[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] In the End, It's Actually Kind of Relaxing...

Now, I've seen traffic in some various parts of the world, but I've never seen the sort of semi-controlled chaos of India. However, this video shows not only the chaos of Indian traffic, but there's also a sense of elegance involved.

Of course, I dare you to toss in a tourist in a rental who has no idea how these unwritten rules operate just to see what kind of massive pile-up you'd witness.

I like it.

One of my favorite traffic stories was on my first trip to Paris in the summer of 1993. It was a Friday morning in June, and as the cab driver negotiated his way through the catacombs of narrow Parisian streets, one turn after another became more and more congested until we found ourselves wound into a massive gridlock of honking, stagnant Renaults, Fords, Citroens and any other little metal box of indeterminate pedigree.

There may have even been a terrified Yugo or Trebant trembling and dying in the middle of it for all I knew.

"Merde!" My chain-smoking, stubble-faced cab driver said with a smack of the dashboard and a glance back at me as if to say Ugly American? This is not the Paris you were meant to see!

I personally didn't care. I was in Paris, and I was learning the French language in a traffic jam that stretched for miles for all I knew, and when it comes to spitting out profanities in traffic, it's a pretty tight race between the Romans and the Parisians. The Romans are a little more animated with their hands and fingers; whereas, the French are far more alluring. Even as my cab driver suffered a brutal beating at the hail of biting French epithets, I could see his eyes in the rear view, and I knew that no matter how much the man in the car beside him cursed his mother for her love of farm animals and sailors, I knew that the cab driver was most likely thinking this will only end one way you bastard! Once I get this dumb American out of my car, I will be sleeping with your wife because you're stuck in gridlock and you're going to have a lot of hours to make up at work.

Fortunately, I only had a backpack to lug around, so I paid the cabbie, gave him a tip, he shook my hand with a laugh, and I trundled off down the sidewalk to quickly realize that the Parisians do a very odd thing when stuck in gridlock:

The simply abandon their cars and start walking.

Of course, I suppose it's not like anyone will hop in one these abandoned autos and take off since there's no way to go anywhere.

I have absolutely no idea how they go about cleaning up that mess. I imagine a herd of tow-trucks come in and start lugging away the detritus of Parisian traffic planning to clear a path. After all, by mid afternoon, the mess was gone when I stepped out of my hotel in pursuit of a ridiculously cheap but damn good bottle of wine (which I actually found at the pharmacy two doors down from my hotel while buying band aids for my blisters).

The thing is, never in my life have I ever seen that sort of maddening gridlock. I wish I'd been in a helicopter as to see the full extent of the spider-web of cars backed up from one intersection to the other. I'm glad I wasn't trapped in it. If I were driving in that mess, I'd have probably died from starvation, and I'd have ended my holiday having my flesh pecked from my bones by French ravens on some shady Parisian side-street.

Now, as for Rome, as much as that's an entirely different story, I'll also say that if you're in a cab somewhere on the streets of Rome, you're going to be moving one way or the other. Your life will be flashing before your eyes, and if you reach your destination in one piece, you will actually fall from the car jolted and rattled to the point of crawling to St. Peter's in the middle of the night on bloodied knees to thank God for inventing cars with brakes so as to not hit your taxi that apparently didn't have any.

Anyway, back to India... The traffic in the video above looks a hell of a lot like a rugby match of some sort, and I'm thinking there isn't a car within fifty miles of that intersection that doesn't have some patch of paint on it from another car that's also within fifty miles of the intersection. In fact, I'm willing to say that considering all the cars have probably swapped enough paintto the point of being a kaleidoscopic mass of multi-colored cars and trucks in that neighborhood, this would go a long way in explaining at least a few of the later Beatles album covers.

-DP

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 1/05/2008 01:06:00 PM