April 23, 2008
Shams-Tabriz (ST): I had an interesting experience yesterday here. I’m in Bombay as you well know but for purpose for those of you who don’t, and the traffic here on the road is absolutely crazy. There are more than 20 million people in this city and many of them are out driving at the same time each day. And when I say driving, they’re out on their scooters, they’re out in these little three wheeled cobblered cycles, which they refer to auto-rickshaws, they’re out in the vehicles, taxis and they’re out walking, and there are very few traffic signals.
Nobody really obeys any traffic laws and so cars are whizzing around, bicycles weaving in and out, the rickshaws doing what they can to navigate, and it can be quite (scary). Even when I first started traveling here it was quit a scary experience and you know my stomach would turn upside down on more than one occasion. Lately of course I’ve just been enjoying it and yesterday of course I had an experience as such that I like to share.
I had made the observation that oh isn’t it interesting that people don’t seem to get so riled up here as they would in the west.
Where, for the last little while I’ve been using the auto-rickshaws just because they’re very inexpensive and they can get me quickly from one place to another in short distances. I hadn’t really noticed but the goings has been pretty good in the auto-rickshaws despite the fact that there is a lot of chaos and traffic. I had made the observation that oh isn’t it interesting that people don’t seem to get so riled up here as they would in the west.
Even I driving in California, at times get irritated with slow drivers or bad drivers and yet I wasn’t discovering that here. I was discovering that each of the drivers that I have been with kind of went with the flow and tolerated everything that was around them.
Yesterday, I got into an auto-rickshaw in the morning going into the office and the driver had a suddenly different demeanor to him. He was quick to temper. Out of the blue somebody came and cut him off. He vocalized and told them off. That same person came at him again. And then there was a second incident where they did just a couple of minutes of that. And I had the realization that he was drawing that to himself.
His circumstance, his situation, his environment was absolutely no different from anyone of the other auto-rickshaws, but these other ones where largely going through their day, through their route without incidence without similar incidence. And yet this fellow just because of that demeanor was actually drawing these incidences to him. It’s quite profound.
