Highway Star

Nobody's gonna take my car, I'm gonna race it to the ground
Nobody's gonna beat my car, It's gonna break the speed of sound
Ooooh it's a killing machine, It's got everything
Like a driving power big fat tires everything

Deep Purple sang this song thinking they were so special ... they were so wrong !

You come down to any Indian road, and you don't just see one lunatic who thinks he's a highway star, you see a the whole freakin galaxy !!!

Seriously, it's a known fact that Indians have absolutely no traffic sense. Unfortunately I think that's just a mild way of putting it and more so, dismissing it lightly.

But putting the more obvious suicidal and murderous tendencies of the drivers aside ... I have come across a more peculiar observation. It's like this - I'm going down in my car in this narrow lane probably meant for bicycles, and there's a car coming from the opposite side as well. Now I know I can bank my car next to the paan-waala allowing just-enough room for the other guy to pass through just barely. But I can see even the other guy has a place close to him just like that. Now, for more birth-related reasons (namely : I'm Indian), I don't bank next to the paan waala and think, due to some psychopathic reasons, that the other guy would stop. But ofcourse, due to the same birth-related reasons, he doesn't stop as well. So now we end up stuck headlight-to-headlight in ... a glaring competition !!!

Oh yes, that's what I am talking about - The Glare. Almost anybody who's been on Indian roads on any mode knows exactly what I'm talking about. It's the deadening-frozen glare that u get from the person sitting behind the wheel telling you that you're an idiot and you don't have any road-manners and probably were abducted as a kid and also should be whisked away now. It's the glare which says "What the hell are u doing man !". It kinda reminds me of the way the profs in MDI used to look at me after I'd just woken up from my mid-lecture nap.

But this one's especially amazing. That's because I know that the person giving me the glare is probably as inept at understanding traffic rules and is a mass murderer of traffic sense and rules himself. But still ... there's the glare !

I've gotten ga-zillion glares from uncles, drivers, shorties, one-foot-in-the-grave old women and even a 13 year old ! Well I had to peep down onto the driver's seat to get the last glare.

Earlier I used to glare back. You know the drill, be a man on the road, don't let your guard down and all that crap. But now I just smile. It's loads of fun, you should try it. Next time you get a glare from the man with the bushy mustache because u turned a little too fast into him, give him a nice big smile. Even show your teeth if you have to. That just turns that glare into a gaze - confounded, extremely.

Nobody's gonna take my car...
I'm a highway star, I'm a highway star.

Cursed to be Born

It was one of those days when you are just chillin ...leading ur mundane life the 'coolest' way you think .. and then something just happens and brings the world in your face ... smashing the comfortable cocoon that you build around yourself.

I was just meeting up with Indranil and TAG at PVR saket ... sipping onto some iced eskimo outside Cafe Coffee Day and having a couple of doobers. We were discussing people, old times and the usual stuff.

Four little boys came running towards us. 2 of them looked around 6-8 years old while the other 2 looked around 13-14 ... harmless. They all wore the ragged, torn, dirty clothes that the slum children wear. They were all dark skinned .. probably from the dirt that sticks on them and the sun they have to face due to the lack of a roof on their heads for much of their days. The two younger ones were visibly running away from the elder ones.

One of the bigger ones punched a younger one in the back and he sort of stumbled towards where we were sitting. The other younger one followed suite. The young ones grabbed the legs of mine and TAG's chair and started complaining generally to everybody that the elder ones were beating them up. The elders tried to drag the kids away from us but they held on to our chairs tightly.

Till that point we were pretending not to notice the ruckus. We were pretending to have one of those 'coffee shop' discussions (u know the kinds ... 'so how's he/she' .. 'that one was a bitch' ... 'that movie was awesome' ... highly shallow in comparison but necessary and entertaining). But the scene unfolding next to us was getting a little too loud and a bit violent to be ignored and to be allowed to be in the background. The little ones were, every once in a while, looking at everyone sitting there and tellin us that they were getting beaten up with the hope that someone would come and help them.

At that point, since this was happening right next to our table ... and chairs !! .. we decided to tell 'all of them' to buzz of and not bother us. I looked at one of the elders and told him to beat it and stop bugging them and us. He just looked at me .. with no fear in his eyes .. or rather a slight arrogance, said that the little kids were not coming with them.

We thought that this would subside and the went back to our 'conversations'. At that time one of the elder kids took out a match, lit it and pressed the lit stick on one of the little kids' bare legs. Hearing the cry of pain I snapped back at the elder kid to stop this immediately and buzz off. He again looked at me with those eyes and told me that the little kids owed 'em money and they were not returning it. We again got back to our 'conversation'.

