Chaos and Order

The driving adventure from last post triggered a thought about how organized the way of living for the people in US is. As I said earlier, driving or rather most aspects of US lifestyle, from what I observed in my time here, are organised. People don’t honk while driving! Even the dogs don’t bark much!! Take it from hiking to food habits to exercise, people think a lot over things and then try to make it as risk averse as possible. Human life is much more valued and cared for than most other places can afford to. If you go on a hike, you would find that there are properly maintained trails. If you are in the wild, you are allowed to go on the trails and camp at specific campsites, but not otherwise. So living in developing countries can be much unorganized when compared to this.

India I believe is equivalent to beautiful chaos for many western travelers. It might be much enriched, diverse, beautiful but day to day lives are chaos at the end of the day! And it needs a lot of skills to be adjusted to that. If we take this context of driving, a driver in India never knows where the next pothole will come from, neither the dogs nor bikes nor buffaloes. And that needs a lot of skills to be aware and be equipped and be able to respond to that. I believe, I have been good at it. I was never organised in my things, thoughts or activities but always thrived on that belief in myself to be able to respond to things effectively. I enjoy riding a bike than travelling in a train or a bus or even driving a car cause that keeps me busy, on my toes and needs me always to be aware of my surroundings! It becomes so “not boring”. Same goes with life. I remember, I was riding through south India, alone for more than 3500 kilometers and was staying in Pondicherry for a while. My friend was using my bike for a short duration and it broke down 20 km away from town. I never saw him panic that much. I understand there were some other stakes involved there, but I’m sure I would have handled the situation in calmer manner. After a couple of days in the journey my rear tyre punctured and the guy mending that removed my brake oil tube. Already exhausted from 17 days ride, I rode last 230 kilometers without rear brake as I was 2 days late to join office.

I was at Kashid a few months back enjoying the beach. I don’t know how to swim, but I was still treading the waters as the depths are much more gradual than most beaches there. The waves are quite rhythmic, speeds predictable. If you observe them closely, you could gauge the height the water would rise to as the wave approaches. If you stay still and stubborn, the water will pass over your head. But if you face the seashore, rise along with the water as the wave hits you by an upward thrust to your body, you can easily float for that moment enjoying the ride and then move towards the shore keeping the body perfectly upright, cycling forward with your feet, landing softly on the land. Afraid of the depths, this was my first time in such sea waters where the depths were more 5 feet. It was a wonderful experience and a confidence booster for me. But, it also taught me an important lesson, that learning to ride the waves was a wonderful thing which enabled me for that experience but riding could take me only that much. I could see my friends swimming in deeper waters as it was calm anyway and floating along nicely. Riding the situations can never make you a driver of things. Driving the things takes much more.

Sometimes, this ability of riding the chaos or situations comes with a cost. It gives you reasons to remain unorganized. It gives you reasons to delay decision making. It gives you reasons to not drive things to completion... if that is what your inherent nature is... and the things get worse for you in a scenario when everyone else is organised, everyone else is following rules, everyone else is completing things. Take this scenario of driving. The blessing here is that there would not be dogs, buffaloes or bikes blocking you out of nowhere, but the problem also lies in the structure that it forces you to follow the rules very strictly that you cannot stop abruptly if you have taken a wrong turn, you cannot slow down beyond a limit on highways if you are unsure of the next turn, you cannot afford to enter a wrong lane because it has inherently enabled everyone else to go at a faster speeds. Organized structure has lots and lots of advantages but it could be devastating for us unorganized mortals! It’s high time I work on getting things together and start be disciplined. Cause the art of the day is to bring chaos to order!

The day I almost killed an American!

Holidays on and when you don’t want have stamina for a hike or money for games, people mostly go for road trips here in US. With plenty of miles already under my belt, no one was more excited than me when some of my friends proposed one recently. Not having a US driving experience (and not many knew this at the time) was not a deterrent as I had heard driving is quite organised and easy here. Driving was organized.. very.. but never easy!

