Driving in India

A variation on a classic riddle – how long does it take an American to install a light bulb in India? In my case, a good 20 minutes. I have a little desk in the corner of our living room where I try to do my work. The corner is not well lit, so on a recent trip to Big Bazaar I bought a little goose neck desk lamp. Being way smarter than I look, I also bought two bulbs – a 40W incandescent bulb and an 11W Compact Fluorescent. It may be old hat to you, but I was surprised to discover that bulbs here do not screw in, but rather twist in. There are no threads at the bottom of the bulb, but rather two pins, 180 degrees apart. And rather than just one contact at the very base, like on our bulbs, there are two contacts. The receptacle that holds the bulb of course has two contact points as well, and two L-shaped grooves along the cylindrical wall that holds the bulb tightly against the contacts. The idea is to slide the two pins on the bulb into the vertical portions of the L-shaped grooves, then twist the bulb clockwise just slightly until the pins move along the horizontal parts of the grooves until they seat.

This sounds like a good system, but a cheap lamp and cheap bulbs tend to create lots of friction. Combine that with a receptacle mounting bracket that is as sturdy as toilet paper and you have to go through quite a wrestling match, involving mechanical pencils, leatherman multi-tools and swearing in three languages before you can get the stupid bulb to actually seat in the lamp’s receptacle. Of course now that I’ve done it once I have every confidence that the next time I attempt this particular maneuver it will only take me 19 minutes or so.

I went to the gym the day after the 3-day Diwali holiday, and the cute young attendant was sitting at the front desk. She asked me if I enjoyed Diwali. I said yes. She wanted to know if I had enjoyed the Diwali sweets (candy is a very big part of the celebration). I said that I had, but added that I really liked shooting the firecrackers even better. She wrinkled her nose and said she was a “green” person so she didn’t approve of fireworks because of all the litter (i.e. firecracker detritus) that it creates. I quickly assured her that next year I would refrain from shooting any firecrackers during Diwali.

The power goes out here almost every day, and can stay out for hours some times. I’ve already mentioned that we have some big batteries and an inverter in our apartment (every upper class residence has these) to handle most electrical appliances when the outside power is off. The inverter can not handle the AC units nor the refrigerator, but it seems to power almost everything else. Hold this thought for just one minute.

Most days Peggy has Ashraf drive her to work, then she calls me when she’s done for the day and I walk over to Avaya (about 10 minutes) and walk her home. Hold that thought for one minute as well.

We live on the eighth floor of our building. I usually walk the stairs, both up and down, rather than taking the elevator because the exercise makes me feel virtuous, even if it is not as effective at keeping my weight down as a good case of intestinal infection seems to be.

When I walk Peggy home after work, we usually take the elevator from the ground floor (which starts at zero here) up to our eighth floor unit. Tonight, just after the elevator lifted off from the ground floor, the power went out, plunging us into darkness and stopping the elevator in its tracks. This was not good. Having experienced outages of hours in the past few days, I told Peggy that we might be in that tiny, dark, dank, claustrophobic place for a long time. Just as I was seriously considering panicking, the lights in the elevator flickered a few times then came on. The incessant Muzak (a 20 second loop that either was stolen from Kenny G’s studio outtakes or was the winner of the most recent “play as annoyingly as Kenny G” competition) started up, which was probably a good sign, but was not comforting to me because I was convinced the elevator was going to power down again before we could get to the 8th floor. I punched every floor button to try to get the elevator to stop and open up, which it finally did, whereupon I convinced Peggy that climbing the stairs would be in our best interests.

The interesting revelation came when we got to our apartment and discovered that the power was still off there. That implies that the apartment building either has a back up generator or some really big honking batteries and inverters to power the elevators when the city goes dark.

Not only does power go out quite often, so does our broadband connection. Sometimes it’s just not there any more. But that happenstance is fairly rare. What is much more predictable is how slow the internet gets from about 8:00 pm on. Even at 2:00 am the internet can be very slow here. When I marveled at this when talking to Sanjay a few days ago, he summed up the situation in two words “call centers”. Right! India is famous for the number of jobs that have been outsourced here; many of them call center jobs supporting customers in the USA. When it’s 2:00 am here, it’s 4:30 pm in New York, prime time for Americans who are having trouble with something to call for support.

We normally order breakfast in the morning. As part of the fee we pay for the service apartment we’re renting, we each get complimentary breakfasts every day. Many mornings the same young man, whose name is Ashish, delivers breakfast for us. Like many young men in India, especially Muslims (which I assume he is), Ashish sports a well kept dark mustache. A few days ago the doorbell rang and when I opened the door there were Ashish and one of the cleaning crew supervisors whom I’d seen a number of times. They were there to schedule the day’s cleaning session, but as I spoke with them it dawned on me that both had just shaved off their mustaches. I knew it had to be very recent because Ashish (with mustache), had served our breakfast less than two hours earlier.

I pointed at my lip and said “what did you do to your mustaches?” They both broke into huge grins and said they just shaved them off. I asked why and all they could say was “Johnny!” Johnny is the assistant manager of these units (working for Sanjay) and he is apparently their boss. Why he decided that mustaches had to go I don’t know, but I’ve since noticed that all the young male staff who used to have mustaches are now clean-lipped.

H1N1 is a concern here, just like in the US and many other countries. Just two weeks before we arrived here, a Pune-based Avaya employee died from the disease. There are billboards on the streets that preach good sanitation to combat the spread of the disease and some people wear masks or kerchiefs over their nose and mouth presumably to cut down on the chances the pesky little germs will get to them.