Then I heard the thing that gave me goosebumps. The elder kid came close to the kid who was holding on to the leg of my chair, and said to him politely that if they came now then 'he' would just take the money or else later on 'he' would take the money and cut off one of their hands or legs. At that moment the scene next to me no longer remained the background radio static and my ears were riveted towards them.

The elder kid repeated that threat again.

He tried to pull 'em again but to no avail. That's when I told ID that these kids were probably a part of those begging rackets and it was so unfortunate for the young kids. At which he reminded me that it was equally unfortunate for the elder ones as well as they had probably lived through similar ordeals. Then we discussed our 'helplessness' in this regard.

We tried telling the elder kids again to take a walk while they kept hovering around and coming in once in a while.

Finally, after a while, the elder kid managed to pull one of the kids free from his grip on the chair and dragged his some 2-3 feet before picking him, ruffing him up and then dragging him towards the back. The elder kid then came to the little one sitting next to my chair and told him politely that they'd already taken his brother and that if he didn't follow suite then they would cut off his brothers arms and later his as well.

The other little kid wiped his tears, stood up .. and walked with him.

We were silent for a while. I suppose the same things went on in our heads ... sadness, disghust, anger, helplessness, frustration at the helplessness ...

All my way back I kept picturing those little kids howling while they got their hands or fingers or something chopped off ... and then back on the road again the next day showing their disability and begging. Out of which they'd have to pay the leaders who run this racket.

I hate this feeling .. this feeling of helplessness. It is so obvious that a war or a movement (or whatever you wanna call it) has to be raged against these gangs at a social, legal and even a physical level to stop this menace.
I hate lamenting about these things to other people ... acknowledging that these things happen and it's such a shame and we're so helpless .. I hate it. I think it's quite looser-ly.

It's like the way I feel about Bombay or Delhi or our country and it's people as a whole. We like to call ourselves resilient. We take pride in the fact that we have our families blown away by terrorists one day and then we still manage to go to work the next day like it was nothing more than a cockroach dying in our bathrooms. Well that's just stupid .. there's nothing to be proud in that !!! The same millions of people travel by the same trains that were bombed the last day simply because they have no other option !!! Most of those people simply cannot afford to not go to work the next day and they just don't have any other mode of transportation but those stupid trains ! It is not resilience or bravery or an ability to pick ourselves up after we fall and other fabled things like that ... It is just helplessness, cowardice, indifference and a hope that it won't happen to us ... it's just disguised that way in which the media also plays a major part. It's a sad state of affairs.

Now ofcourse I am not saying that those people should mourn the next day or not go to work or pick up arms against the perpetrators ... I am just saying that let's not be hypocritical about it ... and let's maybe .. slowly if it may .. do something about it !

The same goes for things like the begging racket that I came to see a side of today.

If all that we .. the 'educated' people can do about it is discuss it intellectually and criticize it .. then I guess a lot of those 21 odd years of our lives just went down the drain .. and then got their limbs chopped off.

I feel like such a loser.

Oh yeah ! and by the way .. the amount that the little kids owed the elder ones was 50 Rupees. I don't even get a fucking Iced Eskimo in that much !

The Big Fat Indian Wedding

Celebrity weddings have always made big news. I have never understood people's obsession with the setups, the invitees, the dresses, the rings, which champagne was used, how many coloured flowers were there, what size were the biceps of the bodyguards and how many jobless mindless reporters were present to make it look like a fish market.

I mean face it people, you all may dream about it, but exactly 0.0000000034% of you will actually get to be a part of these weddings ... in any role whatsoever. And that's if you count the reporters as well. The rest of you will have those typical weddings where you try to be different by choosing that unique brownish red coloured cards and the taj mahal styling tents (WoW!). Yet exactly 67.8% of the people i know are just so stuck up on that Abhishek Bachchan - Aishwarya Rai wedding like it was theirs !!! Even my dad, who hardly watches anything substantial on television, was glued to the screen when the low down on the marriage was coming.

I can somewhat understand people's obsession with this couple ... after all u have a woman who probably appears in the wet dreams of most of the male population of this sex starved country and then this dude who's the son of the greatest actor who ever lived on the Indian silver screen (that's all the credit that i'm willing to give him so far... and oh well he acts O.K. so far). But what I just can't understand, is a half an hour special on the marriage ... on prime time television on the top Hindi news .. and yeah I'd like to repeat here ... NEWS channel !!!

