Touch me if you can!

Touch me if you can!

We are told the government is taking active steps to make traffic laws more stringent in order to discipline unruly Indian drivers and make them ‘fall in lane’. Like an effective ‘jugal-bandi’, the Supreme Court has joined the score by using its own authority to declare a-half-kilometer around national and state highways as liquor-free. Now, as you know, highways are to modern India what the Indus river was to our Harappa-age ancestors; so, this has obviously come as a big blow to our civilization, as it exists today.

Of course, I welcomed every move made by the ‘authorities’ to enforce more stringent controls on and around our country’s road network… until my son returned home one Sunday rather annoyed and upset. Upon enquiring as to the reason, I learnt that he had just been ‘fined’ by the traffic police for speeding on a stretch of road close to our residence. Speeding, he told me, meant going over the specified speed limit for that stretch of road, which – as the traffic cop informed him – had been set at 50 kilometers per hour. 50, he repeated: a speed that even ‘autos’ found difficult to keep under when in their highest gear! “You see, Dad,” he exclaimed, “the Indian system is brilliant: first they lay down laws that no reasonable person can ever conform to, and then they negotiate the penalty with you for ‘mutual benefit’”. Furthermore, he explained, the cops had neatly chosen the only stretch of road where a motorist could cruise above 50 kilometers per hour, in the first place, and elected to do this on a Sunday, when traffic was sparse and motorists could actually enjoy their rides in the otherwise choked city roads.

The following day, my son and I were traveling together in the car when, while waiting for the traffic light to turn green, a couple of cows wandered idly across the intersection, ignoring the ‘stop’ signal, before making themselves comfortable in the middle of the busy road junction. As soon as the signal turned green, there was a mad rush forward, as vehicles scrambled to nose ahead to lay claim on every inch of free road. There was a screeching sound and then a ‘thud’ as a motorbike slammed into the divine bovines, making complete minced-meat of the rider. Luckily, he was not hurt, as evidenced by the bored looks on the traffic police personnel standing nearby. As the rider dusted himself off, cursed his luck and picked up his mangled motorbike, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Indian driver deserved a respite from the roadblocks that he faced at every twist and turn of the nation’s roads!

In fact, now with the current enthusiasm around ‘gau-raksha’, the country’s dairy farmers have decided that it is too risky to sell a cow once it loses its (dairy) productivity – instead, they let them loose on the roads. In many towns, these cattle roam the streets, daring drivers going about their business to so much as brush past them – the consequences of wrong-siding a cow these days are simply too much for most. The cows stand there in the middle of busy streets, with an assortment of traffic zigging and zagging past them, almost with an air of nonchalance that seems to say, like the great boxing legend: “Touch me if you can!”