If we all just slowed down

As a member of the "NRI-return" species, I have the usual habit of pointing at every thing that is not right around me and asking stupid questions like "why is the footpath broken?", "isn't this a one-way street?", "does the Pani-puri cart guy have FSSAI certification?".  

I think mostly I'm frustrated, irritated. Many times I'm bemused. Occasionally I embrace it. Sometimes I get all righteous and I want to go on a crusade. I regularly call up local government officials. Mostly I get ignored or told it will be done and nothing happens. But overall I think I have been quick to assimilate and just enjoy life without asking too many questions. It's a certain willful blindness and acceptance. 

This is mostly while I walk or take public transport - which I do a lot. When I take a vehicle - a cab or an autorickshaw - is when my frustration peaks. My frustration at being stuck in traffic that is constantly stop and start is not because I'm in a hurry or anxious to get somewhere. It is because the typical traffic jam in Bengaluru is not caused by sheer magnitude of vehicles or a lack of good roads. 

I know this is going to infuriate people as they point out the crater-field that passes for a street close to their residences. From my observation, traffic jams are created by the driving style and haphazard parking. The traffic piles up in gargantuan proportions because of the number of vehicles, but the cause is one of the above. 

Either on an already narrow, crowded, cramped street, someone thinks "I'll just leave my vehicle here for a few minutes and it won't cause any bother" (or more likely, "I'm just going to park here for a few hours because I don't even marginally consider the impact of my actions on others and I just want convenience and who is going to catch me anyway??")

Or at a turning, a number of people want to outflank the traffic and end up creating a bottle-neck out of nothing. Since I am observant of these things, I can off the top of my head name at least 20 junctions close to my residence where simple lane barricades (I'm not delusional enough to hope for lane discipline coming from habit and behaviour, there has to be something physical to enforce it) would eliminate the constant pile-ups. 

The worst configuration is of the tiny street that joins the main road from the left just a few metres from the traffic light. And a constant flow of vehicles who emerge from that street and want to turn right immediately. They choke off the lanes and block the flow of traffic in those few seconds when the light turns green. Those kind of traffic-lights are just forever blocked. A simple barricade that says "hey, if you want to turn right, go back and join the right lane. Or just spend a minute and half more to make a U-turn slightly ahead" would solve the problem. It's the same with wrong side driving - it's the desire to save a few 10s of seconds. 

Even without this small road leading in from the left, any right turn from a T-junction is a nightmare. Because when the lights are red for the right turn, all the vehicles that want to turn right pile on to the left lane and try to cut ahead of the traffic. 

My little service that I render to Bengaluru is that I always give a lecture to every cab and auto driver about two things - the ineffectiveness of honking towards decreasing your drive time and the immorality of sneaking up the lane to cut the traffic. I know my words are a complete waste of breath, but I hope if it comes from enough quarters, the feedback might just be taken up. 

I believe there is a deeper point to be made here. As a driver of a vehicle, on one occasion I may sneak up on the traffic and buy myself a minute. I could annoy one person and cut them off to gain 30 seconds. But overall, when everyone thinks this way, when every single person is in a tearing hurry, everyone is a loser. For every time that I get to gain a second, there are 20 instances where I'm the one at the back, unable to move ahead because vehicles that want to turn right are blocking the left lane meant for traffic going straight. 

For every time that I narrowly squeeze into the gap and force another vehicle making a turn to suddenly stop, there are 10 occasions where I am actually behind the vehicle forced to brake. Even as I believe I'm gaming the system and making small gains over everyone else, I'm actually fostering a system where I lose along with everyone else. 

If everyone just waited patiently. If everyone stuck to their lanes, went straight without driving waywardly, the overall traffic would actually flow so much better, that everyone would be able to reach their destinations faster, even if momentarily it feels like you're needlessly waiting all the way at the back of a lane. 

Everyone being in a hurry actually causes everyone to be late. 

