I’ve been to India recently, after a looooong gap. Lot of things have changed back home, both good and bad. My favorite among the good things are the brand new highways now connecting the four corners of the country (also called “Golden Quadrilateral”). If you happen to live close to those highways, or use them often for travel, you would really appreciate how much they’ve made life easier for folks. I remember very well, back when I was growing up in India, it used to take at least an hour and half to travel from my hometown to the nearest district headquarters. The same distance now takes less than 45 minutes, and you’d barely get tired! Same thing with travel to a lot of places that people normally go to for work/business/pleasure. It’s just so convenient these days — you can’t help but wonder why it took the government so long to have these roads!!
Anyways, as good as these roads are, I noticed that most of the vehicles still drive right in the middle of the road, rather than in the assigned lane. I used to wonder why they do that…I mean, you have these nice 2-lane roads, with clear markings between the lanes…and they still drive on both lanes! Why?? Well, I didn’t have to wait too long to know why.
We were driving on the highway one day. There was this big truck ahead of us, driving, as usual, down the middle line. And my car driver couldn’t squeeze into the right lane to pass that truck. So he tried all the usual tricks — honking, tailgating, yelling at the truck driver using colorful expletives…everything. But nothing worked. So my driver tried to pass the truck on the left side, which’s not really the smartest thing to do. As we almost pulled ahead, we saw a couple of cows, less than 50 feet away, “resting” in the left lane. The fact that I am sitting before my computer typing this now obviously means my car’s breaks were working extremely well that day!
Even though the roads are nice, there are still issues like this — animals, and in some cases, even people, getting knocked over by the vehicles on these roads. Nobody wanted to be involved in such freak accidents, and so they tend to drive away from the left lane as far as possible. I hope they do something about it…like constructing tall walls separating highways and the houses by the roadside…or something more practical.
