Alternately, if they swerve to miss you, it is usually with a flurry of irritated honks, leaving behind a trail of their choicest swear words, and if the roads are good, a pair of skid marks which bear testimony to the physics involved in stopping a speeding 2-ton vehicle. Skid marks, that you were responsible for, which would on a later day, remind you of your brush with death. For those fleeting moments when you try to make it across, the only emotion you the pedestrian feel is a sense of helplessness at your inability to control your destiny. I can see how one can turn religious just by surviving the Russian roulette act of road-crossing in India, everyday. I can see now the significance of why there are idols of celestial gods like Ganesha and Durga and Hanuman at every street. It is possibly to triangulate their good will during the troublesome road-crossing times.
I spent some time in the city of Gurgaon a few months ago. The city, not too long ago, used to be a very fertile agricultural tract of land, incessantly producing quality produce which catered to the ever-growing population of Delhi. Remnants of its pastoral past still exist in barely noticeable patches in the city, which has since become boomtown. There is dust everywhere, in the footpaths, inside the room, in your socks. When the rain mattes down the dust, you see the shrubs and the trees that have fought off the bulldozers and pickaxes with amazing tenacity. They shine verdant green against the black, impersonal granite of the buildings. There are a few parks here and there designed to provide a little greenery to the city. I am sure the planners for the townships (not the city) decided hastily, after a visit to New York’s Central Park, that it might be a good idea to create some green spaces, but not as big as the NYC parks. That would have been insane to waste all that land on forests. In the restricted green spaces they provided, however, the trees have taken hold with a vengeance. Any seed lucky to find dirt literally booms into life so vigorously that you wonder if they figured out the fragility of life even when young. You would not need to have a stretch of imagination to know intuitively that this was once a thriving metropolis of trees and wheat fields. If left to them and in another parallel universe perhaps, the trees would have rivaled the tall buildings that mar the landscape now.
This land, so fertile, that if you spill beans and forget to pick it up, it could grow up into that proverbial beanstalk. We have always thought that the magic was in the bean, that which we read about in Jack and the Beanstalk. I like to think that it is a common misconception. I like to think that it was the super-fertile land that fed the bean so well it grew and grew. Gurgaon could have been that land. Now, in an absurd turn of events, fed by the telecommunication boom in the country, it now grows gargantuan buildings of steel, glass and concrete; buildings which grow and grow toward the heavens.
Everywhere, the message is clear; this is a city of the young and restless. The symbols of the new-found wealth of the young hang in front of the innumerable malls lining the arterial roadway, beckoning the people to come and spend some more. The malls line the roads, and a subculture of people, taxi stands, houses and apartment buildings have erupted around them. The skyline of the city rivals Hong Kong and Chicago, but the bylanes and roads closer to the buildings look like they have just been bombed.
I ventured out one November evening to see the city on foot. That it was a nice November day, and the city had a smoky golden feel to it, only added to my sense of well-being. My spartan room in the guesthouse was a bit constrained, for the day seemed pregnant with possibilities of adventure; things to see, a city to explore and a chance to meet new people. Those large neon signs beckoned me, like the mythological siren lured a greek ship toward the hidden rocks.
That is when I encountered M.G.Road; I had to cross it to get to the malls. Interesting story about this road. Almost every city and town in India has an M.G.Road; “M.G.” for Mahatma Gandhi. In Gurgaon, M.G stands for Mehrauli-Gurgaon road. In a gesture thumbing their noses at the established system, the planners decided to be more practical and named it after the two towns the road connects. No sentimentality toward the leader who steered the country to freedom. I could almost hear the statement in that meeting; “Its just a road.”
For a city that is purported to be the fastest growing in all of asia, there are markedly no designated zebra-crossings where pedestrians might walk across unfazed. No zones of mercy where one could walk on without the fear of becoming the next hot road-kill. There are no street lights anywhere on the road either. There were ten of us souls who wished to cross the road. The traffic showed no signs of stopping, not even showing signs of slowing down as a sign of solidarity. Something that might indicate, “I see you, and acknowledge that you wish to cross the road. I am sorry I can’t help you. I have to get to the movies fast. Any other time, and I would have stopped for you. No hard feelings. Nice shirt btw.”
Not in any hurry to go anywhere, I watched the people waiting to cross the road. The process was the same.
Step one, pedestrian looks both ways all the time. While the traffic may have travel in one direction, there are always those wild card drivers, who go the wrong way for a few feet, to save a half kilometer of unnecessary-yet-safe travel in the other direction before making a legal u-turn.
Step 2, when there is a palpable lull in the traffic, which occurs every 15-20 minutes or so, pedestrian takes a steady-not-tentative step onto the road. This is done quickly, or the window of opportunity (all of 20 seconds) slams shut like a New York City subway car door.
The key is to control panic, and more importantly, not show any sign of weakness. If your body language says, “Well… I did want to cross the road. But I can wait if you want to go first.”, the drivers sense it like a cheetah senses a weakening gazelle in the Serengeti. Gestures like rapid head movements and holding the palm out in front motioning the oncoming traffic to stop, are all big signs of weakness. Especially the last one, since it looks a lot like Keanu Reeves’ Neo stopping the bullets in the climax scene of the sci-fi masterpiece "Matrix". While it may have stopped the bullets, and made it look very impressive on the silver-screen, it falls flat when attempted in real-life, and looks outright stupid. I was sure the drivers of oncoming vehicles almost collapsed laughing.
