No Parking

From my recent, and increasingly frequent experiences, I have been led to conclude that finding a parking place in Bangalore has turned into an adventure sport ! The adrenaline rush that I experience on finding a vacant spot for my car after circling MG Road, and its neighbourhood lanes for 45 minutes, offers such a thrill, that parachuting and bungee- jumping pale in comparison as insipid experiences. And as far as 'departure joys' go, finding a noble person vacating the perfect place for me to park the car, ranks only second to the joy I would experience in school as my History teacher would take leave at the end of the class :-)

Attempting to park on MG Road launches one into what is called a 'for loop' in C programming, where the loop index is compared against an arbitrarily large number. I think Formula-1 drivers have it easy. They can always find a vacant spot on the side of the track to park their cars, if they are ever overcome with such a desire.  Of course, leaving it parked there longer than  a lap-time may cause their car position to shift in all three dimensions :-)

While I am largely an easygoing person, the lack of discipline on the roads, or lack of civic sense in general, always gets me annoyed. If I find someone coming towards me from the opposite direction on a one-way street, I honk until I make my displeasure obvious. Of course, I never lower my windows to have a chat with the guy, as my car horn conveys my sentiments far more eloquently than my words could :-) I earlier held the naive belief that car horns should be used sparingly if at all. I now believe they should be judiciously used to send out appropriate hints when necessary.  Sadly, most such people never 'get' the hint !

Actually, I find it odd for people to be complaining about corruption, and other such forms of injustice that occur on a grand scale,  when many of them don't follow even basic road rules themselves, or extend the smallest courtesy to a pedestrian. I wouldn't be surprised if thirty years from now, walking becomes the fastest mode of transport; that is, if the pedestrian sidewalks continue to exist then ! Anyhow, till then, what will get you ahead in life is your ability to find a vacant car-park when you're looking for one !:-)