Tuesday 27 October 2009

Gaddi Chaldi hai Chhalaanga Mardi hai!!!

This Govinda one liner definitely suits my car when I'm driving on the Pune roads...The amount of potholes and the condition of the roads test my poor WagonR to its hilt!!! I have to be so careful when I'm driving because I never know where the next pothole is gonna come at me...And most of the time it's usually out of the blue...I'll be cruising along at a comfortable speed of 50 kmph on a good road and suddenly BANG!!! my car goes through a great pothole which appeared out of nowhere! I'm left cursing the road building authorities and at the same time saying sorry to my beloved car!!! She's a good girl, doesn't hold it against me anytime...Thank God for that!!! :-)
Pune roads are one thing...I guess roads everywhere in India are unpredictable and virtual death traps (looking as in the potholes are more like ditches!!!)...But the way people drive in Pune cannot be beaten by people anywhere in India I'm sure! It's pure madness on the roads here...I'll cite some examples...
You're driving happily on Aundh road just after the University circle...It's one of the best roads in Pune, six lane, well maintained and one of the few roads on which you can actually reach the top gear...But before you can even think of doing that, there will be some idiot driving in the right most lane (which is incidentally reserved for faster vehicles) at the speed of a bullock cart!!! No amount of honking or blinking your headlights can make s/he move to the left to give you space to overtake from the right which is the law...So, in frustration you have to break the law and overtake that vehicle from the left after making sure that no one else is doing the same thing with you!!!
Another thing that is popular with anyone who uses the road is that no one will stop to let another vehicle through...So what if they are blocking the entire traffic?! No one will go past them...They have to be the first ones everywhere...This holds true at unregulated U turns too...I once came across this incident where a Swift was trying to execute a U turn just off Parihar Chowk in Aundh...There were vehicles parked on the opposite side and this car couldn't take the turn in one go...So naturally he had to reverse back once so that he could turn successfully...But he should be given some space to do that right?! No way!!! Not if you're in Pune! Cars, bikes, bicycles crowded in behind and beside him so that he had no space left to move his car anywhere!!! And this stupidity resulted in a huge traffic jam that must have lasted for quite some time...I didn't stick around to find out...
I can give a whole lot of more situations where motorists have acted so stupidly that there's just no logic to it!!! But I'll stop here now..I have to go and tackle the Pune traffic again...I'll update my blog again if I manage to survive it all!!! So till that time Ciao!