I saw red.

Red as in red light.

It stared at me unblinking. Obedient to a fault, I stopped my car. Conscious of the new rules for driving to save petrol, I switched my engine off.

A persistent honking was happening behind my car. Loud and insistent, as an impatient bus driver tried to make me move on with the sheer force of his blast.

I wondered quickly if I was blocking his way... to a right turn. I was not.

Meanwhile, another bus pulled alongside and went lumbering on ahead. Past me, past the light.

I saw red again,. A flash of it before my eyes.

A flash of it in my brain. As in danger. What if... I thought, seeing fleeting imagas of motorcyclists or pedestrians cutting across the bus's path.

The lights changed. The bus behind me crossed me, and all the heads inside turned to look down at me from Olympian heights. What... there is no traffic why are you waiting... one man shouted .

That's how it is. If 40 people do wrong, a wrong becomes a right, and the one person who is trying to do the right thing, well, does it become a wrong I was doing? Holding up 40 or more people rushing to work on a Monday morning just because I believed and was taught to believe that a red light saying stop was to be respected?

Pedestrain crossings are another waterloo for me. Not so long ago, I believed the zebras on the road should join the list of the extinct. People cross where they want, when they want, as they want. They walk, run,. Scoot, scuttle, rush or amble across the road at any time, without a thought. One uplifted hand to tell you to stop and they will the wheels of the vehicle to grind to a halt. And if their luck is in, the trick works.

Bit now there is some kind of discipline trying to make itself heard. Pedestrian crossings are becoming what they are supposed to be. And though jay walking is an art our city dwellers, mumbaikars or aliens, have perfected, attempts are being made to make them toe the white line.

The first step is to keep the white line visible. So we gaddiwallas are asked to stop before the crossing. I do. But again, only to the background sound of honking and whistling and rude remarks, as everyone else closes in on the space I have politely left for the man in the street to use to get across.

And yet, strangely enough, I enjoy the feel of a steering wheel guiding a car in my control. In other words, despite it all I like to drive.

The question I continue to ask though is: Am I wrong in trying to be right.... Or are those who think they are right, wrong?

Someone please tell me!