Walk of Life...: Kissed by a Bus

There are only a few "Road Rules" in Urban India…

1. The right side of the road is the empty side
2. Thou shall honk so loud that the guy in front will move out…
3. Thou shall stick whatever part of your bike/car/etc
in any available space on the road.

It’s a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world out there and yours truly often has to stick by the above rules (reluctantly though... there is no value for dutifulness in today's world). If you don’t take the above rules seriously, then you pay the price…

I found this out first hand yesterday when me and Kailas (my roommate) went shopping. Kailas usually takes it as a matter of personal pride that he strictly follows the above rules... and that too, religiously!

We set out from home and Kailas was his usual self… Honking loudly and zipping sometimes through the left and often through the right (read… wherever it is empty), we finally reached the shop, but not without incidents (refer Pic…)

Thank god that the car guy had the presence of mind to stop… and so nothing unwanted happened! I kind of grilled Kailas on the above incident and then he became his docile usual self and wowed to drive ‘Properly’ in the future.

The ride back was much more comfortable with Kailas riding as he had promised.. this cheered me up and I began to relax in the smoke filled traffic of the office-returning Bangalore.

We reached near the St. Antony’s Church as a bus halted in front of us (no movie like or should I say usual antics of screeching, but plain old brakes applied as slowly as it can). As a Good Samaritan, Kailas also breaks (using the drum-brakes, giving his disc-brakes a well deserved rest) stopping dutifully behind the bus.

The next thing I know, I was being rocked as if I was in a seismic zone… A bus that was behind us braked too, but the good ‘OLD’ bus and driver couldn’t get it to stop and kind of kissed our Royal Enfield, thus causing all this. Kailas was stunned, partly because he didn’t know the language (Kannada) to cuss him and partly because he just replaced his tail light and partly because, in India, there are not many who get to be kissed by a bus and live to tell the tale too….. Praise The Lord !

What happened as a result of this... Kailas has now wowed to go back to his usual wanton ways, the technique described in the above picture, that never caused the one below....