Despite these attempts at awareness, it’s surprising to see the public drinking stations in the little shopping center nearby that is called the Destination Center. At the Center there are a number of water coolers standing outside of some shops. On top of the upside down bottle that holds the water to be dispensed is a metal cup, also turned upside down. When someone is thirsty, s/he goes to the water cooler, grabs the metal cup, fills it with water, drinks from it then turns the metal cup upside down again and puts it back on top of the water bottle. The next person does the same thing, using exactly the same cup. I didn’t see anyone bother to wipe the rim of the cup or use hand sanitizer on it or in any way worry about any germs left from the last partaker. Maybe germs can not live on a metal cup so the practice is completely safe, but it seemed very odd to us.

To ease you into the topic of driving in India, let me first mention that gas here runs about $1 per liter (slightly less than $4 per gallon). That’s high, especially compared to the standard of living here, but no where near European prices. Interestingly, like in almost every country except the US, diesel is significantly cheaper here (less than $3 per gallon). There are many more two wheelers (scooters and small motorcycles) than there are cars on the streets. I don’t pay rapt attention to every two wheeler that I see, but I’ve looked at thousands in the weeks we’ve been here and I have not yet seen one with more than 1 cylinder. When I told Ashraf that I have a two wheeler he looked surprised (because I don’t understand anything about India he thinks I’m an idiot when it comes to every aspect of life). When I told him it weighed over 300 kilos his eyes almost bugged out of his head. He very correctly noted that I would have to be from Mars to think about riding such a behemoth in Pune traffic. Assuming that owning a Harley is a world-wide status symbol, I was crushed when Ashraf had no idea what a Harley was.

I have finally figured out driving in India. At first it looks like total anarchy, but it’s not. There is one very basic rule here. Simply put, “THERE ARE NO RULES!” Traffic here is like running water in a creek bed. Each little water droplet is trying its best to get down the creek, but there are millions of other little water droplets all trying to do the same thing. So they squeeze into every space available, thereby maximizing the total throughput of the water droplets as they make their way downstream. Do not try this at home, but imagine how much more quickly a traffic jam would clear out in the US if everyone used every possible inch of road surface (or anything else nearby like lawns, sidewalks, farm fields etc.) to maneuver forward instead of more or less sitting idly in his or her lane waiting for the big knot of traffic to unclot.

Driving in India is a game of chicken, it’s a game of inches, it’s a game of intuition and, surprisingly, it’s a game of gracious accommodation. The most important vehicle accessory here is the hooter (horn), which is way more important than mirrors. Many two wheelers don’t even have mirrors, many trucks drive with their mirrors tucked in (rendering them useless) and we’ve been told that when students are taught to drive on the mean streets of India’s largest cities, the mirrors on the student cars are covered over.

Everyone drives on the left hand side of the road (this is a former British colony after all). When you’re making a left hand turn here, it’s like making a right hand turn in the US in the sense that you are turning from an inside lane to another inside lane. When Ashraf makes a left turn at a busy intersection where there are no stop signs, traffic lights or any other mitigation devices, he does not even look in his mirror or over his right shoulder to see if anyone is coming in that lane. He just makes the assumption that anyone coming will see him pulling out and move over to accommodate his move. The first time I witnessed this I naturally assumed I was going to be killed, but he’s done the same thing numerous times since and I’m still alive.

Right turns are equally adventurous. The idea is to start nosing into oncoming traffic. They will swerve out of the way, but eventually you will be nosed out so far, and/or you’ll have enough other nosers with you, that oncoming traffic will slow or stop so you can cut across their lane to finish your right turn.

Given that no one pays much attention to rear view mirrors, the horn is very important. Horn toots can mean the following: 1) I’m coming up on you; 2) I’m right beside you; 3) move over a little; 4) Don’t even think about coming out of that driveway; 5) Get the f*** out of my way! Surprisingly, number 5 is rarely meant by a horn toot. Despite the fact that everyone is out for him/her self and everyone is honking at everyone else and everyone is threatening to run into everyone else at every moment, people don’t seem to get very angry about all the seeming anarchy. They continue to play their individual games of chicken and when it’s obvious that they are in danger of losing, they give up their position with a shrug and start matching wits with the next locomoter on the road.

The cooperative aspect is probably the most unexpected element of the mayhem. Even though you are trying to move in an unimpeded manner, bluffing each and every other thing moving on the road, the sense of compromise in order to keep traffic moving is palpable. I chalk it up to attention and intuition. Peggy and I can’t even move around our kitchen without bumping into each other every 10 seconds, while the entire country of India seems to perform this transportational dance in perfectly discordant harmony. You do see a few drivers talking on cell phones here, but by and large people really pay attention, because to do otherwise invites disaster.

Does that mean accidents don’t happen here? Hah! Here are some very frightening statistics on accidents in India - http://nitawriter.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/what-is-the-solution-to-indias-high-accident-rate/ . Just to cherry pick a few, India kills more than 130,000 people per year in motor accidents and the country records 10% of the world’s total number of accidents. Most of the serious accidents happen on the highways, rather than in the cities where speeds are kept low due to the massive congestion. (I should not have read this report less than 6 hours before we embark on a long road trip.)

On balance, riding in Indian traffic is always petrifying, but the multitude of near misses Ashraf records every day are just part of real life here.

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