TUSGIR:The Unofficial Survival Guide to Indian Roads, Part 1 - Introduction

I learned to ride a bicycle when I was around 10; and was promoted to an active cyclist by 12 when my father bought me a blue BSA SLR on the eve of Easter 1992 – my first public ride on it was to attend the Easter mass at our parish church.

The only ‘rules on the road’ I knew that day, were:

• Ride on the left side of the road (courtesy my father)
• Look both sides before you cross (courtesy my mother)

Simpler times, they were… and I did pretty well.

Later that year, one of my teachers at school posted a GK question: “How many of you know road rules?”
I shot my right hand up, beaming.
”Yes, Tedy”
”Miss, drive on the left side of the road, walk on the right side”
”Nonsense!!!”
”Eh!?” I was flabbergasted!
”Who told you all this?”
I kept quiet, and put up a ‘sad puppy’ face
”Alright, listen – you can walk on any side of the road – not just the right” (she pointed a not-as-this-idiot-says finger at me) “…and, you have to drive on the middle of the road!”
My jaw dropped, and eyes popped!

Life was great on the road - traffic lights were fantasies, seen only in movies, and it was an urban legend that the traffic policeman’s ‘dance’ was applicable only for motorists. We cyclists, impervious to rules, ruled the road. Some of us picked up many tricks, including ‘frightening’ the drivers of “KSRTC Superfast” buses on the NH 47.

Four more years later, at 16, I took the driver’s license test for under-50cc auto-transmission two wheelers, which are the only MVs permitted to be driven by 16 & 17 year olds in India. (No motor vehicles under 16; manual transmission LMVs from 18). It was then, I got a gist of what rules of the road could be, and I looked back at all those years I used the road with just two rules, and the rest based on a curious phrase called ‘common sense’.

But alas, the enlightenment didn't leave a lasting impact, as there was little opportunity to put them in practice. Since the rules were not really "enforced", the need to concur seldom arose; and moreover, if one took an initiative on himself to practice them no matter what, he never made it to the destination on time and in shape. Well, that's one item where karmic laws didn't really seem to apply :-) The law of large numbers too didn't make sense, as daily commutes never really add up to one long journey, but rather are individual entities with own goals.

At 21, I earned my license to drive manual transmission two wheelers and LMVs. And, to acquire it, interestingly, I took the test on an auto-transmission two wheeler (Kinetic Honda), and demonstrated a pathetic 15 seconds’ jerky ride on an ‘Ambassador’, where I stalled four times while shifting from 1st gear to 2nd, after which the next candidate was asked to drive. Thanks to the colorful world of bribes, my driving school instructors got me the license as was guaranteed when I enrolled with them. I learned no rules of the road during my entire training there – well, I didn’t learn to drive either!!! :-)

I learned to ride a manual transmission motorbike by myself, on the roads of Bhubaneshwar, when I was 22. A good friend’s battered Suzuki Samurai did the honor. Later that year, I bought my first motorbike, and soared the streets of Chennai. Still, not many rules! The only rules were, be alive, stop at a red signal if interested, and keep safe from the police. Chennai also taught tricks on how to handle policemen who solicited bribes with minimum drain from your wallet.

A big break was in the U.S.A, at 24, when I at last learned to drive an LMV. And with a sad heart, I realized that my common sense alone was not going to help much there, and that there indeed were rules, that they indeed were followed, that you indeed were expected to follow them, that they were enforced quite efficiently, and that bribes doesn't work on a policeman who spots your on a violation! A few years later, the U.K. too would confirm similar facts.

It is with such a realization that I hit the Indian roads again, on my Hyundai Santro, and began observing items that were taken for granted during the time I didn’t know of a world outside. And, with a big grin, I realized that we have a traffic world here – one of its own kind… of adventure, fantasy, comedy and drama!

Thus was born, The Unofficial Survival Guide to Indian Roads!

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How I came to carry two mobiles!

It was on Sat Aug 16, 2008, that I won the bidding on my "HTC touch diamond" from Ebay, for £295 + £15 postage. It was my first smart phone - well, just that in another two days, I painfully discovered that it was "smart", but not very much of a "phone". It showed me google maps when I needed direction, it showed my GPS position when I was lost in a forest, it helped me write documents and create spreadsheets while on the move, it helped me take notes, draw pictures, record videos, click snaps, listen to radio - yup - all the works - except that I prayed each time I made a call, or took a call! Yeah - it worked like a charm except for everything except "telephoning".

