In a Country Obsessed with Horns

Bangalore: Srikant Batt has been living and working in a town in UK for three years now. He says, in these three years he has heard precisely four honks, and he goes to work by public transport every day. How many horns have you heard today on your way to work? More than four I suppose. Well, we Indians have several mannerisms on road that are not fit for the road and it remains a mystery how we manage to survive everyday traffic with them. Let us go through some of these mannerisms.

Honking



Well it has a purpose, to warn others that we are approaching. But that is only a part of the purpose for us. We are obsessed with horns; we honk way more than it is necessary. We do not care about the time, place or purpose. We honk at night, near hospital, when the signal is red, and even without traffic. It is an essential part of our driving, we have to do it. We do not care about decibels, we do not care about the ampere, we do not care if we are harming others and ourselves with it, we just have to do it. We flaunt our horns.