Gandhigiri and Bangalore Driving

Bangalore Roads and atrociousness are no new entry to a blog. I always thought I can refrain from writing about it. But, I guess it was important. This morning as I was driving an auto-rickshaw suddenly cut into my straight path from the side without giving any indication of its negotiating a left turn. In total bewildered state I bumped into it. As luck could have it I left my vehicle and jumped away and had a perfect landing with a very minor scratch on my thumb. The driver got down and approached towards me. A normal me would have made a noise and god knows what. For a change, I asked him - "Are you ok?"

I do not know if that was a valid question to ask and walked towards him. I saw him speechless he picked up my scooter and brought it to standing. I could see a guilty feel in his eyes and a look that was downwards. A large group of passers by gathered around me. I just asked them to leave as there was nothing serious there. They were equally confused. A morning entertainment was averted.

A couple of weeks back a similar thing happened with a car. And just to avoid a collision I just switched off the engine and jumped out and my scooter fell on a side and no harm was done neither to the car nor my scooter collided with it. I saw a fuming car driver parking his car 15 meters ahead and giving me tips as how I was reckless and how could his car could have damaged beyond repair and how worried he was for me without helping me with my getting my scooter straight. I gave him a disgusted dirty look and told him how needless his tips were and started my scooter and left. I saw him cursing and making a noise for no good reason.

What was the basic difference between the two incident. It's the approach. One constructive and the other blame game. A simple question of "Are you ok?" did the trick. The simple act of helping someone in distress versus giving lectures as what a genius we have been and how the rest of the world was wrong.

In a world of competition we tend to find our competitor everywhere we go. Even when they do not exist. Showing that upmanship is too inherent to us. The bigger goal is what we are missing in life. The pathetic Bangalore roads is a menace. Rather than helping our fellow travelers we tend to show how a great driver we are in negotiating our way through. That makes our travel more of a competition. Similarly, in life we create unnecessary hierarchies and play power games. Many a times we do not see the real problem which is an inanimate project as we call it as our true enemy and get it straight. Accepting one's mistake and correct it if needed, is that so hard? I still believe the world provides ample opportunity to everyone to compete with oneself and be a better person in your own metric than comparing with the whole world or the person next to you.

I guess Gandhigiri is just a first step to that direction.