Driving In India

It's Saturday in Agra. I am taking the day off again to try to heal my feet and prevent plantar fasciitis from setting in with full force. This morning, Shannon and Lisa stayed in bed. There is a bug going around, but I am sure they are also suffering from exhaustion and heat.

The march of 25,000 is organized into teams of 1,000. Each of the 25 teams have a team leader, with 10 group leaders reporting to him. Each group leader is responsible for 100 people, make sure they keep pace, see to their needs, etc. For each team of 1,000, there is an accompanying water truck, supplies truck, and a medical truck.

We are now well into the second week of the march. The marchers have been going non-stop, unlike the foreign guests who take time off every few days. Yesterday, some of the marchers fainted, no doubt from exhaustion and heat too. One of the foreign guests is a doctor. She said there is a bout of pneumonia going through the march.

I am trying my darnest not to get sick. I've already had a 24-hour head cold. I will give the march my time and energy, but not my health.

At least most of the marchers are doing fine. I was happy to see some of them at the Taj Mahal yesterday. They too wanted to take advantage of their current proximity to their country's world wonder. We greeted each other and said "Jai jagat" (victory to the world).

The most striking thing about India so far is the bustling traffic chaos, noise, and crumbling streetscape. India drives on the left side of the road. Steering wheels are on the right side of the car. Most of the streets are paved dirt roads that don't have sidewalks. Men are often barefoot and spit on the ground. Pedestrians, cows, boars, goats, monkeys, bicycles, auto-rickshaws, cars, trucks, and buses all vie for space to move. I have yet to see a real accident.

Last night, I got lost and stumbled onto a parade. The street was not closed for the festival. Floats and marching bands lined the jam-packed street, jostling for room with the regular denizens of the street. I have never seen so many brightly coloured floats, saris, and people meld into visual noise and become indistinguishable to the eye.

Motorcyclists don't wear helmets. You often see three or four people astride a motorbike built for two. The riders are not young hooligans. They are grandmothers in saris, toddlers barely able to walk, men and women needing to get from one place to another.

Drivers use their horns for communication, such as when they want to pass, to say get out of the way, to say hello. Vans and trucks all have "Horn Please" or "Blow Horn" on the back. They want you to blow your horn. Not just little polite anglo beeps, but long loud blasts that go from one end of the street to the other that announce I am bigger than you are. The poor pedestrian is at the lowest peck of what order there is.

Most storeowners have their own electricity generator. There is churning and grinding wherever you go. I think the cars must run on diesel. If not, why the black smoke all the time?

Because the roads are little more than dirt roads, dust fly everywhere. At night, you can see the haze of dust in headlights of cars. I wonder if India keeps statistics on the prevalence of lung disease now versus 30 years ago. The day temperature is easily 40C and the cool months apparently have started. Indeed, heat and dust everywhere.

I am told variously that India expanded so fast in the last 30 years, people haven't learn city ways so they bring their farm ways onto city streets. That is, traffic rules exist and roads are marked, but people don't pay attention to them. A street might be marked with three lanes, but often you see seven cars racing down the street at the same time, passing each other on the right and left and into the oncoming traffic. When stopped at a red light, clusters of motorcycles swarm openings like buzzing gnats, eager to ready to shoot off in any direction.

My translator told me the heart of India, the India that he loves, is up north, near the Himalayas. He's not fond of the chaos, noise and decrepitude of his cities and villages either. One of the foreign guests told me she lived in India the first time in 1974. The population then was 400 million. It is now almost 1.2 billion.

The younger foreigners tells me they love the vibrancy and freneticism of India. I have yet to see its beauty.