I drive the highways often. It allows my
body and mind to find spaces that I have lost in the city. It allows me to
explore the fourth and the fifth gear in my car.
A bit more than a decade ago, the
highways were outside my comfort zone. It is not as if I didn’t drive from City
A to Town B then, but then that was only when I really needed to.
Those were the days when the highways
belonged to the taxi, bus and truck drivers. In short, the terrain outside the
city, then, belonged to the professional drivers – the guys who sat at an angle
behind the wheel in Ambassador cars and drove with one foot on the accelerator
and one finger on the horn. Those were the days when the highway dhabas were patronised by professional
drivers, and they had not become travel destinations reviewed in Zomato and
Burrp. Rocky and Mayur had not made their television presence.
The Golden Quadrilateral, along with the
arteries connecting the north and south, east and west, changed it all. In
September 2004 my Maruti 800 quivered with excitement as I raced her along the
as yet incomplete arm of the Quadrilateral between Vijayawada and Chennai.
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| These new highways allow us to find space that we have lost in our cities |
The neatly laid out four-lane roads have
opened a new getaway opportunity for many like me. No booking train tickets in
advance, or searching for the budget seat in a budget airline. No anxious wait
facing the tatkal webpage. Just pack
up and drive.
The divider separating the traffic flow
gives wannabe rally drivers like me adequate protection. We don’t need to dodge
the accelerating car heading straight for us before squeezing itself back into
its lane. We don’t need to worry about the truck lights blinding us at night.
However, there is something that I worry
about all the time driving on these four-lane roads. I check my rear-view
mirror far too often. I feel more like a historian rather than a futurologist
driving the highways nowadays. I am especially alert when going past a
slow-moving vehicle in the adjacent lane. I check the mirror once, twice, to see
if there is a smart driver trying to weave through the shrinking space between
my car and the other vehicle.
On the highway I am reminded of the
amusing title that Rama Bijapurkar gave to her book describing the choices of
the Indian consumer – We are like that
only. The smart driver does not want to slow down for those few seconds to
allow me to pass. It is a dangerous game of get-ahead-at-any-cost. The cost, in
this case, can be the lives of all of us in the three vehicles.
In today’s world we love not to wait.
Waiting is for misfits, failures and laggards. We are impatient and successful.
We want progress – here and now.
Bijapurkar’s book title may need some change if we are to describe our social behaviour in the recent years. It would be more appropriate to describe it by saying We have become like that only.
In 1987, I had moved to the metropolitan
New Delhi from the sleepy, laid-back town (then) of Thrissur. The size, scale
and intensity of the city hit me on arrival. The peppy Maruti 800 had started
scampering on the Indian roads a few years ago and the agile squirrels were
slowly replacing the staid Ambassadors and Premier Padminis. Every Kapoor,
Thomas and Kidwai who could own one had one.
Having gone to Delhi from the quieter
Thrissur, there was something that surprised me those days. And this was at the
red light of the traffic signals. After the traffic had stopped and backed-up
on the broad roads, there would invariably be at least one M-800 that would
squeeze its way and go and stop ahead of everybody else.
What provoked this almost obsessive
one-upmanship behaviour?, I used to wonder. Living the city and its social,
cultural and economic environment for the next five years gave me an
understanding to this question.
Those were the years when Delhi was
breaking the boundaries of economic growth. It was building and consolidating
on the kick-start of the development activities initiated for the 1982 Asian
Games. Enterprise was oozing from every street.
Those who were driving this growth were
men and women whose grandparents had been stripped of their property and
dignity and had to move to Delhi as refugees. These families worked hard to
survive and grow out of poverty. And in the process it was perfectly acceptable
to get that one step ahead of the others. What if that business deal or
contract that you have worked hard for is only for one person? You certainly
would want to be ahead of everybody else. Yours had to be the lone M-800 ahead
of the others at the traffic signal.
From metropolitan Delhi I moved to
metropolitan Madras (it was not Chennai yet) in 1992. Change again. There were
less M-800s in Chennai, which was still in the Ambassador, Bajaj Chetak and TVS
50 age. There was no upstart trying to get ahead of the others at red lights.
In fact, the Chennai drivers wanted to be safer than safe and slowed down even
as the light turned amber.
The highways I drive today are located
south of Chennai. But the behaviour that I see on the roads is similar to that
I had seen in Delhi decades ago. At tollgates all too often there would be a
car who would come from the side and squeeze into the lane right in the front.
Delhi has spread to all parts of the
country. In the past 25 years, the game of one-upmanship has been promoted.
This is a result of the very premise on which economic liberalisation has been
built on – promoting consumerism. The way to a person’s wallet, or credit card,
has been by reaching to him as an individual. Exclusivity sells.
This premise has its benefits. When
everybody in the country takes care of himself/herself then the country takes
care of itself, is the argument in its favour. Growth and mobility brings in energy
into people’s lives. Growth also brings a belief in being in control of one’s
lives, adding impatience when something small goes away from the script. It
also brings a sense of insecurity – will one be able to continue on a
trajectory of growth, always.
So when the smart driver sees my car
closing the space between the slow moving vehicle and me, he wants to squeeze
through. I could slow him down. Or, I could reach before him at the tollgate.
My rear-view mirror is my protection. I do not want to be a collateral damage in his impatience.
My rear-view mirror is my protection. I do not want to be a collateral damage in his impatience.
