Monks sell their Ferrari, but men can always delay their insurance renewal

As I got into my car to drive down to office, my cellphone beeped – with a message in my Inbox that read “Your motor insurance will expire on June 7, 2017, 11.59.59. Driving your vehicle without a renewed insurance policy is unsafe and unlawful - amounting to a crime as per the Motor Vehicle Accident Law. If you have already paid the premium, please ignore the message".This definitely was not a message that I could have afforded to ignore especially when I’ve learnt that my vehicle insurance stopped being in force, a few hours before - that day. I ignited the car engine with an inevitable but an obvious soreness of delinquency. 

On riotous roads of C V Raman Nagar that morning, I was clinically gentle and vastly precautious - like an orderly L board driver, throttling the vehicle speed mostly through mental pressure, without flogging the accelerator.

Lapsed vehicle policy toned me down so much so that suddenly I was very protective about others’ vehicles and their lives. With third party coverage gone, I was reminded by a fact that a single dent caused by me on people’s car and limb can decimate my bank deposits.

I was making a way to every speeding vehicle regardless of the direction that they were moving to or coming from.

I was generally used to receiving the middle finger gestures from others for my cocky driving actions on road otherwise, that people using a good combination of their hands, palms and fingers symbolizing grace, gratitude and admiration was a welcome change. Strangely, I was the only man in that huge traffic, who seemed highly respected - that morning.

At DRDO junction, the congestion was ridiculously abnormal.

This is an unusual spot where I get to read usual foolishness of mankind from simple lenses of anthropological imagination. I just see a pointless motion of vehicles, competing to go first.

The spirit to compete, hinges on two variables; the one, who drives the vehicle and the vehicle one drives.

Invariably, there is guaranteed problem either with the first one or the second. Simple.

The one who drives always wants to go first and wants to go fast on small roads that are over spilling by people with similar aspirations. Hence this man finds every driving action of other person crazier than him and uglier than others.

Alas, these men under-use mirrors, so much.

For these men – vehicles, pedestrians, zebra lines, humps… nothing matters, literally.

They just want to go. 

Vallish - my friend who got a supernatural skill of spotting these reckless rogues, cautions me not to come on their way. One evening when Vallish and I were driving together, a driver behind me was honking, loud. “Rajesh …. let him go; looks like his wife has called him to come home and told that sex would happen at 10.00 PM – with or without him’, said Vallish.

Whenever you are maintaining an order on a blocked road and suddenly one warrior breaks it and starts moving as though the road is supposed to be left vacant only for him, whenever someone honks behind you to make a way while you are waiting at the signal and whenever someone is excessively and unnecessarily speeding his vehicle by endangering others on the road, I just remember Vallish and save an adultery that Bangalore may witness.

***

If you have time and patience on roads, you get to spot some very interesting people, patterns and phenomena, here.  

Let us begin with foolhardy motor bikers who rule the Bangalore roads.

A few riding these bikes act as though they are highly medicated by behavioral altering drugs.

Some others imagine they ride an angry rattle snake. It is funny to see them shaking their bums by forcing their soft testicles against hard petrol tanks, depleting their sperm counts. Once they stop their vehicles and go into their workplaces or homes, they must often be going to private rooms to see if their balls are not turned into hummus.

And then you have a city transportation buses; they just need a passage to zoom in their vehicle. Once they get in, rest all is assumed to be alright. The rear body of their buses kissing others’ vehicles is just an affectionate way to say “f*** you.”

And then ‘the world famous, in India’ auto rickshaws.

No matter how horrible is the traffic throughout the city and no matter which part of Bangalore you are at, if the auto driver has accepted to give you ride to the bus station or railway station, he will definitely drop you to the destination ahead of time, dead or alive.

If there is ever a competition between politicians and rickshaws to demonstrate the ability to bend and break a rule, then the auto guys will win over anybody, hands down.

Auto rickshaws were created, when god found it difficult to go on Indian roads.

They believe that they are smaller than micro-organisms and faster than jet planes.

No, hang on ….. they are actually rockets; it is just that Auto rickshaws move horizontally and have no propellants and Auto rickshaws also have brakes that are grossly underused. Astronaut training and human spaceflight programs were secretly designed by the principles of Auto rickshaws’ velocity. I sometimes suspect that Hyperloop may face legal threat on Auto rickshaw ‘IP’ infringement.

One last thing about Auto rickshaws; their actions are conversely proportional to epic quotes, written on the back of the Auto rickshaws. One guy who appeared from nowhere (that is how they occur on roads, by the way) and was about to hit my right door, had a quote on the back of his Auto rickshaw which said “you safety is our concern.” 

It was highly confusing; nobody knew whom this statement was meant for, including the old man sitting in it, who looked apologetic towards me for the action hero’s stunt.

I finally looked at some heavy vehicles.

While diesel tractors carrying mud and trucks ferrying city trash would give a Jacuzzi sprinkle to our vehicles, HLVs and JCB earth movers constantly converted every waiting vehicles into touch me not plants.

***

In a snail paced traffic I perhaps was the slowest snail, that day.

I suddenly heard a sound of a small thud. Around 50 meters away from me, one car hit another. Windshield had a crack, left door was smashed. The fight began on an innocent mistake that Bangalore otherwise is very tolerant about. As rising tide will lift all boats in an ocean, one incident made sure that the traffic which already was worst hit, is now stalled.

Now I had more time to observe; I shifted my observations from vehicles to people.

