I had forgotten how interfering the folks of my homeland India could be. Incidentally, if one was interested in marking their levels of interference, people living in Delhi would top the list. Any day! And that was because there was no concept of individual privacy here … because everyone was busy minding everyone else’s business, you see.
Also, following the instructions on a GPS was a waste of time in this place. The best guides locally were the ordinary people themselves. Alternately, one could drive up to a traffic-cop, take one’s car dangerously close to the little triangle on which he stood, hang one’s head out of the window, and ask for directions. The row of vehicles that got stuck in a disorderly queue because of such an action was generally ignored and they blew their horns incessantly, which was also disregarded as a minor irritant.
A few years back, I landed in Delhi towards the tail end of the odd-even formula that had been introduced there. What was that? Well, to combat the rising levels of pollution in this congested metropolis, the local government had formulated an innovative scheme where private vehicles were allowed to run on the streets on alternate days, depending on whether their license plates ended in an even or odd number.
This method, more commonly known as road space rationing, was followed in various forms across the world. But some experts lamented that its implementation proved to be a major challenge because roughly two million vehicles had to be kept off the roads every day. The model was already in force in Beijing, which Delhi had surpassed recently to be ranked as the world’s most polluted city, according to a WHO report.
“An absolutely foolish plan, this one. Trying to enforce it in a place where no one is ready to follow basic traffic rules is bound to fail,” predicted an elderly septuagenarian. We were standing in the porch of a hotel, waiting for our respective rental cars to arrive. I did not know the grey-haired gentleman, but that did not stop him from giving me a piece of his mind.
I nodded distractedly and turned on my heel in a move that I had perfected in my youth to escape from unrelenting monologues. However, I was not as nimble on my feet as I once was and, therefore, had to listen to more of the vituperative jargon that was hurled in my direction.
For the next two days, I heard many strangers give me their points of view on the traffic snarl, or the lack of it. After a few weeks, the trial experiment concluded, and Delhi, which was a city that hated following any regulation, heaved a collective sigh of relief.
Nevertheless, during that short period, I saw lesser cars on the road and the driving distance from one place to another was reduced to a significant extent. Still, some people took full advantage of the many loopholes that were inadvertently overlooked.
‘Why are you driving an odd numbered car on the even number day?’ I asked my friend one day.
‘I’m a woman’, she said.
‘And so?’ I queried.
‘We are exempt from the rule’, she smiled.
‘In this age of gender equality!’ I exclaimed.
‘I’m not complaining’, she smirked.
‘But you are a fierce feminist’, I reminded her.
‘And so?’, she raised an eyebrow.
‘Now you are being odd’, I accused.
‘It is called getting even’, she grinned.
By Nickunj Malik
|| features@portugalresident.com
Nickunj Malik’s journalistic career began when she walked into the office of Khaleej Times newspaper in Dubai thirty-one years ago and got the job. Since then, her articles have appeared in various newspapers all over the world. She now resides in Portugal and is married to a banker who loves numbers more than words.