The complaints were of two kinds:
- The device hung randomly when I was on calls.
- I lost cell phone signal randomly, on calls or not
In both cases, I had to restart the phone (4 minutes) to get things working again.

I couldn't get a replacement handset from T-Mobile, as I had got this one off Ebay. Having not yet lost my tech-edge, I took it as a challenge to mend it rather than put my hands up - I observed the pattern of failures, I researched around, I tried to flash a new ROM, and I even changed the O/S from windows 6.1 to Android! I learned a lot in the process, got my hands burned too - I emerged wiser at the end, but the device remained the same! Can't call - can do everything else! :-)

After almost a year, I decided that its time to move on, as my professional requirements demanded a more reliable communication device. But I still needed a PDA, whose gap the HTC was so brilliantly taking care for the past one year! I researched each device out there in the market, but found that they were either too much of an investment at the moment, or too meager to meet my requirements.

At last, the Spock in me spoke - buy a cheap "phone" to meet your telephoning needs, and retain the HTC for your PDA needs. This resulted from logical conclusions from a number of parallel threads spawn to resolve the issues I faced with my communication device, against the solutions offered by the market, and my own engineering skills.

Having decided on a secondary phone, I started researching for the cheapest phone which could pass my communication requirements, which included an inbuilt speaker phone, a decent LCD screen, a versatile address book, and bluetooth, along with trendy looks. Although I could have opted for £10 phone, the alpha-arien in me just couldn't digest the idea! a I narrowed down on two phones - the Nokia Xpressmusic 5310, and Motorola RAZR V3i. I could have got one of them free with a subscription, but since I didn't intend to stay in the UK for a time period long enough, I chose not to go for a subscription one - my only option was to either buy a handset, or buy a pay-as-you-go (prepaid) bundle. Having done my research on all UK cellular service providers, and resellers, I roamed Ipswich town-center on Saturday, the 16th May, targeting each of their counters.

After spending around an hour scanning the counters of T-Mobile, Vodafone, O2, Carphonewarehouse and the likes, considering their prepaid options, and ruling out the locked cases (which I could get easily unlocked, but recently I had been making a few wrong choices - so didn't want to take the risk provided the pattern continues dictated by some unknown cosmic laws), I found that there was one handset available for purchase immediately, from carphonewarehouse, one that didnt suite everything - but one that suited the most - the Sony-Ericsson W580i, along with a Virgin plan, for around £80. I went to the lady over the counter -
"Good morning, I'd like to purchase a Sony Ericsson W580i with the Virgin pay-as-you-go plan"
"Sure", the sweet lady smiled.
I waited as she disappeared beyond a "Only Staff" door, to fetch my phone.
As she typed stuff on to the screen, I enquired "... and, this phone could carry any SIM, right? I have a T-Mobile"
"Oh yeah - anything - its not locked" and, she paused "um..."
then she continued hesitantly, her eyes fixed on the computer screen "why did you want a virgin plan?"
"'cause I found it the cheapest?!" (the phone alone came to £135.00, and with a plan, it was cheaper)
"No, Vodafone is the cheapest"
I looked back at the display where I found Virgin the cheapest, and narrowed my eyes
Then, with a smile, I turned to her "... then, vodafone it is!! Thankyou very much for mentioning"
"My pleasure" she went back to fetch my vodaphone package

A few minutes down the line, I emerged from the carphonewarehose showroom a winner, along with Subin a Nambu who had been helping me out make a choice all the while, took out the T-Mobile SIM from my HTC, plugged it into the Sony-Ericsson, and stowed the Vodaphone SIM into the HTC. (My credit card dropped down on its spending limit by around £80.)

I took a deep and contended breath, as the W580i came to life.

Later that day, I connected both the devies to my Toshiba Portégé, ran MS ActiveSync to get all my 580 contacts from the HTC onto my Outlook 2007, and then the Sony-Ericsson PC-Suite to get them all onto my new W580i. (Unfortunately, I don't have a data-plan on my company-provided T-Mobile, else I could have done a GoogleSync) The SMSs would now be taken care of the other software I have in place to browse the internal phone contents, but I'm now on a quest to see if I can get my T-Mobile SIM cloned, so that both my devices can have the same SIM for inherent benefits. Not sure if T-Mobile supports multiSIM (have heard so, with business accounts - one which I hold), but not sure how accurate the legal subscription is, to the lines of usage portrayed in Bourne ultimatum, or National Treasure 2 - but, however it is, I'm sure of one thing - I'll anyway be politically correct - one thing my profession has instilled in me!

