Driving is a legitimate form of self-expression (in India!)

(that's a popular form of public transport affectionately referred to variously as "auto", "rick", "scooter", 3-wheeler")

Yes, it's time for another one of my theories! This one also explains why most Westerners (and every other non-Indian!) finds traffic in India impossibly chaotic. And every person I've talked with about this repeatedly marvels at how things actually keep flowing and moving despite all the obvious chaos around them. After hearing this for about the twenty-three hundredth time, I thought about it for about five minutes and realized that the reason for this was quite obvious. Driving in India is simply viewed as a legitimate form of self-expression! Nothing more. Just as there are different driving styles in Formula One (back when I was growing up F1 was dominated by Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost - Senna was the intuitive genius, and Prost was referred to as the Professor), everyone in India has their own style of commuting to work. Impulses are translated into little spontaneous lane changes, emotions are expressed through headlamps and the horn. Why simply rely on the automobile manufacturer of your choice to make a statement? Do it yourself, in your preferred vehicle!

Now while this may be true, there's a couple of inevitable fallouts - if everyone is expressing their personalities through their driving style, there are bound to be personality clashes! And there are, as evidenced by the sad fact of the higher incidence of fatalities on the road in India compared to other developed countries. What is also true is that every drive on the road is an expedition, drivers have to be more than just alert. Drivers in India have three types of active capabilities that are brought to bear to ensure survival in traffic. The first is the basic set of rules for negotiating traffic, the second is the experiential knowledge about how different elements in traffic behave - i.e. the reality that trucks are aggressive, buses blunder about blindly, motorcycles are capricious and cyclists tend to waft about soundlessly between traffic streams . The third is that ineluctable , elusive sixth sense - that anticipation that is beyond factual awareness and hard-learned experience, it's the the knowing that comes after. It is that sense that allows a true driver to sense one's own limit, and to realize when someone else is skating dangerously close to the edge, about to lose control.

(Yes! The cop in the picture just let the man on the scooter through on this major intersection, though he's just jumped a red light)

Minor corollary (please excuse the gratuitously laudatory nature!): Somewhere between being able to understand the intricacies of Indian politics and successfully learning how to drive/ navigate Indian streets perhaps lie the seeds of success for managers attempting to cope with an increasingly fluid chaotic business environment across the world.

Shine On

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze
Come on you target for faraway laughter,
come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,
rode on the steel breeze
Come on you raver, you seer of visions,
come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

Pink Floyd

One evening by Highway 1 on the Pacific coast

So there I was, driving by and this was happening. It was a Sunday evening, there was no grand orchestra swelling up. No harps or violins wailing in the background. And there wasn't anyone paying attention, simply no one at all. No last-chance surfers, hikers, campers or sightseers. Just no-one. I stopped for a bit, to watch the sun and to listen to the ocean.

Meanwhile everyone was going about their Sunday night routines - a single mom cooking dinner, a young blade rushing through last-minute grocery shopping for the week, an industrious gent preparing to take that onerous red-eye flight out to the other side of the country or the planet, a girl with a sullen face doing laundry, a man with long gray hair in a cardigan taking the dog out for a walk. Someone seeking a soulmate on the internet before getting a headstart on work email, a couple kissing goodnight perfunctorily before putting the kids to bed.

Somewhere else, there's a bunch of soldiers sitting quietly in a dark corner of a desert somewhere, each balancing hopes to see his family again with a desire to prove to his buddies that he could do it just as well as them. Separately meanwhile, a whole set of aging people were sitting in comfortable armchairs in large grand buildings across the world, taking a moment - each of them thinking his or her thoughts on how to take charge, win the next election, sustain the economy, grow the country's military power, increase the employment rate and so on.

As I sat watching, I thought about this and also wondered, who has the time and opportunity to watch a sunset like this? More importantly, who really needs to do it more?

Some days you just have to do what you've been thinking of: another foggy day on the Bridge

Yes! I confess! I did it! Or to be more precise, we did it. A friend of mine and I drove down the GGB and we managed to get through these extremely complicated maneuvers in an accomplished and professional manner (!):

1. She slowed down and cranked the sunroof back
2. I stuck my camera out and up
3. She slowed down a bit more until the car was almost crawling, then she hit the hazard lights
4. I focused on timing it right and squeezed off a couple of shots
5. On the way back, I was driving, and she tried her hand at it as well:
   

Couple of points to note, we were out there at maybe 630am, so traffic was very, very light - practically no-one there in the fog. And the sunroof was a really generous one - enough room to poke your head and shoulders through.

Now, the shot isn't great but the perspective is interesting. Perhaps a underwater view of the Bridge? Hmm...