Driving (b/non-b #2)

I spend quite a lot of time being driven around Lucknow – home to one campus and back in the morning, home to another campus and back in the afternoon, occasional evening jaunts… Most of the time, I find it extremely amusing.  I sit in the front, partly for the extra legroom, but mostly so that I get a good view.  Occasionally, I find it frustrating, when drivers of everything manage to lock up the entire road system, when a touch of awareness would make all the difference.  Even more occasionally, I am alarmed, when I feel we are about to inflict serious damage on some other road user – the more vulnerable, the worse.  I am never afraid.

This is because I have complete faith on my driver, Himanshu (and for that matter his predecessor Arvind, and the others who have occasionally filled in for them both.  I think he is, by Indian standards, a very good driver.  Though I have struggled a little to work out what makes a good driver here, as on the face of it he is exactly the same as every other driver we encounter.  Which is the exact opposite of what would make a good driver in the UK, or most other developed countries.

He drives very fast, when the opportunity arises, speeding towards stationary traffic and braking at the last minute.  He breaks most of the rules of the road – jumping traffic lights, going the wrong way around roundabouts, overtaking across solid white lines, with other cars speeding towards us.  He gives no consideration to other road users.  And he uses his horn almost constantly, something I have always found infuriating.  And these are the very things which make him an excellent driver here, frequently getting me through intense traffic ahead of others, and to work, or home, in good time.

All of this implies a chaotic road system, which it most certainly is.  But it has nothing to do with infrastructure.  If you had a bird’s eye view of the road system here, with no traffic, it would look extremely familiar: traffic lights, roundabouts, dual carriageways, entrance and exit ramps… all of the things that have been devised to make road traffic safe and efficient.  And then imagine ignoring all of the rules pertaining to such structures, including driving on one side of the road (the left, nominally.)  Overtaking using safe procedures.  Showing courtesy and consideration to other road users.  And that is the normal way of life here, observed (or flouted, depending on your point of view) by all road users: lorries, buses, cars, motorbikes, autorickshaws, bicycles, rickshaws, pedestrians… and cows, who can be excused their lack of awareness of the rules.

It is a mad system, very non-binary (though it does seem to work, at least until the volume of traffic brings everything to a halt.)  And yet, how can this be, in what is quite clearly a most binary country, with its slavish adherence to rules, strict observance of hierarchies, a clear distinction between what is right and what is wrong.  It is a clear paradox.  But this is to ignore the third axis, which fixes it in the 3D world that is real, everyday life – context.

Like everyone (everything?), Indians are both binary and  non-binary; which one dominates in any particular situation depends upon the circumstances.  Most people are generally non-binary, doing whatever seems best, not following particular rule.   But throughout their history, Indians have been subject to extreme binary influences – their religions full of rules, of castes, of having their leaders telling them what to do  The British occupation merely accentuated this, in spades.  With independence, one might have expected the abandonment of such rules, an outbreak of freedom, even anarchy.  But the British were merely replaced by the offices of state which replaced it: a strong government, the police, the army.

This dichotomy still exists.  Three days ago, after heavy rains, the roads were comparatively empty.  But apparently at random, there were soldiers and police at every roundabout, with a ridiculous level of control.  Himanshu, along with  everyone else it seems, accepted this without question.  The young soldier, soaked from the teeming rain, waved us to a stop, even indicated we should switch off the engine.  And there we sat, watching a huge and absolutely empty roundabout in front of us, not moving.  For about ten minutes.  Until he received the signal to allow us to move, and we started the engine, and drove off.

Whereas today, for the first time I can remember, there were traffic jams along the lines of English ones, with long stationary lines of traffic, with every road user doing exactly what  he could to squeeze into any available gap.  We use the phrase bumper to bumper back home, but that is as nothing to describe the situation we faced today, with barely room to put a cigarette paper between the vehicles.  To be fair, the army and police were doing their best to get things moving, but were helpless to do anything in the face of such intransigence.

Two rainy days, two approaches. Binary and non-binary, neither able to cope with that third axis: life.