I, Me, Myself

For the last 2 days, I have been wanting to write something here but was quite clueless about what to write on. Then, I got talking with my colleague, who’s been acting as my unofficial editor about how long it took me to reach office this morning, and she told me that that would make a good topic. I guess I’ve mentioned this earlier in my blog as well, but a drive around Bangalore is always worth another write-up.

As always, I started from home sometime between 8:25 and 8:30 a.m. After a year’s careful research, I found that particular timeslot to be the best for my journey from my home in Vignan Nagar to my office in Koramangala. Anything after 8:30 made the traffic quite a bit worse whereas anything before 8:25 was out of the question thanks to my detailed attention to the morning ablutions. Of course, I could get up earlier, but hey, didn’t I mention I was lazy!

Anyway, there I was, driving up the Kaggadasapura Main Road and aiming to take a right turn to head towards BEML Gate when I noticed a small traffic jam ahead of me. Considering the fact that there were only 3-4 vehicles stuck, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but I had thoroughly underestimated my countrymen’s ability to make bad things worse. Within a minute, there were 3 autorickshaws that wiggled their way into the middle of the jam. Soon, there were about 5-6 motorcycles pushing into the tiny space between the autorickshaws. Then, a couple of people decided that they had to cross the road at that exact same spot and stepped over the front wheels of a couple of two-wheelers before they too got stuck.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, people started honking. Now, I’ve always felt that we honk just because there’s a horn. Due to such incessant honking, most people have come to ignore it to the extent that when I give a polite hoot to let a cyclist in the middle of the road or a person standing all lost in deep thought to make way, they don’t give a damn. Though I’ve still managed to refrain from non-stop honking, there have been a few instances (when) where I’ve lost my equanimity and participated in the rowdy act.

Coming back to today, after about 10 minutes, sanity seemed to temporarily prevail, and people began to realize that this wasn’t getting anywhere, so everyone became quite cooperative, directing each other one or the other, and we did move off. By now, each of us had gotten that much more late in reaching our destination that we were all unrelenting, not giving any space to each other. That ensured that it was crawl all the way past GM Palya, but as we reached the BEML Gate, it just got worse.

While earlier there was a semblance of a crawl, here it was an absolute stop. People weren’t even honking, they were all that tired. Dust was swirling around, sun was heading to the top, and I was beginning to get quite irritated myself. To prove my point, I gave two meaningless hoots and looked around to tell others how exasperated I was with it all. While most just ignored my feeble horns, there were a few who looked at me with an expression which meant they were much more exasperated at me than I was with either of them. Finally, when we all started crawling, all of us had the same brainwave, to go through the vacant plot in front of the BEML to rush to the main road at the other end. That meant we just made it a bigger jam.

In order to prove how emotionally high-strung everyone was, there were a couple of slanging contests. I did manage to learn a few more choice words without really knowing their meaning. That is one big drawback I feel with these words. They are at their deadliest in one’s mother tongue, but they lose their potency if the person at the receiving end doesn’t understand that word. So, I am sure I won’t have much of a chance to put this newly acquired knowledge to great use.

While I was engrossed in expanding my vocabulary, the horns around me gathered momentum, and I realized that a huge inch of space had opened up in front of me. Barely could I release the gear before I had to brake myself to a stop yet again. After another 10 minutes or so, when I got a chance to expand my carbon quotient in this world, I was back to jostling with others for space on the road. This one-upmanship on the road continued all the way till most of us took a turning to Jeevan Bhima Nagar at which time things eased because the roads got a bit more wider, and the traffic was generally in just 2 directions.

After stuttering through Indira Nagar and the initial part of inner ring road, traffic opened up until we came to Ejipura. That is one of the spots where motorists generally tend to lose their brains. While some decide to take a right while traveling in the middle lane, others decide to cut lanes from the inner to the outer one right in front of the signal. Others suddenly turn color blind or just plain blind as they never seem to see the red light. Now, if you were to be correct enough to stop at the red, there would be at least 5 of them who would feel you’re making a big mistake and would want to correct you by blowing their horns some 100 times.

Finally leaving Ejipura junction, I came to the next major stop, in front of the Sony World in Koramangala. Among the various traffic obstacles, I feel this to be the most orderly, thanks mainly to the strong police presence at this point. When I did make the right turn to my office from there, I was still apprehensive, because right in front of the Yo! China outlet in Koramangala, there are some crazy traffic jams most of the days. Today, one bugger did try his best to disrupt the smooth flow of traffic by driving his scooter into the middle of oncoming traffic, but when he realized that I, who was heading the traffic, was driving in a much more insane manner, he decided to put a price on his own life and backed off. By the time I parked my car in my office, I had only spent 1:15 hours on the road, trying to cross a meager 12 kms! Each day, when I put me and myself above others, I tend to reach that much later. I wonder why.