Stereotypes – Traffic

In every situation, you would find a certain number of stereotypes. Be it office or a party or an average class. The stereotypes are present everywhere in different avatars. You just have to have an eye to look out for them. In this post, I would list down the stereotypes that you are bound to notice when you are driving on a moderate to high traffic road.

• Honker – The sole aim of this guy is to scare the hell out of the soul who didn’t see him coming or irritate the cr*p out of the person next in line to him. He might or might not want to go anywhere fast but he surely wants the road ahead of him clear of any vehicle. Often, this species of humanoids is found to behave as if he is permanently angry with someone, accompanied by loud voices emanating from his mouth.

• Pursuer – This is one guy you can’t shake off. You might have been able to get rid of sticky girlfriends or any other friends, unwelcome atithis etc. but not this guy. All he wants to do is to either one up you or keep on following you. He will park his car behind you and will follow you anywhere you drive (of course not to your destination if you both have different ones).

• Zig-Zagger – This guy will follow the path of least resistance to the places that have minimal traffic. It doesn’t matter to him if he disturbs the floe of the entire traffic behind him but he must get o that vacant spot at the other side of the road.

• Speedster – Give him a space of 10 meters and this guy will try and show off the speed of his car to one and all. Also, this species is known for highest fuel consumption per head amongst all species because they don’t know basic things such as how to switch off car at red lights or in traffic jams.

• Blocker – Also known as “Mr.-I-Wont-Budge-No-Matter-What”, these people are very well known for their habit of following a set path. No matter how empty the road is, no matter the traffic signal has just turned green, no matter if he is driving in the wrong lane. This person will assiduously plod on his chosen path, unmindful of the discomfort that he may be causing to others. Very often, this specie also exhibits the traits of adopting a set speed at which they will drive, or try to drive.

• Mr.-I-Will-Change-Lanes-Without-Signal – These are the most dangerous of these traffic stereotypes and are singularly responsible for more than their fair share of the Insurance Companies’ workload as well as most of the traffic jams that you or I are destined to come across. As their categorization suggests, they are free willed people who truly believe that signaling for lane changing is for novices and that they can actually manage without it.

• Jumper – A compulsive red signal jumper by nature, the traffic signals don’t mean anything to him. God may help those who decide to step in the way of these daredevils as they are bound to need god’s help if they are to survive that ordeal. It is often rumored that they jump lights because they are actually color blind and don’t know which light is on but don’t want to admit it. Needless to say, nobody has been able to stop them long enough to make an independent confirmation or rejection of such a statement.

In addition to this, there is also another rapidly vanishing species. They are called as Sane Drivers. Once, when cars used to be spare, these used to be found in abundance. But with the advent of Honda city (and the likes in cars) driving Jats (and the likes in humanlike creatures), these Sane Drivers have been steadily decreasing. In fact, I remember that at some point even I used to be a completely sane driver. However, so much driving everyday has caused me to mutate into a combination of these stereotypes. I still have some sanity left in me so I am not completely gone as yet but I am scared what will happen to me? What affect this continuous driving have on me? Only time will tell.

PS: Please note that even though article has been written for a male stereotype, it would not bode well to assume that similar stereotypes do not exist in the drivers from fairer sex. In fact, the traits can be observed even more clearly in them.

Naxalite Attacks

The newspapers today are full of the recent Maoist attacks on the CRPF personnel, resulting in 76 of them being killed. It is at these times that I feel ashamed of being an Indian. Don’t take me wrong here, I am very glad that I am an Indian, I like our culture, our values, our food (especially) and all other things. But I can’t tolerate this soft stand that the Indian government has a habit of adopting on issues which require a firm handling. Why should we see our security personnel being killed by a rag-tag bunch of bandits? We should learn a lesson or two from the global precedents. Look at the way the Americans destroyed the rule of Saddam Husain or the Afghanistan incident. Now I am not saying that what they did was correct in any sense but the idea here is to adopt the firm “No-nonsense” policy against any threat to the nation from any invaders; be them these bandits or China. Look at SriLanka… Their firm handling of LTTE got them off for good. Now that’s the way we should handle the situations and not play by the vote bank politics of the leftists.

We have top class defense, strategy personnel in India. India, as a country, is known for people with humungous brain powers. Why don’t we utilize a fraction of it in such projects and eradicate these bas****s completely.

In this case, I hope that all the political parties get together for a full and final eradication of such anti national forces. I, for one, am all for it.

Soleckshaw

"The humble cycle rickshaw is now being acclaimed as an environment-friendly means of transport. CSIR has developed an innovative product called 'soleckshaw' to replace manually-operated rickshaws. It runs on batteries which are charged by solar power."

