrounded on 3 sides by cars with their windows shut to keep the AC on and on the fourth by that pleasant fragrant garbage truck. If none of the above has happened to you then please don’t point it out to me you lucky bastards.

Now I guess there’s a point to these trucks after all. I mean people somewhere need that mud to be transported and sure garbage disposal is an important thing so there’s really no point complaining. There however is one really irritating thing about these trucks. Imagine yourself driving at a brisk pace, overtaking vehicles when you can, and you find yourself as I pointed out facing the big ugly rear end of a slow moving truck. So you do the right thing and attempt to overtake the ungainly thing from the right; alas just as you rev your bike and loosen the throttle you see a dirty hand stick out of the front and wave vigorously as if it were the disproportionate wing of a huge bird trying to take off. You then recognize your folly of misconstruing a simple signal indicating the truck intends to move towards the right, so you then fall back and come back upto speed on the left of the truck only to see the same dirty hand with the same dirty movements on the left side as well.

This time you’re really confused as you fall back, you’re not sure if the truck is going to split down the middle with the two sides going their separate ways (which I hope to see someday soon) or whether they’ve got the very stretchy Mr. Fantastic from the fantastic four with some weird infection on his hands which cased his hands to darken and look really dirty and he’s waving them desperately for help.

Determined not to let your superheroes down you risk your life and possibly the chance to see a truck split down the middle and pick a side and accelerate down some side to see that it’s actually two different individuals dancing and waving to the same Daler Mehndi tune – “dardi rub rub” (thus explaining the similar hand movements). Grumbling to yourself about the complete lack of road sense these truck drivers have and the negative influences the whole indi-pop scene has caused you drive on wondering if you’ll ever get a chance to see a truck split down the middle or to help Mr. Fantastic.

Now I know the whole thing was a little lame, I also know driving a truck is not easy, but it’d be nice if the truck drivers could start using indicators other then dance moves and preferably on only one side of the truck please. I won’t express any more annoyance here because i’m saving it up for the –

Buses –

Yes well before I get to bitching about them I must say that Bangalore has one of the best public transportation systems around, I mean the Volvos are really awesome to be travelling in, nice and comfy on the inside.

Now anybody who drives in India would say that the biggest menace on the road is the auto, but I beg you to now reconsider, especially after the introduction of the Volvos. I mean these busses might be nice and comfortable on the inside, but if you’re a guy driving a simple victor like I do on the roads and one of these monsters happen to swish by then you’d do well to move your bike to the corner of the road beforehand. My drive to office generally consists very largely of me looking in the mirror to see if any pre-emptive Volvo avoidance techniques would have to be instantly used.

I mean the govt. did a good job by bringing in a very nice mode of transport, but where they really screwed up is by giving the same ol’ irresponsible drivers much more powerful toys to break the rules and have fun driving crazy on the roads. It’s seriously crazy. And a very astute observation I made not very long ago is that the drivers of the non-volvos today seem to’ve developed a complex and deal with it by being even rasher then usual. In short the buses, the Volvos in particular today are like that really scary roller coaster, you would love to ride in them but wouldn’t want to stand too close to them for fear of being sprayed by someone on the ride. The one thing worse then busses on the roads probably are –

Autos –

Aah what gaali can I give these rascals that hasn’t been given before. Which one of you hasn’t hated these three wheeled menaces on the road that turn at will irrespective of who’s behind or in them? These lane cutting, paan spitting, slow moving but fast turning, loud noise making, rule breaking heaps of junk metal held together by cellophane tape. I’m not sure if people hate these things more while they’re driving and have to avoid them or when they have to travel in them and pay exorbitant prices for a slow uncomfortable noisy drive. But I’ve got to say the teamwork between auto drivers is remarkable; be it while extorting your life savings out of you or while one auto fails and you see another auto pushing this one using his leg.

I’m not going to say much about the taxi drivers here as they’re really just a slightly more sophisticated (read much much more expensive), less noisy, faster variant of the same with the same ol’ disregard for the rules and general road safety. The only thing on the road worse then autos are –

Cows –

I realize that these don’t exactly count as vehicles, unless of course you’re unlucky enough to come across a bullock cart or something, and I’m trying not to discuss that now in the 21^st century. But I included these bovine creatures in this partially because I very often run into them (well not literally, not if I can avoid it anyway) and partially because they emit a lot of greenhouse gasses. Now I wouldn’t claim to be someone who really gives more then a perfunctory raised eyebrow to cows their flatulence, I mean who’re we to judge we probably fart more then our good share of greenhouse gasses, but I really sometimes find the presence of cows on the road quite annoying.

I mean they just come there in front of you out of nowhere and look at you with those huge innocent eyes, like you’re doing something really wrong. And if you’re anything like me then guilt immediately creeps in even if you’ve really done nothing. It’s like they come onto my way and ask why’re you on my way? What did I do to you? Why do you drink my milk? Aargh damn that innocent look. And you’re generally like – no it wasn’t me, I didn’t do anything, I’m just getting late to office, I didn’t drink milk, they made me do it goddamn it!!

