Any one new to Hyderabad can be forgiven for assuming (mistakenly though) that given its reputations as a hi-tech city, traffic in the city would be zipping around at bewildering speeds on mirror smooth roads. They would get the shock of their lives when they find the traffic moving at a leisurely pace more in keeping with our Nawabi culture.
What they are not aware is that all traffic in Hyderabad is governed by a special unwritten law which states that the maximum speed of the traffic on any given stretch of road shall not exceed the speed of the slowest moving object (object, not vehicle) on that road. Following this law, traffic here rarely exceeds speeds beyond a funereal 10 kmph.
With speeds like these one never gets to shift into any higher gear other than the second gear. The second gear is the unofficially designated top gear in Hyderabad. All gears above the second gear are practically redundant in Hyderabad. One reason why Hyderabadi drivers are such expert one-handed drivers is that the other hand is almost welded to the gear stick.
Some say that one of the most appealing things about traffic in Hyderabad is that it is such a great leveler. Irrespective of whether you are driving the latest Mercedes or a spindly moped or a fancy imported bike, you have to move in tandem with several other vehicles specially designed to crawl. Out of ten moving objects on the road in Hyderabad, one can find two or more rickshaws, one auto trolley, two cyclists, two pushcarts (out of which one selling bananas), one bullock cart and one garbage truck and one city bus. Rickshaws rank as the slowest on the road.
Normally ricksaws should carry passengers but nowadays in Hyderabad they seem to carry more goods than passengers. More than half the rickshaws in Hyderabad seem to carry kilometer long pipes or iron roads and the other half carry plywood boards the size of football fields. Bullock carts rank next. In this age of CNG buses and cars with six gears, these still survive. In Hyderabad they mostly transport enormous mounds of grass or hay which gives the feeling that one is a following a multi-storied hut on wheels reaching almost to the sky. Any higher and they would have to fix red beacon lights to warn low flying aircraft.
Auto trolleys are next in slowness. These are nothing but glorified autorickshaws. But the guys who drive these ridiculous vehicles like to think that they are actually driving 20 tonne trailer trucks and hence pile it up with enough goods to fill a cargo plane. It is the most favorite vehicle of the tent house firms that supply all the articles you need to organize a function at home.
One of the s-l-o-w-e-s-t moving objects is the push cart. The perennially hot favorite of vendors, this plank of wood on four spindly tyres carries an amazing range of goods- from fruits, vegetables, flowers to consumer goods like pressure cookers, plastic goods, suitcases and what not. Incidentally, every second pushcart in Hyderabad sells bananas and judging by the number of pushcarts selling banans one sees, the banana seems to be the Hyderabadi’s favorite fruit. Quite interestingly, the banana also happens to be the favorite food of monkeys. Given our antics on the road no wonder we consume so many bananas.
All the above vehicles someow manage to be at the very front at the traffic signals. When the light goes green it takes quite a while for them to achieve critical momentum by which time the light would have changed to red again. Sometimes it takes three changes of lights to just cross the junction.
Ironically one sees signs like ‘Speed Thrills, But Kills’ almost every where in the city. They look so out of place in Hyderabad where the traffic speed is such that we don’t seem it necessary to wear helmets or strap on the seat belts.
The above article appeared in the 'Hyderabad Life & Style' supplement of The Hindu way back in 2003 and incidentally, in July!
No comments:
Post a Comment