I spotted the most respectable and tolerant set of people first; the pedestrians.

With smoky breeze caressing their bodies and cranky noise crushing their ears, their only respite perhaps was to walk fast on the vanishing footpaths of Bangalore, mocking at the trapped vehicles in the figurative messy amusement park rides that all the drivers were perennially into.

The second respectable man on that day was a middle aged traffic cop who was amused with multiple challenges he was dealing with- all at once. His hands – that were designed to do one function at a time were magically universal; on the touchscreen of his mobile phone, on his mysteriously coiled mustaches, on his groin, on his slipping pair of trousers – all at once.

Well, he was also regulating the traffic, effectively.

The third guy was funny. It was a cab driver – who came out of his window, pulled out a half-filled green pet bottle from inside – drank a bit, poured most in his hands, splattered against his face, gurgled with creepy noise, sprinkled it out, weakly.

Before he pulled himself back into the car, he looked around stoutly - as though he was one soldier who killed 10 terrorists, infiltrating into Indian Territory.

Most of us who saw this man in this action, saw each other- swiftly.

There was one common relief on everybody’s face that he did not have a bucket of water.

And then a very pretty woman riding her stylish moped, almost sneaked next to me reminding me the brio of a charming lady who led the crowning glory ads in the 80s. A perfectly curved body - almost complimenting curvaceous bike that she was riding was magnetizing both men and women around her. She looked at me (accidently) as though it was the closing scene of La La Land and I was Sebastin playing a band and she is Mia pausing to give me one warm look. You know, some people have a rare sword swiping specialty in their looks; she had it. If you are fan of Ghazals, you would realize that Ghazals often uphold three things; melancholy of life, mirages of men and magnificence of a woman. She was a live Ghazal!

I switched off my cacophonic FM channel and switched on to the USB. Then Mehdi Hassan sang “yeh meri umr mohbbat ke liye thodi hai (this life is too less to be in love with..).”

Once the road opened up for her motor bike to move, she vroomed ahead - leaving me to linger into a light hearted sin.

Her vacated space was timidly occupied by a Nano car carrying a Giga couple.

Inside the car, I saw a fat man in his early thirties - wearing an awkward floral tie that was too short, competing with his pot belly. He, every now and then would look into his mobile phone and giggle - as though he was under a severe influence of a laughing gas. He continued reacting differently every 3 seconds, reminding me of a dog that witlessly rubs its back, lazes on the ground to lessen its itch.

The lady (I assumed, it was his wife) sitting next, chomping some food, also pulled out her mobile phone, switched on the selfie mode. She spruced up her face looking into it, applied lipstick and began clicking selfies by making faces that only can be made by people who by mistake inhale highly allergic gas.

This woman who had no dressing sense was wearing an awkward T shirt that surreptitiously covered two squeezed oranges, positioned exactly on top of an inflated pumpkin.

The couple, by all means were a byproduct of etiquette massacre that are mostly spotted in Bangalore shopping malls.

‘Lucky you’ – I said in mind looking at both, wondering about the quantity of lies that they should be telling each other about their beauty and body - everyday, just to keep the marriage intact.

***

Even as I was freelancing people, I realized that I was turning out to be mean, wicked and highly opinionated. This’ what democracy does to us; it unreservedly gives us a weird entitlement to brand others with vicious opinions and contentious views. No wonder, why the name of new born baby of a celebrity and the games that politicians play around it - become national headlines, in my country.

In guilt, I looked into the side mirror which displayed my convex image and insultingly said that ‘the objects are closer than they appear’ – underlining the abundant absurdity that was hiding, within me.

The mirror hinted to me that there is a differentiated way of looking at others.

The note reminded me to tap into my own dysfunctional life before I assess others, precariously.

People honk because they are happy.

People eat because there is a greater joy in feeling hungry and eating food.

No matter how envious I am about an undeserving couple, they are not going to change their relation just because I have an opinion about them.

The cab driver who did a miracle with half bottle of water perhaps must be working very hard and he may not have had time to even go home and feel refreshed. The Auto rickshaw drivers mostly speed up so that they attend more and more passengers and make small money; they also have daughters whom they need to buy school bags for or pay for their sons’ bus passes.

Who knows?

But I knew one thing for sure; every person that I was branding was generally nice, warm and happy. They merely were creative characters in a play called halted road.

Tyranny of rapidly surfacing remorse, put me into an aching discomfort.

The traffic was a merely a symbolic time trap – making me appreciate an undeniable relation that existed between devastatingly stunning contradictions I knitted about myself in comparison with others.

The self-serving compulsions that made me ascribe a blueprint to an ideal way of dealing with life, actually seemed to be my neurotic disorder.

I was sick!

I think, I was reduced to live a life of a denizen in a detained pool of water. My zest was simply trapped under a heavy armor of turtle, confining me to a flimsy life defined by materialistic norms.

I recovered and made a pledge, never to be mean to people.

The sensation was uncommon; I was in the present and very happy.

Choosing to go slow and be patient on the road was a great incentive to discover life’s simple truths.

It reconnected me to rapidly diminishing values of life.

Technically, driving an uninsured car taught me one simple thing that life is too fast and I must slow down.

As Wordsworth in his “world is too much with us” sonnet highlighted the peril of materialistic progression as sordid boon, the forced halt reminded me that that I have been unnecessarily speeding up, when I am supposed to slow down.

New found nirvana, revealed that monks sell their Ferrari, but men can always delay their insurance renewal to understand good life.