What annoys me even more is that when you slow down, get to the side and go by them there’s always that tail that comes out swinging at you. Without fail there’s the tail.

I mean what’s the point? Is that tail supposed to get me? Is it supposed to scare me?? Is it supposed to do anything more then spread their dung around? Is it like they just release some greenhouse gasses directed toward you?? Can they even do that? No really what’s with the tail I gotta know.

Ok before I get too annoyed and start complaining about their dung all over the place, lets move on to something worse –

Dogs –

Ah well these aren’t exactly worse, I mean they used to be the worst thing on the roads, coming in between all the bloody time, every bloody where; but mans best friend has learnt mans ways well. Today we very often see dogs on the road, but they generally are the most responsive to horns. So if you’re vehicle has a functional horn then you have no problems with dogs, a big bow-wow to that. I really never knew why dogs wanted to cross roads but lets not go there now. Lets just be happy that dogs respond to horns, well at least the respond to horns better then –

Men –

Ah yes, mans biggest problem is man himself. I always find it quite remarkable that a dog knows what the sound of a horn means but most men don’t. You’ll see loads of people trying randomly to cross roads without bothering about anything else. They’re like hey this feels like a nice bit of tarred high speed road to walk across, let’s do it and they grab the moment with a single minded eye only on the goal approach while the rest of us try desperately to grab the brake. Oh and do despair because this isn’t the worst approach, there’s the invincible hand of Moses approach where they’re convinced that once they stick their hand out nothing can happen to them and they can walk across the road with the same confidence that Moses and his folks walked across the red sea years and years ago, there must be a lot of Jewish people in india.

Then there’s the Uslain bolt approach wherein they just pick their lungi up and let their body be taken over by the spirit of Hussain Bolts, in this state of possession they just sprint across the road confident that they will not occupy any place for more then the briefest of microseconds and thus will reach the other end safe, in women this phenomenon is called the PT Usha phenomenon.

Oh how can I forget the left is right approach, this really is a brilliant philosophy. People just look at the other direction i.e. towards the left, see no traffic and presume that there won’t be any traffic on the right either as left is right and just walk across. Simply awesome.

There’s also the this conversation is everything, there can’t be anything behind this bus and just jump off this moving bus, there won’t be a bike coming here, look at that huge poster of some skimpily dressed woman and walk towards it approaches among others.

As a man I realize that these above few points talk very ill of mankind and our inability to learn things as simple as road sense and self preservation, but at the end of the day I find more security in the fact that the one thing worse then men are -

Women –

I mean seriously ladies what is the matter? We understand that you’re all good looking, we understand that you’re not blessed with the same sort of easy balance as we men are, we know that your world has a lot more important things like make up, cute shaped cloud, color of your shoes, but we beg of you to not bring it onto the road. We understand that you’re not good at crossing, that you in an attempt to avoid a cycle might well end up in front of a bus, but for heavens sake don just freeze in the middle of the road and create confusions as you often do. It’s simple when you’re trying to cross the road –

Look right, then look left, then look right again then if there’s no traffic cross the road, walk fast don’t run.

And never cross a road alone if you forget the above, cross only when there’s a small group crossing a single woman crossing the road can be quite a problem ;)

And if you’re driving then I have no advice for you, only prayers for the others.

Ya that might be sexist but it’s a fact, moving on, the above points and more might’ve given you all a very distinct impression that yours truly hates driving and wants no more of it, and you’d all be very right. In a short span of two years I’ve decided that driving isn’t going to help me much and I’ve come to detest it. However only the last week, I was on my way from whitefield to electronic city in the morning and decided to take a road that I hadn’t seen before. In case you guys want to ever try it it’s the road that goes straight when the road from forum value mall to marathahalli curves to the right.

The road ended up leading me to a place well beyond electronic city, damn near the Karnataka border, in a couple of mins I would’ve reached tamil nadu if I had gone on; but what a road!! It was an awesome drive, I must’ve gone on for like 50kms or so without even realizing it. Beautiful weather, great music (turn the page – Metallica), great road aah it was simply amazing on the road again. The gentle high speed curves on the road mixed with just the right amount of traffic to overtake and feel like you’re flying are something I’m not going to forget in a hurry. Needless to say I went late to the meeting but I really didn’t care about it, in fact for the first time I was actually disappointed that the ride was over.

This brings me to a very interesting observation. I’ve ridden my bike for nearly 4-5 years now, it’s a low power, not too interesting, not too high mileage either simple victor which has gone for some multiple tens of thousands of kilometers and as I clearly illustrated in the beginning has borne me for around 36680kms in the last 2 years alone. Laying my backside on it anymore seems really tedious, but in the last year or 2 I’ve had at least 3 articles on my blog where I’ve enjoyed the ride, maybe it’s not soo bad, maybe I do enjoy riding but it’s just the traffic that’s making it seem a herculean effort, maybe I do enjoy driving, maybe I’m a Roadwarrior afterall!!