Politely ask others on the roads if their affairs are in order, ( the Tamil way of asking this is Enna Vootla sollitu vanthutiyaa ... ) and then decide that it's all not worth it .
If you are wondering why all these words are in the title of this blog post, it's not very hard to get to the bottom of why I'm doing this and my locus can very well be guessed. After all this the world is at peace again, the sun rises from the East again and there is a nice cool breeze blowing in the city of Pune in India.
Given that I've deliberately not started driving in the old blighty just to preserve these essential driving skills in India, where if you go into a roundabout, the first person in wins it's been fun. Driving around on the first day of the trip, there were still a few rules left in me . Anyone on a zebra crossing wins, I stop my car and let them pass . However the stares I received in return were as though I was a person from a different planet or a member of a species totally different than the one that inhabits the country we like to call India, Bharat, Hindustan, Jambudvipa ...
Driving down the expressway and then driving in heavy traffic in downtown during peak hours has a cathartic effect. You can put your window down, curse to your hearts content at idiots who decide to overtake you from the left and go to the right or cut right across your path from right to left. There is no place for gentleness, the odd driver of the scooter who decides to sit in the fast lane and plod along at 40kmph on a polite enquiry for overtaking asks you if you are flying a plane to go past him and you respond with either the finger or politely inform him of the risks of a gentle push that is enough to send him and his family flying under other forms of traffic which vary from smoke belching trucks to the odd auto-rickshaw.
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