DON’T GET PERSONAL

#PAKISTAN #RULES #KARACHI #TRAFFIC

One of the many things I am annoyed by in Pakistan is people’s driving. I am now on the stage that it has become funny to me. I laugh.

People take it too personally on roads here. You can’t be in front of someone (LITERALLY) . Anyone behind you thinks that it is his right to be in front of you. Everybody wants to be ahead of everyone. If you dare to overtake someone, you commit a moral, ethical and spatial crime. (It is his right to be ahead of you). Your overtaking will make you face all sorts of verbal and gestural abuse. You will be honked behind until you turn deaf or run into the car in front of you.

You can’t even think of crossing the road in your car. If you are at a junction without traffic light, you have to wait until all the vehicles stop coming FOREVER. Wait as long as it takes to pass a lifetime. You dare to calculate the appropriate distance between yourself and the car coming (and the distance is just right), you will have to have that car speeding up until it comes an inch away to your side (or even on you). You will realize that you ripped the other driver of his ‘road rights’. It is ‘TOO PERSONAL’ in Pakistan to come in front of someone on the road (even if you are right). Everyone wants to be the first one to go. ‘Give Way’ rule is something Latin for people. Don’t think it is the trait of only illiterate; you will find the entire nation in competition. (taking work place ‘lost competition’ frustration out on roads.)

People feel pride to be the owner of part of the road they are over. They are too possessive for any part that is juxtaposing their space in four directions. Right, left, front, behind, all are theirs. You can’t take any. You take it and you will be harassed until you change your course. (go home from some other side of the world).

A 50 feet trawler, a giant mechanical tyrant, will not fear to side you (even if its whole long behind sways like a flag on the road). (Happened to me yesterday when I overtook an empty trawler on a bypass and the driver got offended because my size was too small to beat his on the road.) It’s too personal for everyone.

Many times people have cut me right in front (so dangerously that a second’s miscalculation would have me collect a flat front of my car.) Why cutting me? Because I did not respond to the driver’s honk when he was being unreasonable in demand of way in spite of millions of cars in front of me.

Yesterday (and everyday it happens) I was on a flyover bridge. There were only two lanes. I was going fast, hence I rolled on the right side. (Pakistan has right hand driving). I overtook a Suziki Highroof (that’s what we do, we overtake from right side if we want to go ahead of a slow car.) I did not do anything wrong. That vehicle’s speed was less than mine was, so I overtook. Well, a few seconds later, that driver came right behind me on the bridge (two lanes only) and tailed me with hardly an inch gap. He honked like crazy. (so loud and so much that I thought he was in my car), he started showing me hands (gestural abuse), started calling me names (verbal abuse) and clearly seemed upset at me of going ahead of him. I could not change the lane because all the vehicles next to me and in front of me had same speed as mine. Believe me, if the car in front of me had suddenly slowed down because of car in front it had slowed down, my car would have turned more hatchback than it already was in its Japanese design. (I changed the lane a few seconds later and the crazy driver still stayed behind me because of the cars in front of him. He continued his practice and road rights to others then. )

You can’t even come in front of a driver who is coming in your opposite direction (wrong way). He will want to go first (even though, he is on the wrong side of the road. It’s his right to go wrong way because the road has an island with an opening 10 meters away, which will cause him delay of 10 second if he follows the road discipline and take a ‘U turn’ from there.) Why should he do it? He is a Pakistani and he has a right to break rules.

Everyone does it -big cars, small cars, expensive cars, cheap cars; educated uneducated, literate, illiterate. Everyone’s in hurry. Everyone wants to have a few extra seconds seeing life.

I am not sure if I am supposed to follow rules or live in a jungle like animals live. (Dog eat dog rule).