Here I am! My first blogpost to what I like most.. Driving( and off course.. not killing people J) Let me tell you about the experiences I had in my short stint. First thing in the morning, we started from the rental car parking and saw a guy at a zebra crossing. He was idly standing at the edge of the road. What do we do in such cases? Off course honk, so that he be warned and not try to cross the road lest be run over. And “Blow Horn” I did as I was not in a mood to slow down (let alone stop) for mere mortal pedestrians incorrectly finding themselves on the road. He and others in my car were swearing bewilderingly and that was the first reminder that I was not in India and was indeed in US!

First rule, roads belong to drivers but crossings to pedestrians! If you see someone crossing on a zebra crossing, you are obliged to stop and not honk! I was so amazed as a pedestrian in my initial days here and almost guilty every time someone stopped for me at a crossing even when I was not on the road and allowed me to pass with a smile and could not get what have I done to enjoy this respect! It took me some time to realize that I was never special and the drivers were just being good citizens by following rules. Now, behind the wheel, it was my turn to reciprocate the honors and it was such a culture shock coming from a place where most drivers treat anyone walking on the roads equivalent to dogs! (?) Err, it’s the same here, just that the dogs are much more valued than the way we value our pedestrians!!

Moving on, we were at a junction waiting for the lights to turn green and were discussing where our other friends would be. I was advised to take a left by people sitting at the back. Let’s try to understand the geometry for the driving rules here in US. Imagine you are waiting in the “right” right lane of a road (because of the right hand driving) and you have to turn left, your car will have to take a longer turn as you would be entering the “right” right lane on the road to your left whereas if you are taking a right turn, it is immediate shorter right turn for the right lane on the road on right. And it is so easier to read than drive if this is your first time on the wheel. One more important rule is, when the signal is green, a driver is supposed to see for anyone crossing the road and then take the turn if the road is clear. They call it ‘yield and go’ rather than ‘green’. By definition, “a yield sign calls on the driver to do the following: Slow down, defer to oncoming or intersecting traffic, stop when necessary, proceed when safe, and remain aware of oncoming vehicles. “

Thinking that we were indeed to turn left, I started. All was good as I crossed the zebra crossing in front of me, entering the square so I would take the longer radius to turn. Suddenly, my navigators from the back came to life asking me to turn left instead as our destination was that way. Panicking is bad! When you have committed to something, panicking in between is worse! But one simply does not learn lessons without mistakes! I turned right, though there was nothing right in it. Panicking when you are committed to long left turn, driving halfway through it and then having to turn short right is worst! To my horror, there was a girl crossing the road in the same direction that I started on a zebra crossing. There is something called as ‘fight , flight, freeze or fawn behaviour’ in psychology which defines our response under stressful situations. And from common sense when you are driving, it is always better to freeze/stop in such situations when you make mistakes, but doing what comes naturally to most humans, I accelerated. The car I was driving was a longer car than I have ever driven, I could not see the bonnet and hence gauge the contours of the vehicle. The girl in question was doing something on her cell phone with music in her ears and could no way have had an idea about us without us actually hitting her. And still she would have been legally correct. Traffic rules are a bit strict here and enforced very aggressively. So even if we would have only brushed her, I was in deep trouble.

In that fraction of a second, I could see my stay in US, dreams, everything gone! In the end my earlier mistake of taking a left turn actually provided me extra space as the right turn was immediate right turn that I needed to take and I completed my turn inches away from the girl. If there would have been a cop around, all the savings that I had for my quarterly expenses were gone! Finding a roadside parking space, we stopped. Everyone was in a shock with such a close encounter. Many had thought of trying their hand at driving on the trip but nobody spoke now. We called our friend in other car who had some driving experience in the US and agreed to take the wheel. With him at the helm, things were better, sun brigher, breeze cooler and mood lighter!

Here comes the best part! I was checking in the rear view mirror when all this happened and to my surprise and delight, the girl in question was so engrossed in her mobile phone, she did not even know anything like this happened!

On a lighter note, see this video which shows (though a bit exaggeratedly) difference in driver behaviour in US and our beloved India.