Last weekend I visited Bangalore, where I came across this situation. What I love most while driving is changing lanes with a sharp cut and crossing perpendicular road with a deep arc. I donno whether it is a perfect way to drive but I love the way I do it and it gives me a kick.
Naturally in the busy roads of Bangalore it is highly possible to have sharp cuts and highly impossible to have deep arcs, so I was having my most unusual way of driving on the roads. There came a cross road near indiranagar 100ft road at Sony Centre and I was about to join the 100ft road from one of the cross road with a red signal in front of me and no traffic police at the cross roads and anyways what I need is a free left and here it is just a left. I did not even notice any sign boards though I don’t care one if it is there. I wondered why people are to the left of the road with out taking free left, since it is none of my business I had my half usual way of driving like sharp cuts and took free left sorry just a left here. there started an incident which provoked me to scribble a post in my blog, I saw a traffic police asking me to stop the vehicle, In a normal day and my usual way of driving I would have easily escaped from his wide arms but it was my unusual way of driving so I stopped to pay 100 rupees as a bribe. at my shock and surprise he pointed me towards his S.I who is sitting on a white Pulsar 180c.c DTS-i with a high end mobile and a big bracelet to his hand and to all a pure kannadian asked me the papers to which I replied nothing an he took a book out and started writing challan but not before delivering a speech which every police does before giving a sign that he needs to be bribed with his hand in upper way like he is not asking for the bribe but we are teaching him to take the bribe even though he does not like it.
The above is not the main point in the story because every one and all might have faced this situation. My point is that I was really impressed by the way he explained why we should go in lane and not to switch the lanes suddenly which made me to think that I should not do that again for a few seconds while he was giving a class to me. Why we should follow the traffic rules and why foreigners are looking at us the other way to good and how important it is for a motorist to follow traffic rules? But all the effect that created on me vanished with in a flash of milliseconds when he asked for bribe. Leave it here.
Practice what you preach else stop to preach. In my life I came across lot of people who talk about moral and ethics where his intervention is not at all necessary to assess them. I never want to blame Indian traffic and Indians traffic sense who use the plain roads in zigzag way and complain about zigzag roads. People talk and praise about glassy American roads and blame Indian roads while spitting on Indian roads. Stop it. Stop even thinking this way. Stop, either praising or blaming. Stop saying about fairy use of toilets, while peeing roadside.
STOP THINKING, START ACTING
