It is truly difficult to spot. It is like a mysterious cloak that covers you, unbeknownst to you and disappears just when you are about to realise that you are suffering under it.
It is the caste system that rules our roads. Here caste is not determined by birth, it is determined by the vehicle that you travel in.
At the top of the pyramid are the trailers, the trucks, the buses (here ST is really the creamy layer) and at the very summit, the cranes. They are the royalty of the roads. Their rule is absolute, unchallenged and woe befall anyone who as much as raises a finger against them (middle or any other). Once an upright gentleman travelling in a lowly Mercedes S Class tried to defend his right to a lane against a BEST Bus. Last heard he was still making rounds of the insurance company to get some recompense for the bodily damage that his car had suffered. Of his psyche, there is nothing left to salvage and the poor fellow can be seen in his car only on Sundays and post-midnight.
Then there are the mid rangers. The tempos, the delivery trucks, the school buses, staff buses. There was this company on the outskirts of Pune and its staff buses would leave the company gates in a very disciplined manner , bumper to bumper , their column stretching seemingly forever and they would destroy everything that came in their way, man or machine. Fortunately for the city, its traffic police put an end to this majestic parade of solidarity and the vehicles of lower caste found some space on the roads. But this caste is absolutely the warrior caste. They are always up for a scrap. They know their place under the sun is not guaranteed and they will fight with anybody who dares come in their way. Traffic lights notwithstanding.
Then there are the cars. The more expensive they get, the humbler becomes their bearing. They are always scared of getting bumped, scratched, yelled at and being soft targets for the police. They are the meek who will not inherit the earth.
The absolute scum of the earth are the two wheelers. A camel may or may not pass through the eye of the needle, but these guys are convinced that they will. Don’t give them an inch and they will honk their disproportionately large horns till you do and when you do, they will pass through but not before giving you a dirty stare. If all the drivers and the riders of the world were thrown into a river, the two-wheeler riders would be the ones swimming against the tide. That’s what they do on the roads too. For them is not the road less traversed, for them it is the path of least resistance.
But the meekest and the sorriest lot in this caste system is that of the bicyclist. His existence serves no purpose other than for himself. He cannot threaten anybody with size nor impress anybody with pace. Anyone who chooses to cycle on Indian roads, should be recruited into the special forces, for sheer valor alone. A rickshaw can threaten him when it suddenly decides to take a right turn from the leftmost lane with no advance intimation whatsoever. A motor biker gently nudges the bicyclist’s rear wheel at a traffic light, asking him to move on. He can sometimes be spat on by an elite truck or bus driver and he will be paan stained for life.
The reason no-one complains about this caste system is because it is dynamic. The meek cyclist when he gets into a SUV is as likely to drive a two-wheeler off the road as anybody else. And the bus driver when he hands over the keys at the end of the day and rides his bicycle home, complains of the injustice of it all. This is reincarnation and karma in accelerated mode. You get to live several lifetimes in one life and the lessons of several lifetimes are learnt in those brief enlightening moments when the bright white LED lights of an oncoming bus, blind you to what lies in front of you.
