What it feels like to drive a 4-wheeler in Bangalore

In New Delhi, I used to ride a 2-wheeler for about a decade before I began driving a car. Now I have been driving a car for over 30 years. Ever since I relocated to Bangalore, for the last 15 years or so, I only drive a car. Given the way the traffic had been behaving, I lost the confidence to ride a 2-wheeler.

However, now driving a car in Bangalore is getting tougher by the day. Apart from the increasing density of traffic and dug up roads, the principal cause is the driving habits of 2-wheeler riders.

There was always an unwritten norm of maintaining a certain respectable distance from other moving vehicles. I have been experiencing a gradual dilution of this norm. It has now come to a point that many a time, 2-wheeler riders ride so close to my car that my car and the 2-wheeler morph into a third vehicle. When they ride so close to the left of my car, I end up hallucinating enough to strike a conversation as if he is a co-passenger inside the car.

Lately, I have had the realization that when I am driving the car, I am driving something like an armored tank in a battlefield capable of mowing down anything that comes in the way. Knowing this, I am extremely careful and try maintaining a respectable distance from the next vehicle but, alas, it lasts only for a few seconds. A bunch of 2-wheelers fill that empty space quickly.

In all of this the traffic cops have become very spiritual. They have acquired that sense of detachment for which yogis have, for aeons, gone to the Himalayas. The only difference is that while yogis smear themselves with holy ash, the cops are smeared with holy cash.

Anyway, I have a habit of spotting a silver lining in the dark clouds.

When it comes to driving a car among an ocean of 2-wheelers, driving now appears like a video game where each level brings in a new complexity.

I am defining the levels for you. Clearing a level would mean that the rider and I co-existed on the road for a period of time and none of us came to any harm.

I am happy to share with all of you that only yesterday, I managed to clear Level 10

Here are the levels and their operational definitions:

Level 1: 2-wheeler adult rider without helmet crisscrossing lanes at random
Level 2: Above + riding on the wrong side of the road
Level 3: Both of the above + a child in the front or on the pillion seat
Level 4: All of the above + with a phone stuck on the ear held in place by a folded neck
Level 5: All of the above + occasionally checking the messages on the phone
Level 6: All of the above + typing out a message on the phone
Level 7: All of the above + in the night with headlight on
Level 8: All of the above + headlight off
Level 9: All of the above + rider at breakneck speed
Level 10: All of the above + ridden by a 8 year old and 3 younger pillion riders

However, the good news is that I have found the cause for an entire generation of youngsters in Bangalore driving in this manner.

It is the result of a minor error that has crept into the school text book.

You see, we were taught, ' Where there is a will there is a way!'

Owing to a misprint, this is how it appears in the school text book now: 

'Where there is a wheel, there is a way!'

(An article written by Ramanan KS, husband of Ms. Jyothi Ramanan. The article was posted by Ms. Jyothi Ramanan on another road travel group in social media on 2019-02-24 and copied verbatim from there)