Honk, mutter to neighbour, curse, shout

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.

Tranquility on the Expressway.

Driving back from Bombay on the express way at night is quite a tranquil experience. For night birds like me its easiest to finish dinner in Bombay and then drive all the way back to Pune under 3 hours instead of waking up early in the morning and driving back. Accompanied by music , your own merry thoughts about life and the flashing lights on the expressway make for a mesmerizing drive.Throw into this heady mixture, races between 2 juggernauts in the first gear on the ghats at a top speed of 25 kmph, the weaving indicas and qualises trying to make their way past these juggernauts, the sneering corollas and the sedans trying to push their way past your humble WagonR , the hulks of Volvo's which refuse to let you overtake and threaten to push you out like a fly and you have a delectable drive. As an added bonus you can add Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd, Coldplay and a variety of other artists crooning and make you feel at the top of the world. Once in a while you floor the accelerator, watch out for the response and then utterly enjoy in the thrill of what is essentially a union of man's thoughts and the machine's actions.

Thanks to the number of trips I have done to Bombay in the past few months especially to Powai and Mulund I've now been able to mark out the fastest route to the Eastern Expressway from Pune. Also one knows the turns and the curves pretty well that handling the WagonR is quite a pleasure these days. However as they say, all good things must end soon and I should enjoy the last few months of driving on this expressway.

Merry Christmas and the new year arrives.

So Ho ho ho and all that, 2007 has been an eventful year more so than 2006 and 2008 promises to be even more interesting. Looking forward to the new year by celebrating it with Bobs and gang at Not Just Jazz by the bay . In addition there is a quick 2 day trip to Goa on the cards - lets see - depending on how much work one finishes today I'll be able to steal some time to visit Goa finally. Having never visited Goa and hearing everyone go on about it and how beautiful it is to visit especially during new year's - I've gone ahead and agreed to join V and gang on a road trip to Goa. ! Now thats gonna be interesting given that there's going to be a huge gang of us going over to Goa and all of us being a really diverse lot . Fun times ahead till the new year.

Bombay trips and driving around.

Driving down the expressway between Pune and Bombay is among my favourite pastimes . On yet another trip this time to talk to a few folks about compilers and to meet my sister I decided to try the road via Turbhe to the Airoli bridge. However it looks as though the contagion of digging up tar roads and replacing them with concrete roads before the monsoons seems to have also hit our neighbours in the valley. Pune has a long tradition of doing that . This resulted in a driving time of nearly 2:45 min when I could have completed the drive to Mulund in 2:30 min or even lesser. The expressway from Dehu Road to Kalamboli was done in 50 minutes flat with a top speed of 130ks an hour.( However I have received other threats during my trip which pale in comparison to the actual threat in driving down at such speeds).


Driving in Bombay is a pleasure in comparison to Pune iff you restrict yourself to driving on the express highways and the eastern side, large 8-10 lane highways where you can zip at 80-90 kph, smooth roads, quite a number of flyovers etc etc etc.