A jungle often evokes images of wilderness and wanderings… of untrodden paths, of laws of the wild — and survival of the fittest.
But today I’ll talk about a different jungle, the one we traverse every day. It is the great Indian traffic jungle! This is a jungle of chaos and cacophony where humans rub shoulders with bullock carts, bikes, cars, autos, buses, and sometimes, even cows, dogs and elephants. The paths are strewn with pot holes, speed breakers, security barriers and even rocks.
Like the ecological food chain decides the right to live, there is a pecking order on the roads too that decides the right of way. It is the road’s power pyramid.
At the top of this pyramid are buses and trucks. Their drivers are the lion kings of the road. The mighty lions hunt in packs because they lack speed. The bulky road lions also move in packs. Because, despite being slow, they try to race each other and end up blocking the entire road span. Don’t get carried away by the “horn please” on their posterior. Because nothing, absolutely nothing will make them give way. A speed breaker can be their undoing. Because the time they take to recover from the breaker is a chance for lesser mortals to get away.
Second on the pyramid are commercial vehicles like the cabs and tempo travellers. They are the cheetahs of the road — similar to lions in their predatory instincts, but more agile and fast. They can suddenly swerve from the left to the right most lane and take a turn cutting just ahead of you before you have had a chance to blink. Just be a little patient. They will be out of sight before that first expletive is out of your mouth.
Then comes the auto rickshaw. Miraculous machine — no doors, no seatbelts, detestable horn, 3 wheels, 6 hp engine, 360 degree manoeuvrability — oh it’s a mean machine. It is like a fox and high up on the food chain because of its cunning rather than capability. The motto of its drivers is stop, don’t look, go. They turn anywhere, anytime. The one going in front of you can even take a U-turn and all of a sudden be face-to-face with you because someone from the opposite side of the road had shouted “hey auto”. Stay away, because these are stress producing machines. They may not do much damage to your car but with their blatant disregard for traffic rules, they’ll slow poison you with stress and high bp. No point in getting into a power struggle with them.
Next on the rung is the personal car. Their drivers are most interesting of all species. Most of them are paying EMIs to drive the car of their dreams. So they try to stay safe from the predators higher up and do not normally prey on the ones lower down in the hierarchy. But they devour their own species. They are cannibals. If another one of their ilk cuts dangerously in front of their vehicle, they transform — from the docile Bruce Banner into the incredible hulk. All the horses in the engine are put to use and the errant is chased until he is paid back in the same coin. Size does matter. The size of the driver’s ego is directly proportional to the size of his car. Some of them put all their gizmos to use while driving. Voice calls, messages, emails — they attend to everything so long as someone doesn’t cut their path.
Then on the taxonomic pyramid comes the 2-wheeler. Outsmarted and overpowered, its riders have reptilian tendencies like snakes. They zigzag their way through the jungle trying to get ahead of everything and everyone. In the process, other than breaking side-view mirrors and denting other species, they often hurt themselves. They finally have their revenge at red lights and in traffic jams. When they squeeze through spaces narrower than a rabbits burrow and get past the entire food chain, they have the last laugh.
The last on the food chain and hanging on despite all adversities, are the poor pedestrians. They are actually like grass — trampled over by all the higher echelons. Without zebra crossings, footpaths or overhead bridges and the chances of oncoming vehicles stopping at a red light as unpredictable as Trump’s next outburst, it is a miracle that this class still exists. Their safety is in the numbers and the only time a vehicle owner notices them is when like a swarm of bees they buzz across at a faded Zebra crossing.
What a jungle, isn’t it! My fellow road cannibals, let’s admit it. We are a long way from perfect infrastructure and good traffic management. But it doesn’t have to be a survival of the fittest on the roads. All we need is coexistence. So even when there is a slow senior citizen or a nervous learner driving ahead of us, let’s just grant it to them. Being courteous rather than competitive will cut out a lot of stress from our traffic safari. Someone tries to cut you off, so what. Maybe he has to rush to an emergency or maybe he lacks traffic sense. Either way, let us be an example than an irritant.
