Adventures of a Desi KnitterKnitting (and now sewing!) keeps an Indian academic sane in the States. Almost.

Honk

§ September 3rd, 2008 § Filed under Life, Travel § 17 Comments

Hi there! Recognize me?

This is standard issue traffic-head-gear for Pune’s women two-wheeler drivers, a result of the horrible vehicular and dust pollution in this madly expanding city. I used to madly criss-cross it on a scooty when I was in college, and I still take my father’s Kinetic Honda out occasionally, but don’t really enjoy it any more. I still love the city to distraction, but its traffic drives me insane, especially one thing about it. My friends who live here rib me about my “NRI meltdowns” (expat inability to handle rough local conditions), but with honking traffic it’s different. I always hated it, still do, and will never get used to someone blaring away behind me.

It is an old cliche that cows roam India’s streets. But the bovine irritants are nothing compared to the human ones. These too, incidentally, are distinguishable by their horns. The horn is the Indian road warrior’s most important weapon. With a loud horn, you don’t have to stop and look at crossings, you can just charge into them, finger pressed. You don’t have to glance into the rear-view mirror, but just honk as you change lanes, or honk back at the guy who just did the same and cut you off. Naturally, as horns grow more ubiquitous, nobody pays them any heed. So they get louder and louder, multi-toned and customisable, to frighten the life out of you, if not deafen you outright. The horn is not to warn about danger, or to signal extreme irritation. It is to doggedly get ahead in traffic, and, therefore, indispensable.

In true academic fashion, I shall attempt a typology of horns I hear everyday, in the hope that abstracting something into an object of study might render it tolerable.

1. The Bully I: Persistent, short bursts of two honks, usually in a volley of about fifty. A well-dressed man in a large SUV or shiny new car (like the blue one above, right behind the fruit-cart), angry that while the extra money spent has got him more room for his arse inside the vehicle, it has not translated into more room in traffic. Pissed off at the roadblocks around him, he hopes his horn will make them vanish.

2. The Bully II: Same as above, but louder and more imaginative and multi-toned. Usually on a shiny motorcycle. Often customised and enhanced to suit the young driver’s belief that he is immortal, and the road is for him to weave in and out of as he pleases and terrorise other drivers out of his way. This species is easily the worst scourge on the roads.

3. Perpetual Amazement: Random bursts of indiscriminate honking. Sub-species of aforementioned scourge. Usually male on motorcycle, often with something female and squealy hugging its back, just so thrilled that something large and powerful is throbbing between legs and carrying them forward. Look at me! Look at me!! I am so cool!!! Tran-tran-tran!!!! Shall I scare you by getting too close at high speed? Yayy!! Tran tran tran!! Nowadays, with increasing regularity, this species jumps red lights with impunity, disengaging from waiting traffic at the signal like loose boulders from a cliff and scaring the daylights out of those who have right of way. Guess what those guys do in anticipation of these lunatics? Yup – they honk pre-emptively.

Some of these guys now work while they drive – ie, they talk on the mobile phone, even as they are about to plunge into an already chaotic intersection:

4. Scared: Tentative, but very regular bleat, with touch of desperation. Mild-mannered drivers fresh out of the local driving school and terrified of species # 2 and #3. They rely on the horn every time they even see someone in their entire visual range. OMG, OMG, I hope I don’t hit him, they say, eyes firmly in front of them and honk in the hope that this will make everyone else jump out of their way. Car drivers who keep their side mirrors closed because someone can hit and break them use this horn, but so do the smaller two-wheeler ones terrified of the bullies. This terror, however, doesn’t stop these lambs from honking their way through red lights.

5. The Merger: Loud and authoritative, five-six longish sounds. This one is a beauty, and it is amazing that more people don’t die on the roads everyday because of it. It signals a two-wheeler driver merging into a main thoroughfare at full speed – like an arc of vigorous and long-shackled urine. Glance back at the flow of traffic before merging – whatever for? Are you deaf? What’s that about police regulating traffic? Pune’s finest, as always, are busy earning a hard day’s work -

6. Leap of Faith: Continuous, desperate bleating. Usually in snarls and gridlocks, when it becomes absolutely clear that nobody can move in any direction. That’s when the desperate driver thinks that full-weight-of-body-on-horn, amidst all the other cacophony, is miraculously going to air-lift him out of there and into his office on time. He is not upset or anything; he is genuinely puzzled when you tap on the window and ask him what’s the point. Whattodo, he will say. Have to do something, no?

7. Matter-of-fact: Short, functional beep.Used by highway bus and truck drivers to say “can I overtake?” or “I’m about to overtake you” as a courtesy on single lane highways. The guy in front, or his co-rider then waves you on. The old custom underlying the immortal phrase painted on to innumerable trucks on Indian highways – Horn OK Please. Nowadays, though, these large vehicles don’t trust your ears and install electric horns. Just in case. So you’ll jump out of your skin in fear and right off the road. Mild exposure to these ensures that if you do have any hearing, it won’t be for long.

Today is Ganesh Chaturthi, the big festival when we welcome the deity Ganpati into our homes for his ten-day annual visit, bringing good cheer and banishing obstacles and evil. Given the decibel at which we welcome our gods, or call the faithful to prayer, with deafening loudspeakers everywhere, I doubt he can hear very well any more. But if he could, it would be wonderful if he could silence horns and loudspeakers, and bring everyone some earplugs instead of good cheer, before we all go wholly and comprehensively deaf.