Lanes

My wife is a firm believer in something. Well, that in itself conveys nothing new I’m sure to a huge chunk of the male population. Let me specify more clearly. Let me demonstrate where she would differ, or so I’d like to think, from all other fine specimen of wives in general. She has a firm belief that if you look closely and know what to look for, the way a car is driven on the road can tell you almost everything about the personality of the driver, or the owner in case of chauffeur driven ones!

Well! You see, the thing is, I have actually started believing in this myself and by the time I am done here, chances are you will too!

So boot up, get your baby’s engine to purr and hit the nearest expressway (I eke out an existence in the wannabe Shanghai of India – Mumbai,  hence always want to tom-tom the cool sounding expressways; nevermind the fact that I cannot invite you onto any other kind of road without inviting pitiful looks from you). Let me guide you as you bump along the once smooth tarmac of maximum city, inflicting maximum pain on your beloved and yourself.  For this vital experiment to succeed, the hour needs to be the rush hour, the hour when the sum total of everyone’s emotion in this city is an ever rising panic and the only physical signature is a fearful heart that keeps fluttering with every tick-tock of the clock.

Come, watch with me as the masses leave their cubby-holes in a wide rainbow of departure manners. The rainbow begins from the enormously suave and cool, long-since-arrived, grey haired chief executive of a bank with a servant in tow clutching the executive briefcase and the jacket, while he calmly chews the cud of his success and of the office intrigues lying ahead at work, all mixed with the cardamom faithfully packed by his wife. And then there is the middle aged manager of the MNC pharmaceutical waving frantic good byes to his daughter while practically running toward the waiting car; the young software techie who saunters to his bike and never forgets to plug on his 2500 bucks headset mated to the latest ipod before he glides away into the traffic – oh, the blast of the first wave of heavy metal music, coursing through his body shaking and waking every slumberous geeky cell into action; the always busy working couple who tumble out of the elevator and shoot straight toward the waiting cab, bags, keys, shades, cell phones, tiffin, newspapers in hand executing every move with the precision of a marine and surviving them with the breathlessness of a dog. The rainbow has many more colours but then we digress. Let us get you back to the expressway where you have by now settled into your favourite lane I’m sure.

My wife believes that to choose a lane is the simplest way to reveal yourself to the world. The right most lane, the fast lane, the one sticking to the divider is the sediment bed. You know, if you have ever noticed a glass of murky water shaken and stirred, there is this clear thick layer of heavy substance that settles at the bottom almost immediately, laboriously moving in fitful jerks, burdened by their weight and failing to match the twirling frenzy above. That, my friend, is the right lane!

The home of either the heavy, the calm, the ones with the heaviest baggage inching slowly forward in life, the ones who have their life neatly chalked out in front of them, the pieces of the chess board laid out, all the moves rehearsed; or, of the ones with no baggage at all, no purpose to achieve anymore, no battles to be fought. They would probably tell you that they have already discovered this world’s secret: the complex webs all woven by the simple thread of ‘maya’, the deceptive mirage, the bubble! They would think well before they utter a word, would mostly know where they need to be at what moment and plan to be double sure to get there. And yes, they would never skip their breakfast for the chance to be the King of England. Too important a meal you see.

This lane is the abode of the content, those willing to get into the slow gear, willing to join a long queue of vehicles snaking towards their destination while the bulk of the traffic buzzes and whines past them in the lanes to their left. They would find it beneath them to commit the ignominy of honking, would rather patiently wait behind the car in front while their lane inexplicably stands still, would of course use the time to glance through a few more pages of the newspaper. Even if they have to wait an eternity in that stagnating long-winding queue, they would stake it out with a ferocity that is almost religious. After all, they were meant to be there in that place, waiting to see what has been placed in store for them. Life, for them, is a journey to be enjoyed, not an end to be achieved!

