The Road is Mine. And Mine Alone!

By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam

I drove a reasonably sensible car. I followed lane discipline, stopped at red lights and always used indicators at turns. This made me a minority community on Mysuru roads. Not a protected one, unfortunately.

Every morning, I navigated the seven kilometres from home to office. It took between thirty minutes and a small emotional crisis, depending on the day. I had learned to budget for both.

The red light was where philosophical differences first became visible. The signal turned red and I stopped. The driver behind me did not understand why I had done this. He honked. Once, then again with feeling. A third time with existential urgency, as though the light turning green depended on the volume and frequency of his horn.

The driver to my left inched forward. Then more forward. Then he was at the centre of the intersection, which was technically illegal, but nobody was keeping score. When the signal finally turned green, vehicles from the crossing direction had also decided to move simultaneously, because their red light was apparently a suggestion rather than an instruction. What followed was a brief democratic negotiation conducted entirely through honk and gesture.

I came to admire this negotiation. It was remarkable that a country which could not agree on very much had found such perfect common ground here. The common ground being that traffic rules applied to everyone except the person currently driving.

The two-wheeler culture deserved its own chapter. Three people on a scooter was not unusual. Four was aspirational. The child at the very front stood and looked out at the world with the expression of someone conducting a field study. None of them wore helmets because helmets were for people who expected accidents and this driver did not expect one. He was an optimist. A fast one, weaving between a bus and an autorickshaw at a speed that would have impressed a professional stunt rider.

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The wrong-way driver was a separate and committed category. One-way streets presented a philosophical challenge to a certain kind of motorist. He acknowledged that the road was one way. He simply disagreed with the direction it had chosen. So, he drove against traffic, slowly, with great confidence, as though the forty vehicles coming toward him were the ones who were confused. He flashed his headlights to inform us of our error. Nobody moved. He did not move either. The situation resolved itself eventually through a process I can only describe as collective exasperation.

Then there was the honking. I was honked at while waiting at a signal, while parking legally, while pausing to let a pedestrian cross and once, memorably, while stationary in a traffic jam that stretched as far as the eye could see. The honk in that last case achieved nothing except expressing solidarity with the other horns already engaged in the same exercise. There was something almost musical about a good traffic jam. A symphony of impatience played by an orchestra that did not sound musical.

The cow deserved a mention. She stood in the middle of the road with the composure of someone who had read the Constitution and found her rights clearly listed. She did not move for honks. She did not move for buses. She turned her head occasionally to observe the chaos she had created and returned to her original thoughts, which appeared to be about nothing in particular. She was the most serene creature on the Mysuru road. She was the only one following the spirit of right of way.