Thus, I, Tedy Kanjirathinkal, became the carrier of two mobiles!

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"Numbers": How they change perceptions!

It was lunch time, and during general chit-chat, I broadcasted to the crowd around the table, my latest addition to the fitness regime - 20 push-ups and 20 sit-ups every morning, with an aim to raise it to 100 gradually in two months' time!

And, guess what the first response from an overwhelmed colleague was?! "How do you find time for all these!!" A couple of heads nodded along, as if, yeah! How do you!!?

I was puzzled, but then answers have to be answers... so, I went something like this -
"Do you know how much time it takes to do a single push-up action?"
"2 seconds?"
"Yeah - pretty much - make it 3 if you really want to squeeze those muscles. So, how much does 20 push-ups take?"
"3 x 20 = 60 seconds"
"Exactly - it takes only a minute extra from your regular chores to do it - add a minute or two to preparations etc, so if you set your alarm to, say, 3 minutes earlier than your regular time, you can do 20 push-ups every morning!"
"Hmm... true"

How perceptions change when you talk in terms of numbers, or say, when facts are laid across bare!

Simple analogy, but wide possibilities! Look at the following typical questions, from across walks of life:

• Why should I switch off my computer, or say, lights or fan or whatever, when not used? What difference can it make!? (think a billion of yous doing it)
  
  
• How would a sachet of sugar less in my cofee help me in my fitness!? (put 60 sachets (a month's set-aside) together, and lets see how much of sugar it amounts to!)
  
  
• Oh my God, its a long walk! (dude, its just 2 kilometers - you used to walk even more, to school, when you were a kid)
  
  
• How do you drink that black tea without sugar? (ahem, well, its more of an acquired taste - remember the first time you tasted alcohol? It would have been like "yuck, how do you guyz drink this?!" And now, you might just be drinking and making merry everyother day!)
  
  
• Oh, I've worked out a lot today (dude, your treadmill says its just 50 cals!!!)

Nah... you wont turn into a machine, or loose your human nature, or loose fun in life if you think numbers or facts where they are required :-)

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5 addictions of life

Alright, been long since I'd been consumed heavily by work; and my good little friend Cris has nudged me, with a rather loud "Oy! wake up!" :-)

:-) thanks, Cris... for the nudge... and more than that, for caring to...

Well, okay, the tag is to list 5 addictions of life... and here I go...


1. Family chat: Talk to my entire family at least once a day, where ever on the globe I am; an addiction since around 2003; gets all jittery if not done - really, can't sleep :-))

2. Undulations of craziness: Need a change of seasons along with the nature, and each season has its own tinge of madness - sometimes work itself... sometimes art... sometimes health... sometimes literature... sometimes music... They all come and go in a rhythm, to return again; I'll go crazy if they don't i.e., if they don't undulate - and that undulation itself has become the addiction!

3. A little discipline: Hates over-sleeping, sleeping during the day, being late, breaking promises, not washing the dishes you soiled, and not cleaning up the mess you created.

4. Pizza: A true addiction - can eat it for all three meals, and even for snacks :-)) Although an Italian item, my choice is the Americanized version, specifically the thick-crust ones from Papa Johns & Dominos, and that too, the ones they make in the USA (yeah, I don't really like the ones they sell elsewhere in the world - believe me; however justified, it tastes different)

5. Ice cream: Vanilla, with a tinge of chocolate in it. Yup, can keep on eating dawn till dusk! :-) Prefers Cornetto cones and Magnum sticks for their taste and convenience :-) Oh no no, I'm not an brand ambassador of Unilever's heartbrand :-))

Now, I'm passing on the tag to five of my pals; you're tagged, guyz: :-)

1. Nithin
2. Aneeshji
3. Alco
4. Vini
5. Sreenath

;-)

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The "late" Indians: a quiet retrospection

This may sound rude or offending to some, but tell me, when's the last time you had attended a function or a meeting, with all the "Indian" attendees arrived on time? Well, my motive here is not to condemn this trait or anything, but instead, to take an interesting perspective on it.