Then there is the center lane: the choice of the moderate, the middle path of happiness. Look at the car perfectly cruising down this lane, so very much like the champion tennis pro with the ball raised above his head, legs outstretched, racket and breath held back, poised to deliver the ace that’s sure to come. Oh, the advantage of keeping the world guessing which way the ace is going to rain down! You guessed right, it’s the den of the opportunist. The one who has successfully broken away from the dreary existence and has discovered that to be smart in today’s world is simply to have options! If Tendulkar is the guru of improvisation in cricket, in this lane you would meet the veritable gurus of improvisation in living life itself. Never take too firm a stand on anything, never commit yourself beyond the point of no return, never be seen too close to this camp or to that, balance, balance, balance is the mantra! They believe that no one in this world is right or wrong. Of course not! It’s the time and the situation that always is! This is the class of the quick risers, the shrewd game players, the diplomats lurking in the boardroom, the ones who absorb every shock and wait simply for their time to come. And they know it will, sooner or later!

And then as they try to move ahead and capitalize on an opportunity that just appeared in the left lane, there comes at break-neck speed, the bindaas left-lane maverick, the loose cannon, the wild card! And this is the only class that the opportunist hates sometimes, the one that wrecks up a carefully crafted, patiently awaited opportunity with a recklessness that is foolish and headstrong and unprofitable. Enter the quintessential Indian destroyer, the dancer in a trance!

This lane is the battleground of the aggressive, the reckless, the vain and the vainglorious. The beauty of this lane is it is the great leveler of Indian roads. Look closely and you would see a mingling of a sort that centuries have not seen in this country of ours. A mingling of the rich brat with his inherited millions in his third SUV, the poor autorickshaw-wallah eking out an uncomfortable existence on a borrowed rickshaw, the young property broker zipping through to reach his clients recently stolen from his old employer, the seasoned taxi driver negotiating the restless crowd smug in the knowledge that his rusted battered metal box has all the right of way in this beauty conscious crowd of metallic paints and bold body curves and enhanced wheel arches and crystal tail lamps and indicator sporting side-view mirrors. Also milling about are the transport wallahs in their tempos of all sizes and shapes, engines wailing in protest to the heartless greedy overloading, the frustrating hand-carts showcasing India’s ugly underbelly on the proud shining expressway, the cycles, the beggars, the occasional traffic cop and the unfortunate pedestrian who long back lost his footpath in this lawless city devoid of all civic sense.

This lane has it all: the reckless rich who have it all and don’t care if they lose some; the scraping poor who have nothing to lose and so don’t care anyways, the working class, the lorries and the trailers who ply here to make it convenient for the greedy cop who again ran out his budget 3 days before pay-day. They will stop at nothing if they think there is a chance to get ahead. It has the fickle, the impatient, the ungraceful, the young, the confident and the overconfident, the brusque and the rude, but most of all, the out-of-breath.

Watch closely and you will find that the young office manager who is trying to find his foothold in the cold, calculated, unforgiving corporate world drives here. He hasn’t arrived yet. He needs to pick at each of those risks that come his way and take them, and create those that don’t come and take them as well.  And some day, he hopes to switch lanes, to move across to the right lane in a car that would decisively proclaim that he has arrived. He hopes to join that slow lane in life where he would not need to be rushing somewhere all the time, getting late for something all the while, catching up on missed meals on the go; a place where he would no longer watch life cantering past him faster than he can cope with. Where he would perhaps get the elusive moment to sit down with his beloveds and take a deep breath and enjoy what has been always waiting in the wings.

But for now, life is galloping away faster and faster and he needs to catch up. To slow down is not an option and so he shrugs all the dreams and races ahead to fulfill these dreams. That elusive moment remains elusive for now.

And now that I have told you what my wife believes and what I too have observed, I’m sure you would see that over a fair amount of time, even though the denizens of these different lanes may chance upon and taste the other lane once in a while, they will almost always return to the comfort of their own lane, very much their story and statement in life.