India Reloaded - Accidents galore

I was going to write on Wednesday because it was a high point in my life. I actually drove my car myself to my office and back home. Ok I ran out of patience when I was trying to park back again in my puny little parking lot at DD. So I asked somebody's driver to help out, but other than that, the feeling was totally awesome and exhilirating.

I drove.

And I was determined to drive everyday now that I had driven once, I didn't want the confidence to ebb. But then, it rained two nights in a row and I didn't want to take the car out on wet roads. So my car stays perfectly parked (by the driver, of course)

Meanwhile, I had to gloat about my newfound ability to drive without causing major havoc on the road. So when Dicky (my childhood friend called me up, that's the story I told him first) He seemed wan. He told me his car was in the office as he had had an accident a couple of days ago. A motorcyclist rammed into him from the front. But since that guy had a fracture and he was the guy on the smaller vehicle, the law is likely to be on his side.

My world almost came crashing down all around me. Dicky has been driving for eons. And even in Bangalore he drives quite a distance to and from work. There is absolutely no reason that Dicky could make an error. And he probably didn't. Bangalore roads are truly the worst. I keep hearing of accidents day in and day out. A lot of them are fatal. Even pedestrians are not spared. It kind of makes you wonder whether you should go out at all.

The other day one of the guys in my team Ravi, had an accident, where he swerved to avoid a motorcyclist and rammed his car into the kerb. The crowd still broke his windshield. The crowd menace is probably more of an issue than the accident itself. In this case, the motorcyclist was totally unhurt, all that happened was that he fell off the bike.

And then just when we were going to go out on holiday, I heard that a jeep full of people from Fidelity had a head on collision with a truck and all the people including the driver died instantly. This was a Trinity Cab and I have been regularly using their services. It made me shudder and mutter a rushed prayer of thanks that it wasn't me.

Accidents have become very commonplace in Bangalore. People are very used to it. It makes me sick, the low value that life has here.