Column

Traffic cops were right; zombies are the safest drivers

It looks as though the traffic police are back-pedalling on what was a praiseworthy plan to fine people listening to music while driving. The fulminations in the media must have muted their resolve. The tyranny of journalists is becoming tiresome. I remember that in 1988 the central government tried to introduce the sensible anti-defamation bill. Had it not been for the media’s thrashing tantrums, the bill would have been passed. The results would have been revolutionary. Today, any parvenu critic can question the acting talent of Sunny Deol; with the anti-defamation act, the critics would never have dreamed of using metaphors related to stones, wood or agricultural implements to describe Deol’s expressions.

At any rate, I think it was brave and sensible of Mumbai’s traffic department to attempt to cut drivers’ distractions. I urge them to try again, and to demonstrate that not all hacks are law-eschewing anarchists, I offer them a blueprint for making driving more focused than ever.

- At stop signs, no driver shall consciously ogle at cars that are larger than the one he or she is driving. Such an envy-pumping exercise is apt to make the drivers of smaller cars subconsciously hammer the accelerator in order to make their entry-level vehicles gun through the green signal like a BMW. Instilling such a forced zeal into their cars will only startle the surrounding cows and tempos, causing a mangle of hooves and ‘Ok Tata’ stickers. Events of that nature cause traffic blocks, which - as modern science affirms -can trigger road rage and debris of hard-to-clean dung

- One hour prior to commuting, drivers shall cease reading magazines that feature Beyoncé Knowles; or, in the case of women, any vacuum-head who passes for the latest Bollywood ‘dishy hero’.Such images are prone to spur dreamy thoughts in drivers. For example, I know a man in his fifties who was heading towards Lower Parel but ended up in Panvel - all because he had seen, on the previous night, reports of Richard Gere nonchalantly showering affection on Shilpa Shetty

-This comes from personal experience. No human being who has ever seen Herbert von Karajan conduct Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony should ever be allowed to drive.
The memory of movement which features a splendid marching tune, which aficionados remember as allegro molto vivace, simply bewitches the fan to lead an imaginary orchestra, especially while on a boring drive home. When I did that in Kalina, folks around me construed it to be an incitement to rioting. Only when I hummed the brass section were they reassured that I was insane and let me go. And, in the genteel Colaba, an elderly gentleman in a taxi made me pull over and asked, rather blasphemously, if I was paying a tribute to Simon Rattle’s rendition of Mahler’s Fifth. I wanted to start a riot that day.

This, of course, is not an exhaustive list. But I hope the cops will appreciate that I know how difficult it is for them to curtail distractions while driving. Keep going, bhaus!
raghu@dnaindia.net