An event pops in to my mind as I ponder more on this topic: I slept over at a friend's place on a Friday, and the referred-to episode happened the following morning around nine, as we sat sipping coffee at the living room, frisking the newspapers. My friend's elder brother and family too had come over the previous day, as they had to attend a wedding in town. The wedding was at 9:30, and there was around half an hour's drive to the venue. The elder brother had a son, aged five.

So, around 9:00, the boy tells his father "papa, lets go, or we will be late"
The father, without lifting eyes off his magazine, replies, "Its okay; no one would arrive at the scheduled time. If we are on-time, we will be the idiots"
The son, having received a precious piece of advice on life, picks up a kids' magazine and squats at the veranda. In time, he would pass on this little advice to his next generation (if not learned otherwise in due course), as his father got it from his, and he from his.

Amongst us Keralites, the dialog mentioned above is quite a popular one. Its one of the greatest pieces of advice passed on from generation to generation, equipping people to live a smart life on land. This advice and the related practice, though frowned upon by some idealists, is not considered an evil in the society (you know, each society has its own culture eg: Say "dating" in India, people freak out, while its a way of life at most places in rest-of-world; say "late" in England, people freak out, while its a way of life at some places in rest-of-world); its just that everyone "knows" that others will be late, and hence smartly adapts to the scenario.

Now wait! "Everyone knows that the others will be late"? hmm.. interesting! Being a man of science, I can't help not breaking it down into an equation, and analyzing further.

Let's take two people: 'x' and 'y', positioned at two different families. They both are to attend a function at a time 'z'. Now, 'x' thinks that 'y' would be late, and hence gets himself late to handle it smart. In the meanwhile, 'y' thinks that 'x' would be late, and hence gets himself late in response. Both turn out to be right, as the other person was late.

But hold on, isn't there something wrong? Its a freakin' catch-22 situation!!! 'x' was right about 'y', because 'y' was right about 'x',
Putting it into an equation, if ψ denotes "was right about", and β denotes "because", then,
(x ψ y) β (y ψ x)
=> x ψ y β y ψ x
=> x (ψ y β y) ψ x
=> x (0) ψ x , because (ψ y β y) is just vanity (~ bullcrap).
=> x ψ x

i.e., 'x' was late for the function, because he was late for the function!!! The other person, parameter 'y', doesn't really play a role at all in this phenomenon, as 'y' nullified itself in the equation - its just a "temporary hypothesis" borrowed to prove the phenomenon. In other words, "the others would be late" is a 'hypothesis' brought in to set up this social institution of justifying oneself to be late, and prove that one was quite right in doing so. You take out that hypothesis, and it all breaks down!

Ah! the vanity!!!

Tail piece:
Hmm.. what if I once become the President of India, and proclaim on the Republic day to the nation, "dear all, according to the recent secret survey conducted, your fellow citizens have informed my team that they wouldn't be late anymore from the 27th of January, ie, tomorrow. You might want to plan accordingly."

Would everyone think from the morning of 27th, that "Oh, all would arrive at the scheduled time; its bad if we are late - lets go early", or would they think, "brrrrr... we know them - no one would keep their word; lets go late and prove we are right!"

:-)) the catch-22 might just continue to roll on...
oh, me the bloody pessimist!!!
LOL

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"On the move" blogging

Okay, now this might sound a bit like a technical boohoo, or like the confessions of a bloody technocrat a geek; but here I go... cant resist the temptation of just blabbering it out :-)

As I "write" this directly on to blogger.com, I'm cruising in a super fast "national rail" train to "Newcastle" in northern England, a place just below Scotland (to meet my cousine brother and his family). I started at 6 am from Ipswich, (South-east England); time is now 8:40 am, and I still have over another hour to reach my destination.

Gone are those days when train journeys used to be unproductive... Here I sit with my "HTC touch diamond" Pocket PC running windows mobile 6.1 (which also, by the way, serves as my mobile phone). Connected to the train's wireless internet, I'm browsing the net, scribbling emails using the stylus directly on to the touch screen which dynamically recognizes my handwriting and transcribes it into ASCII text...


I sit finishing off my spreadsheets and word documents and viewing pending powerpoint presentations using the installed MS office 2007 mobile suite! Entering text is a breeze with the transcriber, those days are already memory, when touch screens used to recognize scrits only character by character!

