ONE NIGHT DRIVING IN DELHI:

Last night Richa and I decided to grab a quick drink at PVR, Saket which is at a stone's throw from home. Well you cant actually throw a stone but but maybe its an air gun shot from home? The point is that it wasnt as if we went for a drive drive and almost as we stepped out - at the sole red light between home and PVR one blue Wagon R (UP number 6890) drove right into my bumper and Richa immediately jumped out of the car to "fix the moron"!!! I was still struggling with my seat belt when the guy sneaked his car almost through my open car door and ran away. Now that was enough to ignite my north Indian fighting spirit. Richa promptly jumped back in and I almost stood upon the accelarator to catch up with him and we gave him the chase of his life for the next 20 minutes.

The guy must be about 35 (can't even blame adolescence and the blah )and his eyes were glued right in front of him as it was his mission to pierce through all that came his way that night and he would intermittently raise his right arm at right angles as if to say that he was going to stop. And then he would promptly and predictably take the next turn he could find. Like if the traffic was going right he would turn left as if he actually thought I was IQ challenged ! Richa was shouting profanities and I was doing mental math's to arrive at the approximate denting and painting cost of my brand new red Swift since I was itching to bang my front bumper into the back of his car. We were back to back and side to side most of the time and I think I could have broken his side glass with a hammer if I had one ( Wasi told me later that he keeps a hammer under my seat just in case I needed it !!!)

For others on the road it must have been quite a spectacle since he was speeding like crazy and I was right behind him with one hand blaring the horn non stop. At one dark corner at Jia Sarai we spotted a sleepy looking cop resting on his baton. Richa started yelling " POLICE POLICE" and the cop got completely startled and he jumped a few times since he could nothing else and he waived his baton in the air but we were gone by then. A few meters ahead there was another of his tribe slouching like a fat lazy dog on a chair at an imposing police barricade near Qutub Hotel. I thought we had finally got the evil Wagon R but the UP Champ nearly drove through the barricade, almost knocked a scooterist dead and Richa was half out of the window shouting "CATCH THAT MAN" and I was honking non stop driving like a maniac. The cop kept slouching like he was and looked so bored that I decided that the chase wasn't really worth the effort since not only did no one including the cops, seem to care but it wasn't entertaining enough for anyone either! I turned back to go grab that quick drink at PVR.By then we really needed it. On the way back we both wondered what would happen if a woman screamed rape in a moving car on these same roads, or if someone just went berserk with their car killing people, like this guy seemed close to be doing....Delhi would probably not even bother to look the other way. Too much effort. Easier to just stare.