Graffiti

Hi all! I am back after a brief, inadvertent gap. This is a season of weddings and vacations and I was a bit tied up.
One of these days, I was driving in to an unknown part of the city. While at the wheel, and being plodded along by the traffic around me, I had no other way of knowing where I was, except the signposts and road-markers put up by the administration. Thank them and God for that, I thought.
I was merrily cruising along when suddenly I found that that the next signpost exhibited not the information I sought and which this signpost was intended for, but a picture of some idiot grinning at me with his hands folded, extolling me to “vote for glass” or for some other such house-hold item.
This happens all the time. You wish to board your train from some obscure station on the way but find the space for the reservation chart is splattered with pamphlets of some political rally; you are at a government office and the information board is all filled up with the union elections in the offing; in short all and any important information displayed for some public good is bound to be defaced and replaced with some humbug.
Why does this happen? What types of people do this? In my view, this happens because there is such a huge identity crisis and people need to assert themselves in the most radical manner, public sensibilities and their needs be damned. And also because, in general, we are not a very civic society. Any one of us is actually not attuned to respecting valid needs of others.
I remember having read somewhere recently that in Germany, there is a talk of proposing a legislation to curb all such graffiti, with a provision of strict punishment including imprisonment. I think there is a valid need for such a legislation here in our country too.

Horny Indians

I have just returned home after an excruciating drive through the notorious city traffic and have realized yet again how horny we Indians are.
Now, please do not get me wrong. I usually do not think about sex while driving, at least not in terms of some dry sociological fact.
When I say horny, I refer to the propensity of an average Indian, while s/he is driving, to rely on his vehicle’s sound horn more than any thing else, including his driving skills.
While waiting at the traffic lights, God forbid if your reflexes fail you for even a nano-second when the light changes from red to green. Instantaneously, you would be chastised by a harsh symphony of sounding of all kinds of horns from all directions.
While actually moving, its your solemn responsibility to come up to the expectations of all your fellow-drivers in terms of maintaining speed, sticking to your lane etc. If you falter even a bit, a sharp rebuke of a short, powerful sounding of horn (akin to a rap on the knuckles) awaits you.
And then, what better way to proclaim your right to the road than an authoritative and gruff sounding of horn.
I sometimes wonder why do we need any brakes at all in our vehicles? Let the best horn win!