Driving In India

Being the passenger in a vehicle in India offers you an opportunity to practice letting go of control. You must trust that the driver and everyone else sharing the road will be able to make sense of the chaos happening all around you. The roads are filled with pedestrians dashing in and out and in between. Motorcycles, motor scooters, and tuc tuck (auto rickshaws) that create their own lanes anywhere they see space. Cows and dogs laying around, wondering scampering and just doing what they do. Human powered rickshaws, bicycles, man powered wooden carts selling goods and foods trying to push though in and out and around. And the condition of the roads and not exactly up to code. I don't know if there is a code, but if there is, they are not meeting the standard. It is literally the scariest and most amazing experience that by the end awed me with the the perfect fluid nature of how it worked. Sarita, the mom in the family I stayed with, offered me a chance to drive one very early morning. I replied with an enfatic no followed by a giggle. I had learned enough by then to know i didn't have what it took to

drive. If you don't push your way through, around, backwards, and basically drive as if you are the only car on the road that matters you will not succeed. You will get into the lane of your choice by pulling into it because you expect the others to stop for you, you will pull a u turn in the middle of the road and stop traffic because thats what you need to do, you will go off the road to go around a stop light since why would you wait for green when you can go around the red. It is a new definition of offensive driving that requires skill. But the beautiful and most amazing part is everyone knows that is how you are to drive, so a "passive" rule abiding driver like me would mess up the system and be the cause of an accident. You see the people are predicting how others would drive and that is what makes the system work. Everyone knows that you beep every other second for many reasons. Maybe there is a cow or dog that needs to move. Maybe you are about to overtake a car or truck which is seemly allowed at every moment of any road at any time and it happens

nearly every other minute, and often times there is on coming traffic, but sometimes this miraculous thing happens and suddenly there road seems to have three lanes and you all fit and everyone gets where they want to go. And while we are on the subject of lanes, some roads have lines some don't. The ones that do don't really create lanes so much as a space to get over if needed or offer a you could drive in this lane if you choose. The smaller roads, the ones I was mostly traveling didn't have lanes and in my opinion were just big enough for one car. On this fact I was proven wrong multiple times and I still can't figure out how those cars defied physics and made it work not only to accommodate two cars but lest we not forget the pedestrians, motorbikes and scooters, cars, rickshaws, tuc tucs, cows, and dogs.

After that first ride to the hostel I was staying at, I realized that I had to let go of how I believed roads and driving was supposed to work and surrender to how it does work. This was the moment I knew I would be surrendering many things that I felt should be a certain way. I always knew there are many ways to do things and many views and perspectives on the world. But now I was faced with realizing that this lesson transcends intellectual debates and philosophy and landed right on daily routines that I never considered looking at from a different perspective.

Like I said, by the end of my travels I found beauty in the controlled chaotic patterns in the streets. But I would never be so arrogant to suggest that I would be able to drive in India. The level of attentive, reactive, and mindful driving seems exhausting.

I also want to mention that the trucks transporting goods seem to have a style that I can't even describe. They are painted and decorated in bright vibrant colors and things that I can only describe as "flare." Every time I saw a lavishly decorated truck I felt the need to giggle and smile. I couldn't help it, it just seemed so uplifting and happy. I imagined men taking their time to decide exactly what they would do with their truck. I had

visions of them all sitting around discussing who "wins" the award for most flash. Or the conversations like, "Did you see that guys truck, damn he went all out, he is a creative an happy man." I imagined guys pointing and beeping, smiling and giving thumbs up for creative flare. I mean there has to be a sense of pride connected to all this beauty that was making me smile so much. So I let my imagination play out all the silly moments that these fancy trucks as I grew to call them in my mind would give people as they did their daily work.