You Can’t Drive Without This in India
What is it that a German takes 1 year to produce but an Indian can produce in 1 day? Hint: It has nothing to do with population or any of its related processes.
It is the amount of honking people do while driving on the roads…
No wonder, the director of Audi-India once said, “For India, the horn is a category in itself. They are tested with two full weeks of continuous honking to make sure they can do the job.”
Sounds incredible doesn’t it! We have all experienced that horn power is as important as horse power on Indian roads. People might drive without brake, without changing gears (because they are anyways moving at snail’s pace in all that traffic). But they can’t drive without the horn. In fact, you are expected to be using the horn as much as (if not more), than the brake and the accelerator. No wonder, the posterior of commercial vehicles proudly invite you to “Blow Horn” or proclaim “Horn Ok Please”.
On the road, the horn is our national language. Honking cuts across classes — all sizes and models use it with equal ferocity. It is like an introduction before the speech. Like a trumpet to announce “I have arrived” doesn’t matter whether in a Audi or in an Auto Rickshaw. But “I have arrived”. Some people are so addicted that they honk even while driving on empty roads in the dead of the night…I wonder why…maybe they honk at the speed breakers expecting the bump to rise, pack up and make way for the royal rider.
What would life be without the horn, I wonder. One day my colleague showed up at work with a terrible sore throat. Overnight his voice had changed from a rich baritone to that of a croaking frog. After much coaxing, he shared his ordeal. On his drive back home the previous evening, his car horn had stopped working. Without a horn, how was he to announce his presence at red lights, or to holler at others when the light turned green or simply show that he didn’t like the vehicle ahead of him. Without the horn, he felt mute. So he substituted his throat for his dead horn and every time he had the urge to honk, he yelled. 2 hours of yelling to himself in his car had barbequed his vocal chords. And the result was there to see.
The horn is the handgun of the traffic jungle. Normally a jungle evokes images of wilderness and wanderings… of untrodden paths, of survival of the fittest — and silence. But the traffic is a jungle of chaos and cacophony where humans mix with bullock carts, cars, buses, and sometimes, even cows, dogs, horses and elephants. The path is there somewhere, waiting to be discovered among potholes, barriers, stones and even garbage. And all the drivers seem to believe that only incessant honking will show them the path.
Some days I imagine a scene like in the “War of the worlds” where one fine morning all vehicles stopped working. Kaboom! We wake up one morning and every vehicle in the city has lost it’s horn. That would be something — to drive in silence.