As soon as a pedestrian sets foot on that road, the high-stakes game of life and death begins. It is difficult to take that first step what with a vehicle barreling down toward you at 60 km/hr. Man and machine molded into this fire-breathing dragon of a steel carriage; it has no sympathy and harbors no love for the person standing in front of it. Meanwhile, the poor soul on foot, takes another step, and the car speeds up to get around the person, before he takes the next step. In all this, there is little or no eye-contact between the 2 or more parties trying to share the road. There is a cosmic connection between the two; almost as if one is the designated hit-and-run-driver for the other.
In the beginning of all this, there is that refuge of the side of the road where the pedestrian began the journey of 10 steps. But as he side-steps and stops and takes a breath, he moves toward the middle of the road, which on one hand, puts him that much closer to the other side. But on the other hand, takes him away from the comfort of the side he left. The same comfort zone issue that prevents us from taking unnecessary risks in life, now befalls the warrior on foot. When the person takes that leap of faith to cross the road, there comes a point somewhere in the middle, when reason goes on vacation, and adrenalin takes over. That is typically when the "Matrix" gesture typically comes out, as a last ditch effort. If all else fails, try telekinesis. If it works at home, in forcing the wife to get up and go get the TV remote, it might work here too.
That is typically when the speed of the oncoming car picks up and you hear screeching tires. Eyes, closed, you wait for the sickening sound of screech and thud, and wait for the hit; will it be the knees, or the hip or the head, you wonder. These SUVs have become tall, and now injuries to the head are probably more common. You hope that the end will be swift. All you hear is, "Hey! Have you lost all fear of life?", "Mother^#&*!@#(", "Sister&%^$6", the abuses come out in hindi, even a few you never heard in college, for times have changed. Once the fear subsides, and the pedestrian realizes that their organs are intact, bristling white anger comes shooting up.
I watched in horror as the Mercedes screeched to a halt, within an inch of the man’s life. The pedestrian was a 60-something old man, carrying a bag of groceries; the carrots and spinach in the yellow tote bag dangled outside the bag, ready to fall onto the dirt with the slightest of movement. His bald head sweated in the evening heat, his white shirt caked with the dust of the road. The last few sprigs of white hair around his ears seemed to stand up with indignity. The driver of the Mercedes was a 20-something hot-shot, his lush black hair combed back with a gel of some sort. He wore the same shirt as one of the models looking down upon them from the facade of the mall he had just left. In that evening sun, his fashionable shades shone, two little spots of sun adorned the eyes. As the last rays of the sun streamed down, you could see the dust rising above the pair. The cultural epithets came pouring forth from both men. New words in english, hindi and indianized english; "I could have killed you, you lazy lout.", "You think you own the road, you $%^&@#". The obscenities seemed so uncharacteristic coming out from the mouth of an otherwise dignified older man. In another time, sitting under a tree with a glass of chai in his palms, he would have seemed a harmless follower of "MG". Now, in this situation, anger pounding in the vein that throbbed in his forehead, the old man was the indian version of "The Hulk". Neither seemed ready to give in to their faults. The car engine idled, and cars lined up behind the Mercedes, angry horns surrounded driver and the old man. A crowd gathered, not to break up the duo, but just to see if there would be a little fisticuff. Or we Indian call it, a little "dishum-dishum". Eventually, the din of the honks and shouts of irate drivers won over, and the fight fizzled just like that. I too crossed the road soon thereafter, also leaving behind a flurry of screeching tires and angry shouts.
The old man, resenting what young people had done to the quiet little hamlet that he had grown up in, his retirement plans shot to smithereens now, later told me. "Cars and Malls. That is all there is left of this place. Did you know this is a very historical place? Somewhere where those malls are, Guru Dronacharya had his ashram. . If not for the Guru, there would not have been the Mahabharatha! He was the symbol of righteousness in the book.That is where he trained the Kauravas and Pandavas. All we have now is a metro station called Guru Dronacharya. Just like that, they wiped out the significance of one of the most important men in our religious texts Not his ashram or anything, just Guru. You know why? They can’t find the damn place that is why! This used to be a peaceful place Delhi wallahs used to come to, for some weekend respite from all their dirty politics and the heat. Now it’s just this”, he said waving his hand at the incessant traffic and the malls. “Expensive cars and expensive malls. Now we get our vegetables from other states, and pay premium price for it. What are retirees like me supposed to do? Telecom has been the death of middle class here, I tell you” he lamented. It is little wonder that the generation that was, has struggled to deal with the explosive growth.
Gurgaon aspires to be the city of the millennium for India. Ripe with the possibility of making it big, opportunities at every coffee shop, capital growth in every sector. There is money to be made even in the laundry business here. It has the feel of the town that dreams about becoming a world-class city, with really no plans on how to go about it. Migrants fill the city; the rich are the NRIs (Non-resident Indians) who plan to settle down somewhere else when they makes their money, the middle-class who have their families in other smaller towns in the care of spouses and parents/in-laws, the bottom in the service sector who struggle to make it here. The bottom two are the ones who are in danger of road-kills every day.
Perils abound here in simple things as crossing the road. I never thought about it before, but here at least I could tell why the chicken might have crossed the road. In Gurgaon at least, the chicken had to buy some groceries, get to work, or just go to the Mall since he was bored.