The special covered the following events in very shallow detail :
- The groom's dad went to some famous temple to ask god for blessings for the new couple ... and he gave a wedding card .. yes I'd like to bold it again ... wedding card ... to God.
Makes you really wonder ... is god stupid ? I mean if he is the God then he must know that the wedding's going on and wouldn't really be needed to be invited for the wedding ! Quite clearly it's a very juvenile stunt for the cameras .. but hey ! who said common sense was in surplus nowadays !
- Who all the family is inviting and who all are the unluckiest people on the planet to have not been invited for the wedding. I mean Jeeez ! Was the girl who had cancer and then got raped at a hospital in Mumbai really so unimportant and real that they had to put this shit in the slot instead of her ? And It's obvious that the crippling electricity shortages, the farmers' suicides and the whole north east and eastern part of the country which is on the verge of a civil war is really not that consequential as compared to the fact that Shahrukh Khan is probably (mind it .. it's not confirmed .. it's just speculation) not invited for the wedding.
- Some 500 cops will be stationed around the venue.
Now that just infuriates me. I just think ... if these 500 cops could be actually patrolling a city ... and if they would actually be doing their job instead of siphoning money some way or the other to feed their already gargantuan bellies, then the crime in the city would be so much lesser. But then .. I'm just dreaming.

The worst part of the whole ordeal was the fact that this shit was coming on prime time national news. Damn ! I hope they kill some politician soon to get this crap off the air !

What's even worse .. i mean what takes the cake .. is that most people in the country of 1.2 billion people ... have nothing better to think about / talk about / watch / etc.

Fascinating !

I'm off to watch some movie now.

Drive me Crazy

With the latest traffic laws coming into enforcement one really has to wonder what the next set are going to be like. Already talking on the handsfree and smoking while driving are prohibited. This really makes me question how capable or incapable do the law makers actually consider the drivers to be !

I mean the logic behind the handsfree is that there is too much distraction because of it. So let's see ... hmm... i wanna call Santa Claus ... so I'll pick up my phone ... look up on the road .. quickly unlock it and bring up the names starting with 'S' (since most people can do these things without actually looking at the phone) ... look down and confirm if it's on 'S' .. then get back to looking on the road ... then scroll down on the phone and in my memory ... then glimpse down on the phone to confirm if I'm pointing at the right number, then click 'dial' while looking up and then talk away and make my wishes and tell him what a nice boy i've been and that i've been keeping the toilet seat up ... all while having my eyes on the road !!!
All in all ... that musta taken me about 2-3 seconds max of focussing on the phone and not on the road and the traffic. But then ofcourse, one could give a very valid argument that the 2-3 seconds distraction could actually mean the difference between life and death. But then there are so many other things that can cause distractions for that crucial time !!! --- For starters, passengers should be banned from indulging in any kind of conversations with the driver .. even if it includes giving directions as such acoustic vibrations and distortions could mess with the driver's head and cause a pile up as long as the wall of china. Babies should be a strict no no as the driver may be forced to tend to the baby or the child while in the middle of the mission critical process called driving. Besides the cute toddlers may actually tempt the driver to look at them and smile thus causing a catastrophe. Basically, passengers of any kind should just be banned as anything they do (for example talk on the phone to a third person or sing) may cause a disturbance and thus a distraction for the driver.
Next, advertisements in the form of big boards, etc. should be banned as the pictures and the messages actually tempt the driver to look away from the road and focus on them thus again causing the 2-3 seconds fatal distraction.
Being a guy, I would also like to suggest to the courts to prohibit good looking women from walking on the sidewalks or anywhere in the proximities of 'driving zones' as they definitely take focus away from the road and life in general and also risk being picked up by the rapist gangs that patrol the roads more often than the cops.
... and that was just from the handsfree bit !!!

Smoking and driving is another story. I would just like to rest my argument with the fact that music systems should be banned as they have little buttons which require the driver (at times) to leave one hand from the steering wheel (watch out !) and press 'em. Also, all those guys who drive vehicles should have their balls cut off as they have a tendency to start itching at the wrong times and the wrong places and may, again, distract the driver's hands to indulge in some 'unhealthy activities'.

What I'm basically trying to drive at, is the fact that the courts should not insult the intelligence of the population as a whole and should consider them human beings with normally developed brains which are capable of handling minimal tasks simultaneously.

Secondly, they authorities should actually take a driving test for people rather than handing them out like chocolates for Rs. 500 a piece thus ensuring that the person would have enough cognitive abilities to manage chewing with the mouth closed at the same time.

The rest should be trusted upon free will and self regulation which generally rides on substantial rationality with a little acceptable exceptions without which the world would be a boring place and the car insurance companies would go bankrupt.