I check where my journey has reached, using the google maps application, zooming to the rail lines of England's map. I turn on the inbuilt GPS system, and a blue dot blinks to life, moving up north along the rail, indicating where I am, realtime! I switch to satellite-view mode, and the screen shows the beautiful green landscape through which the rail line runs like a vein! In the near future, probably I might even be able to see the train streaking along the vast green!

Phew!!! I remember the days of childhood - the early 80s, when I learned the alphabets on "slate"!!! How much has technology changed in a mere less than three decades! And I wonder, how much would it change in the next three... So much it may, that I might write once, about a younger generation "pocket pc" that I had in the 2000s!

Here I submit my first ever post "written" (literally!) entirely using a stylus on a palm-top device.
Amen!

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Fearless!

!Its called "fight or flight", and we all choose one of the two, when confronted with a hostile situation. We either avoid the situation, or decide to face it chin up.

What do you think the majority chooses? Lets take some situations, right from childhood (my non-Indian readers might not be able to relate to most of the following):

1. You are a 6 year old kid, playing in your front garden. A ragged man comes by, and peers over the fence. You study him for a few moments, he looks dirty, he has a rucksack, his hair long and grown, he looks at you and grins. Would you just resume what ever you were doing, or would you run back home to your parents?
   
   
2. You are a 10 year old kid, your class did something to irritate a rather violent teacher, and she is disciplining the entire class with a cane, delivering each blow on to the outstretched little palms with a ferocious face. You watch each blow, your friends' palms red and bruised, most of them crying with pain. As your turn nears, would your heart be thumping, or will you be stationed with a calm pose, ready to accept what ever would be delivered to you in the next few minutes? When its your turn, would you calmly stretch your hands with an expressionless face? Or would you be trying to escape the blows with quivering hands and teary eyes?
   
   
3. You are a teen fresh into college; on the second day, a bunch of seniors round you up for the so called 'ragging'. Would you piss in your pants, or stand up head high?
   
   
4. You are a young employee, and your boss gives you crap, treats you crap, you hate the job. Will you stand all the pain, or quit and get another job?

Cases go on... and most of us might react different to each of these, and we have our own honest reasons behind these. I'm not generalizing, but I did a short survey, presented these and a few other standard scenarios; for those who chose the "flight" option, I encouraged them to just imagine what if they had chosen the "fight" option. I helped them with scenes, descriptions and outcomes in the short-term and long-term. I also carefully noted down the anecdotes of those who had opted the "fight" option in their lives.

And, the result was something like this:

Flight: Those who took this option claimed to experience the following:

1. Short-term deliverance from the situation.
2. Constant fear of facing the situation once again in future.
3. Reduced levels of self-confidence.
4. Restricting self from involvement in any activity connected to the situation (I know someone who stopped going to beaches after he took flight from an incident at one)
5. Long-term sense of insecurity.
6. Inability to command respect, or inspire confidence and trust in others.
   

Fight: Those who took this option claimed to experience the following:

1. Possible short-term repercussions.
2. Ability to successfully deal any similar situation, or anything even remotely connected, anytime in the future.
3. A mammoth boost in self-confidence.
4. Long-term sense of security.
5. Command respect; others look up for courage, guidance and protection.

Many more exist in both buckets, but to summarize, flight (or in other words, fear) might provide you short-term reliefs, but plunging you into long-term suffering; while fight (or in other words, courage) might get you into short-term issues, but guarantees long-term glory.

Fear, quite an emotion in itself, at times narrows down to a deadly thing that can ruin an entire existance. Caution and care are good alternatives, but fear somehow seems to have a different purpose or perspective. Take the classic example of walking across a railway track, and suddenly finding the train around the corner. If fear grips on, you are paralyzed, your limbs give away, and you'll end up staring at the train and scream. Else, you'll just walk across in peace.

Again, interesting thing about fear is, that it seems to provide a false security of short-term gains. It lures its preys in, only to reveal itself in black some point down the line. Courage, interestingly, can not only provide what you think fear can, but even much more.

Well, at the end, it seems that its always your choice to make :-) After all, you 'start' like everyone else, you 'end' like everyone else... but between these two, what you are, how you are, and where you are depends solely upon you and your choices.

An interesting line from Gabbar Singh goes like this: "Jo dar gaya, woh mar gaya!" (meaning, if one gets frightened, consider him dead) :-)

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