If we all just slowed down, we could all go faster. 

And I would end this piece by saying - I ride a scooter regularly in Bengaluru and occasionally drive cars as well. I honk maybe once a week. And I just go slowly in a straight line. To quote a friend of mine, "you drive like an Unc." I get honked at like crazy, but I'm happy to be the crazy NRI return who hasn't re-learnt the ways of my country. We need to adopt this at a large scale to make our cities more livable. Enough has been said about rapid urbanisation and pathetic streets. Even on those streets, some basic empathy for a fellow driver and human being would be half of the solution. 

The Empty Key-chain

I have a habit of constantly patting my pant pockets when I'm outside home. I run a quick check of whether my mobile phone (right pocket), wallet (left pocket) and apartment keys (also left pocket) are still present or they have been pick-pocketed. And on occasions that I am without one of these, usually because I would have kept my wallet in my backpack, I have a 0.2 second long burst of panic before I recall where it is. 

This happened to me recently, but not with the wallet. I felt around my pocket as usual and I could feel the absence of my keys. I stopped dead and panicked for my usual 0.2 seconds! Being without the key was a scary thought. I usually have a spare key in my office but I would have to endure the commute to the office and right under the fury of the sun at the hottest point of the day. And this spare key is only for the door to my apartment, not the apartment building itself. 

To enter the building I needed a different key for which I was never given a spare. I don't know why the landlord did it this way, but I had just received one key for the building door and I had never asked for another. The door is usually open, but if someone has per chance locked it, I would have to call my neighbour, hope that she is at home and request her to unlock this door for me.  Even if I could enter the building and my apartment eventually, I would have to then pay money to get a spare made, maybe file some report to the police for the official records, etc. 

I had thought about this scenario several times before to psych myself into never forgetting my keys, especially since my apartment has an "auto-locking" system where the moment you close the door from the outside, you need a key to get back in. Maybe this is a better protection against people forgetting to lock the door, but I think forgetting the keys inside is a much bigger danger. 

0.2 seconds later, the panic faded. The keys were indeed missing and I had only an empty key-chain in my pocket. Neither did I have the keys on my person anywhere else - not in my backpack, not my shirt pocket. I simply had no keys because it was no longer my apartment. I was just returning from the key handover and making my way over to my friend's house. He had kindly agreed to let me stay at his place to bridge the days between the day of my apartment handover and the day of my departing flight. 

It was a departure from the country, from a number of people with whom I have developed deep friendships and personal relationships. A flight from one country to another, from one life to another. And in that moment, it somehow sunk in. I would never hold those keys again. I would never walk in that apartment again. It was somehow all so sudden. A month ago it was a fully stocked apartment, a home, an abode in which I had spent upwards of three and a half years. In a town whose many alleys I had walked in quiet exploration to clear my mind. Whose many woods and paths I had run across to get in my weekly kilometres for half marathon training.  

Suddenly, now it was an empty building that I was barred from entering. Clean walls replaced the cobwebs that had made their homes on my walls. The layers of dust on various untouched surfaces were gone when I had done my final cleaning. There was no bed. I ordered a pizza home earlier that day but I had nowhere to sit down and eat it. My chairs and tables which had hosted a dozen people and more were simply absent. 

This was home. Soon it would be an alien small town, far away from me, largely irrelevant to my life. It would never appear in the news. The view from my window where I watched the icy winter turn to the fresh green leaves of spring, then to the fierce, almost overgrown green of summer, to the orangish hues of autumn, back to the bare, dull brown of winter would be gone. That favourite corner where I spent reading so many books and mindlessly scrolling so much internet nonsense will be someone else's corner. 

I come back with an empty key-ring on an empty key-chain. I fly back to a place I once called home, more than a decade ago. A place which never ceased being home, but somehow also stopped being a home. 

Nearly four years of my life are packed neatly and tightly in a few suitcases and bags. To start over again. It is daunting and exciting.