Road lessons

In the middle of a spell of travel here and there, much of the time with no web/newspaper access ... and when I got a newspaper a few days ago, I found out about a tragedy on Carter Road. Here's a short piece I wrote about it for DNA Westcoast (today November 17).

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So let's see, what lessons are there to learn from the recent deaths on Carter Road? Well, going by the letters columns which I'm addicted to reading, more or less any lessons you choose. Try some, won't you?

If you tend to drive fast, don't worry. Salman Khan can and will help. So says letter writer Chandrakant Kotian. His advice is to "fix a poster of Salman Khan on the windscreen with the words Aaram Se Boss. It might help you slow down." Slow down, not least because your vision through that windscreen will be suddenly restricted, perhaps severely.

Those who were killed were the ones who actually broke the law. So says letter writer Anjum Samel. He believes the city "has become one big orphanage and the migrants keep pouring in." Yes, and these migrants sleep on the roads, so Anjum would like the Motor Accidents Tribunal to "take cognizance of whether the victims have transgressed the law" in so doing. And if they have, punish them! What's death got to do with it, after all?

What those people in the car were doing that night was "deviant behaviour", says letter writer Denis Khan. And the "triggering factor in all deviant behaviour is a lack of parental/societal love." So if these kids had only had more love from parents and others around them, they may not have mowed down people sleeping on the road.

The big surprise in this tragedy, for letter writer Ian Pereira, is that the people in the car were all Catholics. After all, says Pereira, Catholics were "till recently, respected for being disciplined." I'm thinking of a perennially drunk college chum and a builder I know who cuts some serious corners, among others, when I say I find it hard to agree with Pereira. But that's what he says.

So there you have it, some lessons that people have taken from the tragedy.

You might also think about some others.

For one, the way we build roads. After all, these dead people were not "migrants" "pouring" into the "orphanage." They were labourers brought there by a contractor to work on Carter Road. Such labourers invariably, and I mean invariably, live in shacks on the pavement of such roads and sleep outside those shacks on the road. Just so are our roads made even more easily drivable for Corollas piloted by party-goers.

While you're thinking about that one, you might also think about the toilet facilities such contractors provide for such labourers. Just an aside, you realize.

For another, which is related, the way we develop. In 21st Century wi-fied India, we have a large number of people who can afford sleek speedy cars. We also have a large number of people who both build the roads for the first set, and sleep on those roads at night. Are these two sets of people unmindful of each other? Should they be? What does that say about how we develop?

As I said, you can take away whatever lessons you like. But choose carefully.