By Tushar Aggarwal:
What to expect when driving on Indian roads:
1. Paranoid female drivers honking every 2 minutes.
2. Frustrated men who’re always eager to fight.
3. 2-hour traffic jams because it rained for 5 minutes and the roads melted.
4. Everyone is going to flicker their headlights excessively because they have to catch a flight to Jerkland.
5. Rickshawallas and Autowalas like to believe that they can ride just as fast as a car can, hence, they do not let you overtake them.
6. If you own a SUV, you automatically are a superior race. You can drive however you want and get away with it.
7. Bratty Boys blasting Amplifier at 1 pm… In a Santro. With tinted glasses.
8. 2-hour traffic jams because a herd of cows was crossing the road.
9. Small kids randomly coming and cleaning your car and then getting majorly pissed when you refuse to give them money.
10. Irrespective of whether you did a good thing or a bad thing, people will stare at you. They just will.
11. When in a parking lot, people will park their cars blocking yours* and you will have to deal with it.
12. When in a market, uncles will stop their cars in the middle of the road to chitchat with shopkeepers.
13. You may want halt your car suddenly in the middle of a busy road because you saw some object fying and red fluid coming out of it, but don’t worry, chances are that it’s just an empty McDonalds bag with squished ketchup.
14. If you see a car with a yellow number plate, BEWARE! It’s going to want to overtake you at a red light. (Translate: Taxi drivers are the worst drivers)
15. There’s going to be some sort of construction work going on on every second road. And of course, once broken, the roads are never rebuilt.
16. The rear windshield of cars will read every Indian name there is… like Rinku, Pinku, Sapna, Sheetal, Bitoo, Pappu** etc. You also see the “Gujjar/Blah Blah Boy” every now and then.
17. Bus Drivers and Trucks will enter residential colonies and drive around like a boss. Car drivers may have to reverse their cars back for several meters to make way for heavy duty vehicles, which is totally rational.
18. Bikers are going to honk worse than female drivers and would want to overtake your car by hook or by crook. It’s an ego thing and you do not want them to lose face, so you let the rats.. err.. Bikers take you over.
19. (Note: You won’t experience this while driving on an Indian road.) Travelling in autos will familiarize you with Bollywood better than any Tabloid or TV Channel will. Interiors of autos have them all- Aishwarya, Mamta (Kulkarni), Katrina, Raveena (Tandon), Govinda, Salman..
*In a parking lot, cars are parked vertically. Now some son of a gun will come park his car horizontally, blocking your car, so that you have to wait till he comes back. But that’s totally justified.
**You see names of people in that ghostly text, even in 2011. Not like that font went from being cool to kEwl 10 years back.
Image courtesy:Â http://trak.in/tags/business/2011/05/16/india-road-driving-conditions/