Our Roads and Us

In about an year of driving to and fro my office, I have only seen one accident happen and fortunately or unfortunately, I never saw it Live. I only arrived on the scene about an hour late. But this week alone, two incidents took place.

Incident 1:

I was on my way to the office, as usual on my bike. Then along the way I saw a huge crowd at the side of the road. There were even people who had climbed the divider to get a glimpse of what had happened (such a thing can happen only in India). As I crawled through the inevitable traffic jam, I saw a couple of people who were bent double and they had long bamboo sticks in their hand. I noticed that the ends of the sticks were damaged a little. There seemed to have been a lot of beating that took place. Further there was a bike standing nearby with its seat removed. And everyone was looking on the ground. I strained myself a little - stood on my toes, bent sideways - to get a glimpse of whatever/whoever it was the crowd was lost in but I could get a glimpse of neither a body nor blood. I crossed the scene of the incident, parked my bike at the side and asked somebody who was coming out from the crowd, "What happened?", and he replied, "Snake".

Incident 2:

This incident happened just the day after the previoud incident took place. I reached a junction and noticed that the traffic was stagnant. Nobody was moving. Rather everybody had tried to move and got into the way of someone else. The result - Something similar to the pic below.

(this pic has been flicked from Hindu.com)

Everyone was stuck behind someone else in a circular kind of a fashion. Taking full advantage of being on a bike, I weaved my way through the traffic in what could have been the longest route to cover 25 m. Then I noticed what could have triggered the congestion. There was dust all over the road and half the road was blocked by some large object. Whatever it was, had fallen on the left side of the road causing some amount of damage to the one-room, tiny shops alongside the road. And the object was nothing but a, lorry. A lorry carrying dugged earth had overturned and fallen on its side blocking half the road. I couldn't even imagine how such a large, slow-moving vehicle with a full-load at the back manage to overturn. And this proves, that "IMPOSSIBLE" isn't a word in the dictionaries of Indians. It also justifies the love we have towards Physics laws-defying stunts in our movies.