Honking!!!!!! Oh, this really cracked me up. As soon as I exited the airport, what I heard was the blare of a horn (The first one I had heard in 6 months or more). I knew I was in Delhi. I smiled to myself. Pretty soon though, honking was all I heard (And I landed at 3 AM). Goddamn!!! Why so much honking in the city? I guess some do it to warn people they are being overtaken, some do it to protest being overtaken, some do it because they didn't like how somebody overtook them, some do it to break monotony (Of 2 seconds of horn-silence), some do it because they see a pedestrian about to cross the road and they don't want him/her to, and lets not forget the HRs & UPs who do it to 'show off' (?????) (Oh, I can't find a category to put this under, so here's an honorable mention. Some HR & UP bikers fold their rear-view mirrors inwards to form a sort of protective sun-shield for the instrument cluster (I'd REALLY like to believe that is the reason they're doing it and NOT to make a style statement). Some remove their rear-view mirrors altogether to reduce aerodynamic drag (Again, I'm trying to think optimistically). They then get hit and run over by a bus from behind cuz they had NO WAY to determine whether there was a vehicle behind them, get their illiterate brains crushed and spilled all over the road
Courtesy: Drivers in Delhi are NOT courteous. Find an inch of space, even a guy who is in no hurry whatsoever will try and fit his small one in. Hehe. At an intersection without a traffic light, say driver 'B' sees driver 'A' coming and driver 'A' should go through before 'B' gets there if everything goes well, I swear, it seems as if 'B' speeds up just to get there in time to stop 'A' and block traffic for everyone else! Un-f*cking-believeable! I might've pushed it a little bit with exaggerating, but trust me, traffic is THAT ridiculous
Right of Way: This is the order in which items on the road have right of way, in decreasing order of importance:
- Buses and trucks
- Expensive & VIP cars
- Cars with HR & UP plates
- Call-centre cabs
- Cars with chauffeurs
- Cars without chauffers
- Motorcycles
- Cycles
- Dogs
- Human beings
I don't need to say more. (Anybody with an argument to this is most welcome to kiss my a**)
Cars on the right have little or no right of way. Overtaking is best done from the left (And we in India drive on the left). The high speed lane is everywhere (Unfortunately, so is the low speed lane).
Human Beings: India's super intelligent pedestrians. They think they have right of way. Actually, I'm pretty sure they're certain they have right of way. They don't. Cars and other motorized vehicles do. This is one thing I'm not protesting. If pedestrians choose to cross a busy road wherever they wished to, maybe its a good idea vehicles didn't stop for them. We've got enough red lights. We (Motorists) don't come to a screeching halt every 200 meters for no reason! Can't these jaywalkers cross over at signals???
Helmets and Seatbelts: You must all know there are rules regarding wearing seat belts and helmets in the capital city. You gotta wear em! I'm really glad 100% of the motoring public does adhere to these rules. The animals operating bikes and cars and buses don't though. Whatever. Who cares? They're animals! Why should I give a shit if an ass or a monkey gets his brains spilled across the road?? And frankly, even if I did want to, I could not do much to increase their (HR & UP, and I'm not talking about just the plates here) IQ levels. It's funny that they think riding around fast without helmets makes them look cool! Girls'll dig 'em. Bullshit. What girl in her right mind would get impressed by an ass or monkey riding a bike (Part 1) recklessly around town (Part 2) without a protective hat (Part 3)? Oh, just a little mention regarding seat belts and helmets, a fact actually. Hold an interview with Delhi motorists, if 99% of them say they do these things to escape from getting a ticket and not because they give a shit about personal safety, I'm superman
Markings on the street: I was shocked when I saw markings on Delhi roads after coming back this time. I never really noticed em before! I feel like an ass myself now. There are marks separating lanes, marks indicating lane usage (Left turning traffic, right turning traffic). WOW! Oh NOW I KNOW! I never noticed em because of all the traffic on top of them. 3 lanes on a typical Delhi road on a typical Delhi day are occupied by atleast 6 lanes of traffic. Funniest part is, 75% of these 6 lanes don't exactly know where they're supposed to be. The guy who wants to turn right is on the extreme left and so on. If you got within 5 feet of another vehicle in a more civilized country, people would start freaking out! Here, it's an everyday affair. Maybe that is why when they have a traffic slowdown, things still manage to move at atleast 20-40 kmph. Maybe that is why people there don't ever end up in a traffic jam for 2 hrs stuck between half a km stretch of road.
Delhi Cops: With you, for you, always (For a small to medium to large compensation, and NOT from the government): Cops in Delhi are simply fantastic. They eat well, they make good money (under the table), they..... are fantastically USELESS! Traffic cops: A whole entire Police division dedicated to controlling vehicular traffic, something a lot of countries haven't employed. It should work pretty well, but it doesn't. I got stuck in a traffic jam recently when it rained in Delhi. Most of the traffic lights were taken out (I'm no scientist, but there must be a very simple solution to this). I managed to cover exactly 500 meters in 2 hours. Seriously, where the F*** were these dumbf**k cops?? If they'd gotten there a little earlier, traffic wouldn't have been racing with each other to get past an intersection and in the process, creating a glorious traffic jam. Cops get to such a situation just in time to look at the situation and say, "F***, I can't do anything with this, we'll just have to let it work out for itself!" Once the traffic does start moving, you can see them waving their arms and feet around as if they had anything to do with it, sometimes even making gestures that suggest we are responsible for not having had the traffic under control.
Animals, auto-rickshaws and cycle-rickshaws: If a lot of livelihoods didn't depend on it, I would sell my entire property to advocate having them thrown out. Indian heritage or not, they slow traffic down, they are a pain in the ass, they don't know any of the rules, they swerve as if they are driving Ferraris and will never get rear ended. Delhi is not the place for these vehicles. I'm sorry.
Why did I write this?? No reason. I was bored. Does that mean any of this is far from the truth? Maybe, maybe not. You decide!
