Moving into a city can be real fun, the excitement of locating essential landmarks, the orienting response to a historically rich and tastefully put together Arch. A few weeks pass, a few months, and now you rarely spare a glance to the intricately carved Arch you can spot on your way home. This is one of the many instances of habituation you are going to encounter in your life. But nothing beats the insane road system and etiquette (or the lack of it) prevalent in some of the cities here. I kid you not when I say I am mortified to take a motor vehicle to the main streets, if not for the hundreds of by-lanes riddling the cities that push out vehicles when you least expect them to (is that a truck exiting a single person walk only space?), the stats alone does the job. PRS reports 5 Lakh accidents in 2015 alone, clubbed with a 158% increase in the number of vehicles registered since 2000.
On the streets, the very first thing to look out for is the startle reflex sure to hit you as a wild teen whizzes past you in a sports bike from nowhere, or the lone pedestrian crossing the road at a moment’s notice, choosing to jump over a fence dividing two bustling and potentially fatal lanes than trek the 120mt to the zebra crossing ahead. Have you ever heard of the acoustic startle reflex? It is the sudden jolt that brings you back from that peaceful daydream you were cherishing at 10kmph traffic, by the guy honking in a vehicle next to you.
Getting to the traffic, the taxi industry has been busy expanding itself. Since 2013 when Uber touched down in India, they have grown to over 40 cities in 2019. With almost the whole day spent by Uber-Ola drivers navigating this obstacle course (cows incoming!), is it a wonder they resort to ways of dealing with this crazed crowd. You are sure to come across the ‘deafening stereo enthusiast’ or the ‘fast and the furious’ who only seems to be getting sensitized to the traffic as the days pass by. And on the days you decide to ditch the app and take a bus back home, you might find yourself dishabituated to the beauty of the city. The new route shows the side of the Arch you have never seen before, the unscathed side tucked away from plain sight, the city’s blind spot saved between restlessness and the cycles of habituation.
