I recall watching a hilarious take on how traffic in India moves. It was a very good demonstration of all the wrong things we practice on the road in our country.

How we swerve to overtake, without worrying about the person behind or in front of us. How in the quest of reaching some place early, we break rules. How much we honk, as if it’s our birthright. And how we have a general disregard toward pedestrians.

After coming back to India, while driving around for the last two plus months, I have often wondered about this question – why are our worst behaviors coming out when on road?

Not that the US doesn’t have its share of such behavior. I did see a few cases when I was there. But when I compare those to India, we win handsomely. By a margin so big that I cannot even calculate!

I have been driving a car for more than twenty years. But we’ve never had the kind of insensitivity that we have now.

Earlier, there was a certain civility in the way we used to drive. The traffic was way lesser, and even though the roads weren’t as wide as now, it used to flow through pretty seamlessly. Pedestrians could coexist on one side of the road. Bikes weren’t approaching you to stomp over.

Now, everyone is in a mad rush, playing Roadrash all the time (my favorite game once :)). Not just the autos and taxis!

I have seen people not yielding to pedestrians even though there is not much room to move forward. I have seen bikers zoom past zigzagging at high speeds like they were playing a video game. I have heard countless and useless horns, without a need for them mostly. And I am sure I have been abused multiple times, by someone in a different vehicle…

But the worst part is not that. It is as if we don’t care anymore. We are just trying to get by, wading through the labyrinth, unhinged by what we leave in our wake.

All this makes me wonder if this behavior is just happening on the road or is it playing out in our minds. Are we so frustrated at life on the road that we take it out on the machine and on the fellow travelers? Or are we genuinely so pressed for time always that even a second’s delay isn’t affordable?

In our quest for survival and winning at all costs, we are taking it to an extreme everywhere? Or is it the lack of discipline and enforcement that’s letting us become the worst version of ourselves?

Whatever it is, I feel just like so many things around us, there is something that we must do about it. That I must do about it. It may not amount to much but at least it allows me to have a good feeling about my behavior.

The hack to conform to my own principles? Switch on some music, focus on staying in the lane, and drive with the same respect that I would accord to others in the US. One good thing that I carried with me…