(Written Dec. 23)
India is somewhat infamous for its crowded streets, chaotic traffic patterns and hell-bent, survivalist drivers. So I expected some thrill, some danger, some chaos.
I had no idea.
In traffic here things are perfect chaos. I think that is the right term. It is perfect, in a sense. The mad harmony of constant merging and passing and honking and cutting each other off. The drunken ballet of near-death experiences.
The roads are the city’s arteries and veins and they are truly alive with a bristling variety of wheeled (and unwheeled) things. Pedestrians cut off bicyclists and pedaled rickshaws while enormous dump trucks barrel past cabs and the miniature three wheeled “autos” (auto-rickshaw). The bicycles seem to all be custom jobs, the biodiversity so high that not one of them is the same in this thriving Darwinian transportation jungle. Some are long with racks on the back, while others lead with an enormous flat bed for carrying goods; many have four or five propane tanks slung across the back wheel, pedaling through this dance of death like some kind of two wheeled kamikaze. Their potential combustibility does not seem to deter aggression against them - clearly their evolutionary advantage is only slight in this survival-of-the-fittest cage-match. I’ve noticed the “pedicab” model does seem standard here, though, with two forward-facing seats (or rather room for two or three or seven on a forward-facing bench) with a second bench in the back facing whatever is tailgating the pedicab (a ulcer-causing point of view, I’d imagine). There is a single bar across the back bench, I suppose to limit the inconvenience of people sliding off the back bench and into someone’s windshield.
No one seems very in control of this insanity, either. Traffic lights are installed in some major intersections, but often are not working, ignored entirely by drivers, or superseded by brown-uniformed police officers who direct traffic flow. Blow through red lights, force your way in, regardless if they are letting you in (or not, as if often the case). These traffic lights and formal, striped lanes are ghosts: neither believed in nor in any way able to affect the actual functioning of the real world. They are the hollow, meek “thou shalt”s of a feeble state trying to tame a restless beast.
The road is a space. It is not a series of parallel, equally sized lanes that can contain one vehicle at the time. The road is a space. Or really, the road is space. It is a kind of cosmic vastness without boundary or border, where all vectors of travel are simultaneously possible. The rule of thumb: if you can fit, you will fit. There is no void, no openness in this space, however. It is packed, dense. Heavy particles, these massive dump-truck protons, lumber slowly through it, while speedier and more restless electron bicycles, motorcycles and “autos” buzz and spin and whirl around everyone all the time, seeking some gap in the denseness to rush ahead. The bicycles and motorcycles pass the autos, who pass the cars, who pass the trucks, who pass the buses. This is the liquid hierarchy of traffic flow in India.
There is a kind of miraculous joy to this traffic, and even a kind of efficiency. The miraculous joy in that (so far) we have not been in or seen any traffic accidents of any kind. I am sure I’m drifting into the wildly anecdotal here, and I am sure if I googled India traffic statistics, I’d be appalled (thank you lack of internet connection). But no one seems to get hit or hurt. Most traffic backups are caused by seven vehicles trying to fit down a space for three or by a mechanical failure. Speed does temper the lunacy and probably helps prevent the fatal accidents we have in the US. In this turgid flow of people and machines, you can’t get much about twenty or thirty miles an hour. Once, out of town and free of congestion, I think we may have hit 40. Maybe not.
Americans’ sense of space is vast. The plains stretch on endlessly in their flat monoculture until the mountains rise up and then crash into the ocean. Our history is one of settlement and expansion and the seemingly limitless availability of yet further westward land. We drive with much the same feeling of space. We need fifteen to thirty feet in front of us and behind us, or you’re tailgating or being tailgated. At least five to six feet is required on the left and right sides of the car or someone is cutting you off. In India, all of those dimensions have been shrunk vastly. If you can fit, you will fit. It is as if everyone drives with a two-inch force field around all sides of their vehicle, be it bicycle or cab or truck or bus: no one gets past those two inches, but also anyone can get right up against those two inches.
The perverse kind of efficiency comes from every single square inch of the space being filled by someone on/in something. If you had a country that contained 20% of the world’s population and that needed to get places occasionally, you’d probably want your roads as full as possible as well.
The other thing is the honking. The horn here is not an emergencies-only signal that you’re stopping quickly or that someone did something really stupid. It’s a way to say hello. “Hi, I’m over here behind you!” “Hi, I’m still over here behind you!” “Oh, look now, I’m on your right – Hello!” “I’m passing you now to go some place faster – see you later!” Each sentence is a honk. Multiply by one billion.
Hinduism is an extremely open and pluralistic religion; it accepts and welcomes most perspectives and the wisdom of other religious traditions. Mohammed and Jesus are honored as prophets and sages. If I lived here and had to drive (or walk or bike for that matter), I’d be praying to whoever in the heavens was working the late-night hotline shift as well.
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