---- Excerpts from the Budget 2010 speech of Pranab Mukherjee

More details on this wonderful can be found here. I for one think that this is an amazing invention, if not from an environmentalist point of view then atleast from a humanistic viewpoint.

Commonwealth Games 2010 – Part 2

Further continuing in the series of articles for commonwealth games, there is one particular observation that I would like to make.

We Indians have an innate infatuation with the western culture. Whether it is reflected in the way we try to copy the western way of speaking, their clothing, styles, cultures or even their movies and songs. Take the case of any gala event in the country. If you look at the event closely enough, you will realize how “western” oriented the theme is. How the media will go in frenzy over an international group performing, however obscure they may be. On the other hand, our local talent; however good it may be; is almost always ignored.

To this extent, I would like to propose at least one item for the inauguration ceremonies of The Games 2010 – Prince Dance group of the “India Got Talent” fame.

This group is a bunch of rural folks from Orissa, India. Some of them work on farms, others on such equally blue collared works. However, they are an amazing bunch together and have given out some of the most amazing performances.

Some of their videos can be watched as below.

Video 1

Video 2

It would truly be a shame to let such a talent go waste and instead spend crores of rupees getting some foreign performers to come here.

Commonwealth Games 2010

Indian government set itself a very high goal of getting the 2010 common wealth games in India. At the time it was said that necessary efforts would be made to ensure that the games would go smoothly. While a lot of effort has been put into placing proper infrastructure in the place including construction of places where the sports would actually be played, hotels etc for all the visitors to stay at and other such physical work; there is still a lot of ground to be covered before actually relaxing with regards to quality and quantity of the work. Admittedly Delhi has benefitted a lot from the commonwealth preparation with many flyovers and others such infrastructure developments taking place. Even DMRC is expediting their work to complete a major portion of the Delhi metro before the games. The entire NCR has been set on a beautification drive including renovation of the Victorian heritage, revamping business areas like Connaught Place etc, paving roads, street lightings, flyovers, underpasses and what not. But are these efforts enough? Will the work be done by the time games start? Repeatedly, Sheila Dixit and Suresh Kalmadi keep on assuring people that the work will be completed on time, but did they ever stop and think as to why people are needing a reassurance from them? Nobody asks DMRC about assurances.




Even amidst all the work, I feel that several softer aspects have been forgotten, or at least been put on the back burner. I have listed some of the issues that come to my mind: 

Teaching Delhi manners – With nearly six months to go before the games start in the capital of the country, I don’t see enough effort on the part of the government to inculcate a sense of Mannerisms to dilliwallahs. And I am not even talking about “Atithi Devo Bhav” or being proud about the games being held in India and all. I am talking about people learning basic manners like driving in lanes, not spitting beetle juice, not peeing in the open, charging proper fare for the ride etc. To my mind, six months is not enough time to teach something of this magnitude to so many people especially when the habits have been developed over such a long period. After all, a flyover with people peeing on the footpaths and no space to drive would be same as a pot-hole ridden drive for all it matters. 


Making Delhi safe for women – This topic has been molested so often in the media and yet the government chooses to turn blind eye towards the case. If India as to host any kind of foreign games, awareness has to be generated among the people as to the behaviour expected of them. Is it so difficult for people to look at a firang and not leer at her? I am sure that most of the people are not animals... Hence these urges can be suppressed, cant they? If the people can not get acclimitised to Indian women roaming in the streets, how will they take to the durations of foreigner women on the streets? Or perhaps the foreigner women would be better off not coming to the country at all. 


Making Delhi foreigner friendly – You see a (white?) foreigner in the middle of the street and it more than likely that you will also notice at least a dozen people gawking at them as if they are some alien life forms who have just materialised out of previously unknown dimension, creating a rift in the time-space continuum. These poor entities are then bound to be over charged and gawked upon at every nook and corner. No to mention the judgemental stares and the numerous comments in Hindi that they will have to suffer through. Imagine what impression would they then carry home. And then people grumble after looking at “Slumdog Millionaire”. 


Disaster management – when would the proper disaster management plans be made for the games? How would so many people be managed? What about policing? How would the government ensure that all the people do not fall prey to some bombing by terrorists? What would they do if the people do fall victim to it? What about the hospitalizations and development of other such medical facilities? When would all this be communicated to the country and more importantly what about the dry runs for the same?

Of course at the end of this all, an important questions that I keep on asking myself is that was it really worth all the tax payers money to host these games at this point, especially since India is comparatively lacking in resources for it daily operations. Was it worth spending crores of rupees in these games and the beautification drive of a single city especially when the money could have been put to better use by providing employment opportunities to the millions suffering from hunger each day?

PS: All this rambling because driving that I am close to 50 kilometers a day, I find the overall quality of road, driving etc not very well developed (still!) despite the fact that we are only about six months away from the commonwealth games.