Cavemen in Hyderabad

Every time I get on Hyderabad roads, I see cavemen all around… Now you must be wondering why do I hallucinate, and let me tell you I am not on drugs either.

But before I tell you more about cavemen, let me first tell you about the movie ‘Idiocracy’ I saw yesterday. It was the dumbest movie ever seen. The story goes like this… a man and women as a part of an experiment are put to sleep in 2005 to woke up a year later, but instead they woke up 500 years later in 2505, just to find that the humans have become dumbass, with no IQ… so the movie was about the rise and fall of human intelligence.

Ok now let’s come back to our very own Hyderabad. Just imagine about a person who slept 30000 years ago and woke up one fine day and finds himself in 21st century’s Hyderabad, where everyone follows traffic rules, drive in lane, do not break traffic lights, and do not honk. I know it is hard to imagine, but for fun sake just imagine. What will happen if you give a crash course in driving to this caveman? When he will come on the road, he will be so confused, will not have an idea what to do, where to go, he will come into wrong direction (poor guy, he does not know traffic rules), he will blow horn – again and again because he is enjoying the sound, he will break the light, imagine what all he will do.

Now imagine everyone on the road like him! This is what the real situation is on Hyderabad’s roads. Everyone behaves like this caveman, without any civic sense of driving… and what are our good traffic policewala doing…?Nothing! He is too polite and humble to do anything.

Humans have evolved from apes and even after thousands of years of evolution there is still an ape in everyone. Most of the time that ape lyes dormant but thats not true in Hyderabad, and this is not just limited to a rickshaw or auto wala, or a taxi driver. This also included the likes of highly educated engineers, managers driving big cars and bikes, working in big MNCs. I have observed people who are well behaved in office (most of the time), as soon as they step out in open the ape inside them takes over. They looses all their civic sense and gets in to road rage…

To a great extent our very own police is responsible for this. Law runs on fear – no fear, no law. Traffic police here is too lazy and soft to infuse any kind of fear in the people. Everyday, I see people breaking the law in front of a police guy, because that person knows that first the policewala will not see him, even if he see him he will not catch him.

I wonder how long I will crib about this… I can go on and on and on… and I dont see any reprise from this, at least in near future…. We have become so insensitive, overtaking someone seems more important than driving in lane or follow traffic rules.

How expensive will it be to maintain a car in future?

Today I spent my complete day with a friend of mine. We are neighbors. So after our lunch we were watching an old movie ‘chupke chupke’, where in once scene the driver repairs the car, and the owner of the car says to his wife that if the car had been taken to workshop then then minimum Rs100 bill would have come. This was some 30 years ago. I am not an economist, but will do some simple math without bringing any inflation or current salary trends in.

Today if you take your car to workshop then  you will spend minimum Rs.1000, and I m only talking about a samll car. So it is almost 10 times more than that as it used to be in 70’s. If we continue to go at this pace, then in next 20 to 25 years taking a car to workshop may be as expensive as spending 2 nights in a 5 star hotel today.

Now look at the petrol price today, it is above Rs.52 per liter, which 30 years ago was just Rs.10. I still remember taking my father’s scooter out and then 2-3 rupees from friends and filling petrol for Rs.10.  The oil prices today we get are highly subsidized by government but which still means the price of petrol has gone up by 5 times. In next 25-30 years this price of petrol may be equivalent to taking a family of 4 for a movie today.

It will be so good if there is some machine which does not require any maintenance and fuel.

A dog’s life

Every night when I go back home, I always find a dog sleeping in the middle of the road. He changes his color. Some night he is black and other nights he is white. No no… Don’t get surprised, it’s not a magical dog that can change its color. If India Today or AajTak news channel came to know about it, they will make it a breaking news or headline. The truth is that there are two dogs, who take turns to sleep in middle of the road.

They are not afraid to sleep there. If you honk, they will just ignore you. They will raise their head slightly, look from the corner of one eye and then will just ignore and go back to sleep. I guess they must be thinking who the hell is he, honking in the middle of the night disturbing their sleep. Well they also know by now that I will not run over them and they think it’s my responsibility to by-pass them on the way even if I have to get down the road on the ‘kacha rasta’.

Well, I guess they are right to a great extent. Dog is the closest animal to humans and it is natural that their behavior will get influenced by humans. No matter how small the dog’s brain* is, it still got some and uses it. Dog is not the only animal humans have influenced – other then dogs you can see buffaloes & cows with similar traits.

* The brain of a 20 kg (45 lb) dog would weight about 80 to 100 grams or about 3 to 3 1/2 oz. In contrast a human’s brain weighs about 1500 gram or 3 pounds.

God! help hyderabadi drivers

The title of this blog entry is out of sheer frustration. Yesterday was a long day in office for me. Have to wake up early to attend a meeting with my stakeholders in US and then had again meeting in evening with my other stake holders in US. By the time all things finished, it was close to 10:30 PM. My home is very closed by to my office. The reason I took my home close to office was that I did not want to spend more time on roads.

Yesterday when I started from office, I was very tired and hungry after spending 15 hours in office, with marathon meetings. To sum up I was completely drained. It is really frustrating to see traffic jams at odd hours. Even more frustrating is when people keep on honking and doesn’t follow any traffic rules.

Please God, give some civic & traffic sense to the drivers on road… specifically to cab/taxi drivers!!

(Picture from my Nokia N70)

My dear countrymen! Please follow traffic rules, have some traffic & civic sense, then only we can really become a developed country.