Pedestrian Tales

It has been more than one year since I graduated. It wasn’t your everyday academic graduation. I graduated from being a pedestrian to a motorist. And I have never looked back. Because I couldn’t. The eyes have to be alert and watchful searching for flicker of movements (or the lack of it) when you are driving in India. The only looking back I did was via my rear view mirror (one of which broke one slippery, rainy day. For details, see this post).

Well, there is nothing pedestrian about Pedestrians. In this post, I try to classify them along with their attributes knowing fully well that it is an impossible task. Still, it’s a try. Here we go:

1. You have a thing called a brake in your vehicle, don’t you?: You are on a highway cruising at seventy kph and you see a bloke standing in the middle of the road. You lean hard on the horn from a good fifty meters away and all he does is stare at you nonchalantly. You brake hard, slow down and after ascertaining that he has no notions of moving aside, take your vehicle around him.

2. Don’t walk on the road as if you own it, walk as if you don’t give a damn who owns it!:Well, this class does exactly just that! And that makes it quite a difficult proposition. And guess what? They also don't give a damn who is driving on it!

3. You talking to me?: Now this class is different. Not only they don't heed your frantic calls seeking way, they are always ready with a mouthful of choicest words. And more often than not, they are usually women.

4. Cattle class pedestrians: I hope blogspot isn't as famous as twitter. Else I may have to backtrack this entire post the way Tharoor did his statement. One observes that the more our civilization has advanced, the more our people exhibit what I call, for want of a better phrase 'cattle like behaviour'. The varied response that cattle usually exhibit in response to repeated honking of horns is reproduced in the human populace and is characterized by unexpected behaviour on the part of the pedestrian. To be fair to the cattle though, it has been observed that they have been exhibiting calculated responses to horns. A vehicle has to come, slow down and blow its horn and they spontaneously make way for the vehicle. And we humans call ourselves civilized!

5. Fight or Flight?: A bloke is walking across the road- lost in his thoughts, dreaming of a someone somewhere, of pleasures attained, of the girl living next door... well, you get the drift. Popo goes the horn quite close to him. He is startled. He freezes in mid stride, legs planted wide apart, arms slightly held away from the torso with a look of sheer terror on his face. Its the moment of truth! What he does next decides the fate of all concerned- himself, the vehicle and its occupants and the other pedestrians. Luckily, for me, I have come out unscathed from such encounters.

Well, that sort of sums up what I can think of right now. The next time you are on your vehicle, cruising along, do spare a thought (a good deal of thought, rather) for those pedestrians if you are to have an uneventful ride.