Anarchy

Driving in Delhi is a daunting task, what with cows and pedestrians and rickshaws and buses and dogs all jostling for space. Motorcycles buss around like irritating mosquitoes, pedestrians can jump out of nowhere but somehow, we find organised chaos and life goes on. What gets my goat, is not the pedestrians or the motorcyclists going all over the place, but the apathy with which most people drive their cars.

At least 5 times a day, I see some idiot driving in the rightmost lane at 30 km/h, his face buried in his phone while there’s an empty road in front of him which the rest of us could use to get where we have to at a reasonable speed. No amount of honking or flashing lights can dissuade our friends here who are intent on finding out what their friends ate for lunch or passing off borrowed opinions on major political events as their own.

Now I really don't care if you wanna stare into your phone while driving and crash into something and explode into a great ball of fire, just don't do it in an empty right lane meant for me to drive at the speed limit and get where I have to without tearing my hair out.

You see buses stopping in the middle of the road to pick up passengers, as do auto rickshaws and the newly learned Ola-Uber drivers who decide to turn anywhere their GPS’s tell them to at the last minute. You see people chatting merrily while driving at 24 km/h in the right lane of the highway, people parking their cars in the middle of the road while someone jumps out to go to the shop, people driving on the wrong side of the road instead of taking a 200 metre extra route and taking a u-turn, people parking their cars right in front of the school gate to pick up their kids lest the crummy monsters have to walk a few hundred yards to get to the car.

What’s the point of civilisation and education and all the other supposed benefits of “achche din” if we can’t be even slightly empathetic towards others?

Eat a three course meal while you drive, post about it on Facebook and pick your nose at the same time, I really don't care, just don't do it in the right lane where it inconveniences me and others like me who just want to get on with it and get where they're going.

Don't park your car in the middle of the road while your friend goes out to buy cigarettes and cause eight cars to wait for three minutes before they move. Let your kids walk a little from the school to your car, it’ll probably do their Lays lined arteries some good.

Now you might say truckers ignorantly drive in the right lane at 40 km/h and why have I not said anything about them. I’m sorry, but he isn't bothered about small things like whether I’m getting late to go get into my warm bed and curl up with my dog. He's worried about getting his already overloaded truck as far as he can to meet unrealistic deadlines while avoiding corrupt cops so you and I can eat broccoli all year round. So, as annoying as it is to tail a truck on a highway at 40 km/h, we can let it go but the civilised world that your private school education has afforded you, does not deserve this kind of behaviour.

But I know none of this will make any difference. What might make a difference is starting to bump these guys along so that you're both travelling at a speed that’s socially acceptable. So I’ve decided that my next car is going to be a pickup truck made from the same material as Vin Diesel’s car when Fast and the Furious 35 comes out and I assure you it’ll be able to withstand any of America’s nukes falling on it.

And with that, I’m just gonna ram the next person I see driving below the speed limit in the right lane getting in my way. If we have to descend into anarchy, might as well do it in style.