… the gods in the machine: traffic hazards
A lot of people come to India to find god, or spiritual illumination, perhaps a guru, or anyway some kind of peaceful meditative place somewhere beyond this planet. But perhaps the most out of this world out of body and out of your mind experience is the traffic: I dont think anything can prepare you it. Lots of places in Asia have slums, squalour, and traffic jams… lots offer gurus and glimpses of god … there is a plethora of places with beautiful and ancient religious artifacts, but as far as I know, only India has a kind of complete and utter traffic mayhem that in some strange way has an intricate and perverse beauty and offers a path that veers between road rage and inner calm and harmony, and offers a deep expression of the spirit of “New India”.
Nominally it’s a drive on the left side of the road situation. And I do mean nominally. People are really on all sides of the road. 2 wheelers, pedestrians and cyclcists especially. Some roads are effectively one way most of the time, because of some wierd coincidence of the way the roads are lines up.
I gather Chennai traffic is mild compared to Mumbai or Delhi, but that’s extremely relative.
In a strage way it works. The traffic is too complex to think of the details. By details I mean things like road rules. You can’t look behind you. Traffic lights are more or less just advisory. You just have to find your place in the flow and go along with it. It has a kind of zen. And I guess that’s why the decked out garage is here. No picture I’ve taken yet captures what it’s like, but maybe the gods of India are out there in the traffic. I think you get a good (if dirty) perspective on what India is like by trying to navigate peak hour on Anna Salai on a bicycle. It’s not especially dangerous, but it feels like it would be. And it is such a manifestation of the spirit of India … perhaps moreso than the 10th century temples that belong 10 or 20 cultural paradigm shifts in the past.
Sometimes you end up in a traffic snarl, and you may just sit there while two twisted and entangled head-on streams play auto tetris until the right piece falls into place, vehicles move through the mosh, and normal flow is resumed. It might be just one auto rickshaw that needs to back up 1m to let a bike through which will let a car pass that will let the delivery van move onto the wrong side of the road for a couple of lengths to set everything free. Till then you will be either irritated or at peace, depending on how kind the traffic gods have been to you on this particular trip … while you are patiently awaiting for little butterfly flutter that needed to happen to happen. But mostly you will be calm, because there is nothing you can do but sit and watch the rear end of the machine in front of you.
And the sounds are amazing. The only consistent rule that anybody follows is “Sound Horn”. And what horns. Every imaginable car horn is represented. Loud bright squeeky flabby duck quacks. Some reversing signals are triggered for little tunes. Everyone is blowing their horn all the time. Not to say get out of the way, or to be any more than averagely rude, just to say here I am, I’m right behind you. And if your horn breaks, you are a danger to yourself, and everyone around you.
Keep watching out for the car in front, don’t look back, and keep making your sound …
