Anyway, here they are:
1. We were sitting in line at the gas station (or "petrol bunk" for some of you). The car in front was just finishing. Fuel cap on, fuel door closed, car in gear, and VROOM, here comes a car directly off the street, full speed, making a beeline for the pump. Having waited patiently for the car in front to finish, I did not take too kindly to this. Luckily, despite the astonishing aggressiveness on display, I was close enough to the car that had just finished that the jerk still didn't get to the pump before me. Instead, they looped around to the next one, where they had to wait (horrors!) a full three minutes for that car to finish. I wasn't surprised by the dirty looks I got from the male driver, but I was a bit taken aback by the evil eye his wife gave. I'm not sure I've seen that cruel a look from under a hijab before.
3. This is actually the last one, but I'm saving one for last. As we drove down the highway (at all of 40 mph, since it was an Indian car on an Indian highway after all), we passed a group of fools on motorbikes, the most foolish of whom was standing on the seat. At about 30 mph. On the highway. No helmet. He made it down safely that time, but one would have a hard time summoning too many tears for a Darwin Award candidate like that guy. Of course, his stupidity was no more egregious than the woman we had just seen in incident number...
2. On the same highway, only moments below Prakash Knievel pulled his little stunt, we were cruising along with nary a car in sight, at the Xylo's maximum comfortable speed of about 40 mph. I saw a couple hundred yards ahead of us in the lane just to our right a single person walking in the road (the highway, in case I didn't mention it) towards our lane, clearly not looking at the oncoming traffic. As drivers in this country are wont to do, I honked my horn. At this point, any rational person's thought process would lead them down a path ending with, "whoa, that onrushing car is a whole heck of a lot bigger than I am, and it's going darn fast. If it hit me, I'd probably get splattered into about a billion (100 crore) pieces all over this here road. I'd better just stand where I am so that car can just go right by me and I can be on my merry way." Note the inclusion of the word "rational". Instead, this apparently being an irrational person, she decided to RUN TOWARDS MY LANE, directly into the path of my speeding vehicle. Fortunately for her, us, and the RSO (who would have been the unhappy recipient of the first phone call), I was able to slam on my brakes and swerve just enough to miss her. I'm quite happy to have left a set of skid marks on the road rather than a bloody mess.
I'll save the analysis of this nerve-racking half hour for some other time, most likely not to take place in written form.
Your almost-homicidal correspondent,
Greg
Greg
1 comment:
Yike!
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