Prityjaiswal’s Weblog

Heavy Traffic in Begumpet at 9.45 am, Monday morning, vehicles honking and moving inch by inch with agitated commuters. Conversation in the auto…

Autowalla: Madam, kete hai Dilli main bomb phata hai?
(They are saying that there has been a bomb explosion in delhi?)
Me: Haan bhaiya.
(Yes, brother)
Autowalla: Kitne log mare madam?
( How many people died?)
Me: [ a little surprised with the manner in which the question is put]   Bhaiya, tees logo ki jaan chali gayi aur pachas se jyada logo ko chot aayi hai.  (Brother, thirty people have died and more than fifty have received injuries.)
Autowalla: arre madam, waha kyon phoda, [pointing to the traffic situation] yahan phodna tha …{heavy peel of laughter}
(oh madam, why did they explode it there, they should have exploded the bomb here…)

I am still wondering at the cruelty of the joke. Trust me wanted to whack his head right there.

Good old days when students use to walk up to school and fathers had a bicycle to ride to their work. Fast forward to the present scenario – buildings being reduced to rubble to make way for traffic.

Things move pretty fast in Hyderabad. A couple of years ago, being new to the city I found the city, the roads and the traffic management system refreshing. In Kolkata, roads are bad and narrow.The bellied traffic policemen good only for stretching their hands up to the truck and lorry drivers to receive that handful amount so as to make way for them into the choking traffic. Private buses stop anywhere to pick and drop passengers and not to forget my own habit of crossing the road from anywhere just using the hand signal.

It took just two years for Hyderabad to catch up with Kolkata and yes making me less of a homesick. The ‘wait’ gets endless during the office hours and now I am again learning to cross road in the same old way.

It’s not just the plight of a commuter that I am whining about, as a driver things are all the more bad. Since I took to the driving seat I discovered whole new world of traffic lawlessness. In Hyderabad, one can turn the vehicle from anywhere to anywhere!! Not even a hand signal to be cared for. The autowallas are the Baap of all the traffic rules; they break and create them according to need. And don’t dare to give them a lesson—somehow or the other, it’s always your fault.

Sachin is learning to drive in a Hyderabadi way, to quote an instance – he is not very good with right turnings. The other day he turned the car to right in a clumsy way and the driver sitting next to him saved the brush with a sedan parked innocently to the left of the lane. The driver tried explaining him the rules all over again. Sachin in a quick Hyderabadi way retorted “main to achcha hi ghuma raha tha wo gaari waha kyon khari thi!”( I was turning the car good but why was the car standing there!)