Road-o-mania(c)

Travelling on our roads is like watching an adventure movie which guarantees loads of sound, spectacle and experience. It can be sometimes hilarious, mostly exciting and always unforgettable. This is what I observe everyday -

• Every person assumes that he/she is immortal before stepping out of the house.
• Our traffic is structured like our society's caste system. You have to give way to cows, goats, buffalo, dogs, heavy trucks, buses, light trucks, official cars, jeeps, private cars, motorcycles, scooters, autos, cycle-rickshaws, bicycles carrying goods, bicycles carrying passengers and finally the pedestrians. Well, did I miss out on something ?? I hope not!!!
• All vehicles with wheels seem to drive with the following mantra - to slow down is a punishable offence, to break is to fail and to stop is defeat.
• Short honking is used to clear the animals, rickshaws and pedestrians and long blasts of horn is mostly for the oncoming truck or the bus telling them that "I am going too fast to stop, so you better slow down or else you will get both of us killed" and in frantic situations the horn is followed by the flash of the headlights.
• Sometimes some people honk just once to say "Hey I recognize that fellow by the road side" or "Man..I'm bored...haven't blown my horn in a while".
• Heavy vehicles sounding horn implies that they have no intention of stopping even if they could and this sometimes is emphasized by the flash of headlights.
• Traffic entering a road from left has priority. So has the traffic from the right and also the middle.
• All the traffic irrespective of the direction of travel occupies the center of the road.
• All maneuvers like the use of horn and the hand signals or the direction indicators are used only at the last moment.
• Overtaking is mandatory. All vehicles overtake every other moving vehicle irrespective of the fact that it has just overtaken you. It is mostly done when there is a swarm of oncoming traffic or at blind bends or at junctions.
• And finally "Nirvana" may be achieved from head-on collision.