Ripples of my Reflections

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Tag: Traffic

Be careful what you wish for

May 4, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Owning a car was never on my wish list, but it turned out to be a mandatory evil that I have to deal with. Adit and I were happy with cab rides, public transport and our faithful Activa. But with impending parenthood, I started realizing the perks of owning a car. knowing how to drive a car. I was hell bent on the fact that we should at least know to drive a car even if we don’t want to own one. When you learnt to drive a car 10 years ago only for the sake of obtaining a driving license, you get a misplaced feeling of confidence that learning car driving again is easy. Well, the experience put me in my place.

Adit was not into buying a car and learning to drive it but I kept pushing him. I listed all the perks, nagged him and even told him I will use it even if he doesn’t like to. His main aversion was because of the Bangalore traffic and I fielded it with the typical answer that it is a known problem with any city. He was wary of the fact that we need to own a car and practice often in order to become a good driver and hence we would end up buying one anyway. In spite of his aversion and the fact that he attended driving school 6 months ago and then took a break before actually buying the car, I must say, he drives better than me . I just finished my driving classes and we bought our car when I was still attending the classes so that I can practice more. But disappointment awaited me. The learning experience threw me off my feet on the first day of my driving lessons. I realized that driving in Bangalore traffic is a different ball game than driving in my native.

Soon enough I started dreading the driving classes and the times when we drive our car to practice. Long story short, many driving classes and tense practice sessions in our car with Adit later, I can safely say that I now believe I can learn to drive a car decently  someday. Till then, nerve wracking driving sessions are to continue. I have started hating pedestrians who casually walk across the road while talking on the mobile, 2 wheelers who overtake you on the left, people who cross roads without using the over bridge, vehicles cruising on the wrong side of the road. These traffic hurdles used to bother me before but now I loathe them vehemently. It’s like a mini heart attack every time something jumps at you on the Bangalore roads in addition to the infamous potholes and irregular speed breakers. I agree that I am a poor driver, but these just irritate me further and send me into a whirlwind of panic.

To make things easier, I was even wondering whether we should just buy an automatic version because the controls in the car are one too many for me. However, many discussions later, we have bought the manual version and I gotta learn to drive it. Whether I like it or not. Well, I keep telling myself, “You will get there”. When and how is something that time will answer. Sigh! I should have been careful about what I wished for.

Until later 🙂

To the idiots on the Bangalore roads

September 23, 2014 / / 8 Comments



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To the idiots on the Bangalore roads,

I have a bone to pick with you. In fact, given the nature of your actions on the roads I would like to break your bones but being the self-centered, concerned Indian that I am forced to be by my survival instincts, I would suffice myself with writing this post on my space and yelling at you on the roads when your actions irk me.

– What is with that inadvertent nature of driving a huge ass car for a single person on those narrow roads like you own the road? I can understand if you are picking up a few generations of your family from the airport but you drive your monstrous car even if you are the only person travelling to a few km away. What’s with that? You know that navigating the traffic in bangalore is like navigating through a hellhole for people? Even you must find it difficult to reach your place in time. So why contribute to it?

– Some nincompoops of your kind seem to think that roads are meant for practising their stunts with bikes. I saw one of your kinsmen doing a wheelie on the K.R.Puram bridge with a pillion rider. Roads are not for you to show off your skills. Practise in the playgrounds and break your head, who’s gonna care? Why do you need to do that in the middle of a heavily used bridge causing imminent danger to others?

– I don’t understand your aversion to indicators and attraction to horns. You don’t use the indicators but just cut in when ever you feel so but yell your lungs out if it results in a crash. Even if you use the indicators, you turn it into an amusement tactic where you switch the left indicator on and go right. Are you nuts? While you show this ignorance to indicators, you seem to have developed a love-hate relationship with the horn. Pressing the horn so hard while at a signal? DOES NOT WORK. It will only give you angry stares, which of course, you don’t care about.

– Barriers on the roads are meant to wake your brain up to the possibility that this route is not for heavy vehicles. There might be a million reasons for it, like for instance your vehicle might be too big for the road bends. Why not try respecting the barricades once instead of forcing your way in through them and blocking the entire road with you wedged in the middle? I could even understand if it gets you through faster. But you get stuck like a trapped monkey in the narrow bends of the narrower roads thus effectively rendering the entire road unusable and blocking hordes of smaller vehicles along with you.

– For gits who didn’t get an opportunity to perform in circus and so fulfill that desire by travelling with a wife on the pillion, 2 kids wedged in between and one baby on the head, read point #2. We don’t have time for your circus performances while rushing to work, so why don’t you put up a private show and we’ll visit. Deal?

– Idiots who drive with a cell phone in one hand, I have a variety of colorful names for you. I do serve them to the pleasure of your ears but you don’t care. We know you are good at multi-tasking, but there is no need to show off by texting with one hand and driving a bike with your wife and baby on the pillion. I so wish that I could super glue your hands to the steering/hand grips of your vehicle so that you wouldn’t attend a call or even worse text while driving.

– To those brainless existences who think there is a spitting competition on who spits the farthest, I wish I could sue you or rather sew your mouth shut so that you don’t treat the road like your private wash-basin.

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This list could really go on but I know not one of you will care. Still I couldn’t resist. So you continue your out-of-the-world antics that will one day really send you out of the world and orbiting into space and I will continue swearing at you and blaming God for forgetting to give you that thing called a brain.

Yours truly pissed off,
An Indian on the Bangalore roads.

Until later 🙂

P.S: Came across this in Google, maybe we all need it soon

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