March 27,  2001

Vail Daily 
Vail, Colorado

Honk if you're in Calcutta
By Polly Letofsky

Calcutta, India- There are entire chapters dedicated to the how-to's of crossing a street in Calcutta. I skipped over those chapters. I pooh-poohed the silliness. Certainly if you're patient enough to wait for the light and take your turn swiftly, you'll be just fine. If I would've read those chapters, I would've known that there are no lights, well, maybe a few, but those are broken so the poor policeman has to stand out there in the middle of hell bouncing off rickshaws with nothing but a whistle and a prayer. I hesitate to use the term "traffic" because that might suggest some sort of plan or system and there is none. You don't drive but rather weave and dodge and maneuver. There are no lanes, vehicles don't have blinkers. Driving on the left is only a suggestion and the vehicle in India is nothing without its horn. When someone is in your way (and with over a billion people when isn't someone in your way?), you honk the horn. When you try to squeeze between two buses you honk, they honk. When traffic comes to a halt, everybody honks. When you try to pass someone who's only going 50kph down the side street then you honk before you pass, during the pass and after you pass. At night the honks only get louder because the headlights don't work. When you see the "No honking" sign you honk at it because it's in your way. The horn in India is used an average of 15 times per kilometer, multiply that by the 45 million horns on the road and you've got a lot of people gone deaf, or crazy, at an early age. The buses have no windows or doors, people hang off the sides, the back, from the roof, and the bus doesn't have stops, you just jump on and off. People run through traffic to jump on the back ladder of the bus and climb to the top - while the bus is still moving. When the bus plows its way through traffic, the people on the roof just hang on to the railings and sway back and forth. There are human-motored rickshaws, auto rickshaws, streams of bicycles, ox carts, motorbikes, hordes of walkers, all of them honking at goats and chickens and cows crossing the street, but you don't honk at the cow because the cow is sacred and you don't beep at Her Holiness. To use the excuse, "Sorry, I'm late, the traffic was just horrific" just doesn't fly in Calcutta. It's like those construction companies back home in Vail that say they would've finished much earlier but "who could've guessed there'd be so much doggoned snow?" * * * Raj and his buddy were taking me to an overnight Lions Club meeting about 40 miles - or two hours drive away. So while I sat in the back becoming religious he put his hands on 10 and 2 and bolted around rickshaws, dodging and honking at the people running, the dogs in the street and the chickens crossing the road. LOOK OUT for the truck carrying heaping tons of god-knows-what. WHOOPS look out for the oncoming ox carts. BOUNCY, there we go through a pothole. UPSY DAISY my head hits the roof bouncing off a speed bump. WATCH OUT, herd of cows on the right, there's a truck coming straight at us. HOOOONK, get out of the way. LOOK OUT for the family on the bicycle. ON YOUR LEFT women with baskets of wheat on their heads. UH OH, dodge the man carrying bricks on his bicycle, whew that was close. Raj speeds up but an ox cart pulls out in his way and he slams on the brakes sending us skidding to the left and the right and the left and the phone rings and he answers it because why wouldn't you and with all the squealing and the honking and the skidding still no one pays any notice because it's all normal and once I realize that I'm going to live for another 30 seconds, I weep but the buses are laying on the horn so no one hears my cries. * * * In two hours we reach the meeting. I tumble out of the backseat clutching my hand that is now in a terminal grip and I'm greeted by a number of Lions who'll be helping me along the way: "You made it in good time," they say, "Good job." Good job, yeah right, like the husband in the delivery room does a good job. And like him, I'm just hanging on in the background hoping to survive without seeing too much blood.

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