Crawlover…

This past Sunday had been to Phoenix Mills. Mumbai been progressing and all, the route has a few of them, flyovers. To the uninitiated, these are elevated roads that are SUPPOSED to ease traffic. How? By giving not so nice drivers like moi, nice open stretches of road to zoom on!

So there I was, zooming, and zooming happily, when all of a sudden the jerks in front of me decided to slow down, for no apparent reason whatsoever. And then Mumbai’s Golden Traffic Rule came into play – ‘When thou shall find the right occupied by people who have no right being there, thou shall take the left that is left’. Me being the obedient driver that I am, did so, quite promptly. A neat overtaking maneuver later, there I was, zooming happily when Pandu decided to play spoilsport, big time.

Before I even realized what was happening, Pandu had painted me with an alien looking object (at least it looked alien in apna Pandu’s hands) and promptly hailed me over. (Now everyone out there, please, pretty please don’t tell me you’re not aware of the great Pandu)

Pandu – “Saheb, flyover cha speed limit 40 km/h ahe. Tumhi 55 km/h la speeding karat hota. Fine honar, 200 rupaye.”

Me – “@#$% (din say that, bviously) Are sahib first time ahe, Maaf kara na, jau dya.”

Man, Pandu was stubbbborn. Din budge. Not that I tried too hard. I'd rather have a proper ticket than feed these #$%^&*@. And so there I was, lighter by Rs.200/-, and burdened with (I think unnecessary) lesson.

See, I completely agree with Pandu’s point that a Speed Limit does need to be imposed on the flyovers, what with the number of accidents on the rise. But such things cannot and should not be generalized. 40 is just toooo slow for a road that’s as straight as an arrow. Else they’ll defeat the very purpose of building these flyovers.

Unless of course, the purpose is to just burn a hole in our already overtaxed pockets.