I had a rather funny 'road rage' incident the other day. I live in Pune, and when you live in a city that is famous for its ridiculously bad roads and mismanagement, driving the odd 14 kms to work becomes a mammoth task. As you get close to the end of your 40-minute drive, it's not very difficult to lose your temper if you're already exasperated and red in the face 10 minutes after you left home!
So I'm driving down to work with the missus. I'm irritated because the driving is getting to me now (the missus doesn't drive yet) and the bad roads and traffic aren't making things easier. The missus and I have been working out of different office buildings for the last 2 months. We get to her building first and I pull over so she can get out. As I'm about to pull back onto the road, I look into the rear view mirror and see a handcart approaching. I think to myself "Okay, good! This guy's gonna block the traffic behind me. So I can go." And so I get back onto the road and start driving. As it so happens I get a bit close to a biker, not very close in my opinion but close enough so that he gets a scare. The biker turns around and starts staring me down, then decides he doesn't want to just drive off without saying his piece. So he slows down. Like I already said, I was irritated by then and I decided I wasn't going to back down either. So I pull up next to him, looking really pissed off all the while. He stares as I roll my window down and probably arrived at the conclusion that things wouldn't go very well for him if they got out of hand and visibly calmed down a bit.
"Indicator de kar kyon nahin chalate?" he asked. I was expecting him to come up with something nastier, something that would make it easier to get out of the car and throw a couple of punches, let out some of that aggression. Without a pause I lean over and yell back, "Indicator chalu hi tha, samjha?" and then drove off feeling very stupid! No more words exchanged, no abuses even and neither of us even made a fist!
Damn! I guess some people give road rage a bad name don't we?
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