Delhi Honks

We had a houseguest from Oslo for a few days last month. She went out to savour Delhi’s delights and was suitably enthralled by the tombs and the temples, the malls and the mehfils, the kababs and the qilas. On our way back from India Gate one evening, she remarked, “These roads are so wide and easy to drive. But everyone is honking for no reason.”

I wanted to tell her how she couldn’t be more wrong.

When we Delhites honk, there is always a reason. The foremost reason is the same that Edmund Hillary had for conquering the Everest. We bang on the horn because it is there. You may ask why do we honk when stuck at traffic signals, when nothing can be done except to wait for the lights to turn, like how Sunita Williams can’t do anything except curse the rocket that didn’t know its science. Wrong again, the reasons are many. It is the primitive urge in us humans to excitedly share something we have just seen with fellow humans. Like how we point to a full moon through the ruins, shimmering through sheaths of PM 2.5 and PM 10, to an unknown jogger in Lodi Garden. Or like how strangers hold hands on the beaches of Kovalam when the monsoon clouds thunder in. Like when children Skype their parents back home when they see the first snowflakes fall in Chicago. So, when the light turns from red to green, it is with great camaraderie we honk to tell everyone around us that it has done so.

Marauding Forth

We also honk before that, when the lights are about to change, to prepare our fellow drivers for the race that lies ahead. We are worried someone may be swiping at reels, is immersed in Moosewala, is rapt in a maa-behen chatter with fellow passengers, has simply dozed off, or in a rare chance, is deep in thought. With ‘Jatt ki Jet, Gujjar The Great’ written on the windshields, and Vodka on the fuel-tank lid, we can’t be expected to be idling the engine. The warring lineage forces us to maraud forth, particularly at traffic lights. When the seconds on the green light are diminishing alarmingly, as it turns to a blinking amber, we honk furiously to egg on the vehicle ahead to dabao the killi. And if the light turns red just before we cross the finish line, can we be blamed for not honking at the hand fate has dealt us?

Traffic jams are so staid and static, what better place than this to spread some ‘music’? We honk at traffic jams to tell the cars ahead of us to get Bahubalian powers to get moving even though we can see there are about a hundred of them lined up. If we feel the thought of jumping lanes is lurking in the neighbouring driver’s mind, which we can tell by the short spurts his vehicle has been taking towards our lane, we honk to stop him. Of course, we have to honk to inform the vehicle next to us when we decide to jump lanes.

Roads are for Driving

The most important reason we honk is to let everybody know that we are breaking one of those Colonial-era traffic rules. Wouldn’t you expect us to honk maniacally if we are hurtling down a flyover on the wrong side? If we are in the middle lane and are about to make a sharp U-turn, shouldn’t we warn the vehicles on the fast lane of this move? Isn’t it reasonable that we honk when we zip through a red light? We also always honk at a zebra crossing to let pedestrians know we are not going to stop so they better back off. As everybody knows, roads are for driving, parks are for walking.

At night, we put on a spectacular light and music show on the road. Since ‘Blow Horn’ and ‘Use Dipper At Night’ are written behind every truck, this is one rule we follow to the hilt. The rows of red tail lights of vehicles down the Bara Pullah flyover looks like slow-moving fresh lava from a recently erupted volcano. Stuck in the middle of this, wouldn’t anyone automatically reach for the horn and flash the high beam frantically in PTSD syndrome?

It’s all fine for a Norwegian—wooden, dark and deep-freezing—to be listless while driving, but in sunny and spirited Delhi we drive with a big dil.

Satish Padmanabhan is Managing Editor, Outlook

(This appeared in the print as 'Delhi Diary')