Bone breaking lessons

I understand that hanging out at Miramar beach is supposed to be hep, hip and happening on a Saturday evening. Guys in tight T-shirts and even tighter jeans, and girls in small and bursting tank tops, with enough navel on display to look cool. That’s ok with me. I can tolerate over-crowded, slim shady touts hawking their bhelpuri menus, and shorma that tastes like yesterday’s leftovers. I can tolerate a eager-beaver Guju slurping his pani-puri out of his plate and down his fingers, while giving you the look-over. What I absolutely don’t tolerate is the flashy display of fancy wheels, guys drunk on testosterone think they can get away with, to look cool.

Let me narrate an incident that could have almost knocked some passing scooterists down, while we watched horrified on the almost not-there Miramar pavement. Considering the growing incidence of accidents amongst the younger generation, I have every reason to believe that pedestrians have to seriously re-think whether they should re-consider walking on the city’s ramshackle pavements (wherever they exist) or sit at home safely. You will agree with me that these pavements too (with broken tiles and loose cement blocks threatening to plunge us into underground neck-breaking gutters) are hardly safe for poor us, with juveniles hell-bent on breaking their bones and then ours.

I think of myself as a woman of action, so it was sheer shock that rooted me to the ground, as I watched an 18-something townie almost knock two passing scooterists with a sudden, and without warning, swerve of his Honda Ford. It was sheer muscle reflex applied to mechanics, which avoided, what could have been, a freak accident. Mouthing a volley of un-godly profanities, the scooterists proceeded their way. Not that it deterred this obviously brain dead dude, who proceeded to do cartwheels again and yet again, and then swerving sharply right into the crowded bhelpuri section of the road. Hardly a muscle twitched in grimace, as I watched the faces of the five odd tight T-shirt varieties, huddled inside the plushy confines of the car. I guess it was my yet-to-be-mastered-art of counting to 10, which stopped me from walking up to the driver, and imprinting my palm on his smug cheek. However, he didn’t let me entertain second thoughts on this course of action either. For, within moments, satisfied with his show of shameless bravado, the townie revved up the engine and drove off with his bunch of laughing buffoons.

I skipped the bhelpuri that evening, but continue to keep a watch for an opportunity to exercise my palms. It surprises me that nobody deems it fit to react to this mockery of civic sense (after all, licenses have price tags these days, including licensing authorities), considering children have a right to save roads too. Often, I have seen elderly people use the Miramar-Dona Paula expressway for their evening strolls along the beachside. In an effort to keep a check on accidents (given the fact that the road passes right through people’s backyards), maybe a traffic police/van could help regulate speeding cars, intent on knocking down people. The flow of people generally peaks on weekends, so why wait for a catastrophe, which, however bizarre, greatly works to wake people out of their slumbers.

A recent report that I read in a local newspaper further strengthens my argument, that each and everybody applying for a licence must be given a crash course in acquiring civic sensibilities. I have used the word `acquire’ because research attests to the fact that the root of all ill-mannered behaviour, stems from a poor family upbringing. Basing my logic on statistics alone (50% of accidents have occurred on side roads, 41% on national highways and 10% on state highways), there must be one hell of a big family problem in Goa. I should presume that nobody teaches these riders/drivers basic road common sense. Add to this malaise, the extra cash spent on mending broken bones and loosing a wage, or the tragedy of coping with the loss of a family breadwinner. We are a senseless lot, we Goans. All this hurry for nothing, in a State where nobody respects time.

However, I’m not going to blame all those behind the wheel. I am going to tell the traffic department too a few home truths. Like, training their cops to firstly, identify their left hand from their right. And what hand gesture signifies STOP, and the other GO (considering the lack of traffic tools at their disposal). Also, while they are at it, how not to pause and wave a hello to an acquaintance, thereby confusing the man/woman behind the wheel, into thinking it means MOVE. I had occasion to watch one such cop placed at the strategically located Kala Academy crossroad, soon after the carnival parade. It was traffic mayhem. The cop not only proved he was ill-equipped to handle the situation, but added further injury to his insult in uniform, when drivers totally bypassed him to forge their own way through the crowded streets!!

All right, so, the traffic department is short on staff, like the stretched-to-their-gills-in-overwork police department (see, I’m fair). But we must all agree that we, as citizens, are doing nothing to help tackle this situation, by depending on someone else to teach us how to behave on our own roads. There is an acute need to instill civic sense in our young. We all agree with that. We also are in consensus over the fact, that, often, it is the young who are victims of totally avoidable accidents, with the non application of foresight. I have reason to believe that we are failing as parents to tell our wards how to behave on roads, besides teaching them a few lessons on how to respect older pedestrians walking on pavements. We have to admit that cops have their shelf lives too.

Ethel Da Costa
October  2, 2002

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