In many ways, 2014 was a turning point in my life. I started at the Tata Sustainability Group which for me is the best non-job in the world. It came with an office in the Charles Correa creation – Jeevan Bharati building on the outer circle of CP – with a room with a view overlooking the central park and, by selective razing of one white non-descript building, a view of the Jama Masjid; easily the best view in Delhi! And the ability to take the metro to work! So driving a car, which is the one pleasure-turned-nightmare in my life, is completely an optional extra which I do only on weekends. Do I miss it? Of course I do. And here’s what I miss about it.
The cacophony of the horn is the first thing I miss. I remember when the Maruti 800 first hit the Indian roads, it took a while for the Indian driver to locate the horn! It consisted of two innocuous buttons tucked away on the spoke of the steering wheel. Clearly, the Japanese didn’t think that it deserved the pride of place at the centre of the steering wheel as it was a never-used function in Japan and in all the countries that Suzuki sold cars in. And how wrong they were! To an Indian motorist, the horn is the centre of his driving experience!! It serves as the ultimate symbol of power to the male driver and for some reason, males in Delhi feel a strong need to assert their masculinity continuously. It serves as a substitute for a siren for those poor powerless hoi polloi who cannot fix a siren (with the laal batti) in their cars and who want to always tell the world, “give way, I am coming”! And it helps your knees because you don’t have to press the brake (sometimes spelt “break” but that’s another story) if there is a car, man or beast in front of you as the Indian compact is that whoever presses the horn first has right to run over anything. So, life is much quieter as in the 45 minutes it takes me door to door to reach office, I am exposed to this cacophony for about 10.
The second thing that I miss is the process of finding my destination. Before Google Maps came along and spoiled all the fun, driving to a new place was an adventure in itself. Signage in Delhi is bad (though infinitely superior to many other India cities) and so the only way to get around was to stop and ask (I actually think signage in India is bad with a purpose – to promote human interactions – but that is yet another story)! Now males don’t like to ask directions – attributable no doubt to the cavemen days when there was neither signage nor anyone to ask – but the interesting corollary is that if a male is asked directions, he doesn’t like to admit ignorance (refer Delhi male instincts above). So, the fun starts! So you zigzag your way across the colony till a goodish time later, you reach your destination and are able to update your host on some of the attractions, neighbours and must-go places in that colony! Google Maps help but how I miss the adventure!
Of course, getting to your hosts’ place is only half the battle. The other half is to find a parking spot, and that is the third thing I miss. Parking in Delhi colonies is hugely complicated because every inch of public land is privatised! I went to my dentist’s clinic in the up-market Vasant Vihar and was parking my car in front of the boundary wall of Modern School, but was told by a retired general of the Indian Army that the parking spot was his! Now, he has this large house which should have enough parking but even if he has more cars than he needs, there is the place just outside his boundary wall which, by Delhi convention, belongs to the owner. But now, the Delhi convention extends to all spots across the road in front of the house as “belonging” to the house-owner and he is willing to fight for it! Not wanting to confront a general and a sardar at that, I tucked my tail between my legs and moved, but this is so quintessentially (I always wanted to use that word, I must confess) Delhi! A homeless guy who doesn’t even claim squatter’s rights on a pavement is subject to harassment and arrest by the cops but not the genteel! This parking battle I sorely miss!!
The fourth thing I miss is the orderly discipline of Delhi traffic. There are several handbooks on good driving brought out by the Automobile Association, Delhi Police etc. These are must-reads for the Delhi driver as they provide invaluable tips on what not to do. For example, the good book will tell you that when the traffic light turns amber, you have to slow down. Wrong! You do that at the peril of being rammed by the car behind you because you depriving him of the joy of beating the light. The book will tell you to stop behind the Stop Line. You do that and you miss out the fun of watching the poor hapless pedestrians – like the proverbial chicken – zigzag their way to get to the other side! The book also tells you what those strange white dashes are on the road but were afraid to ask and hence why you should ignore any form of lanes, despite the stern proclamations that “lane driving is sane driving”. How I miss all of that!!
And finally, the gaalis! Delhi’s finest are the masters of the verbal abuse and I attribute this special skill to the fact that the Punjabi, the Urdu and the Hindi have their sangam in Delhi. Road rage is getting less and less sophisticated with fisticuffs gaining currency but for the longest time, thrust and parry was fully verbal. Several parts of the anatomy were seamlessly and inextricably interlinked with relatives near and distant with a healthy dose of self-righteousness that only the Dilliwala can muster. This was Rap ka baap – no reason and certainly no rhyme but a lot of imagination!!
So, weekends are when I get my share driving, horning and trying hard to not stand in the same lane as the car in front of me. Fun, fun, fun!