Announcements

I recently came back from a trip to India. It had been a year since I was last in the country and it has been quite a few years since I last lived in India. 

India is a massive place – languages change frequently, as do religions, customs and cuisines. This massive country is also undergoing change at an extremely fast pace. Each year I go back to India and see the landscape is different. Roads change, earlier they used to be re-named, but now they are actually new – flyovers, bridges, flights, airports. The march is on. I spent a majority of my life (enough of a majority to permanently change the constitution I hope) in India, but all the change still leaves me confused sometimes when I go back. So for short-term visitors, India can be quite baffling.

I remember a friend from the west asking me on his third day in the country whether road rage was a problem. I didn't quite get what he was saying, as in India, depending upon where you are, people could always be angry or never lose their temper. He explained he meant the honking.

Honking in India is not a symbol of road rage or an insult or a warning. It is simply a method of communication. Indians are, on the whole, a sociable people. We like to speak, share, eat, live – in fact we like to do everything that we do, together with other people. And to share everything, one needs to communicate and when one is trapped in cage of metal, hurtling along a road to a destination far and the urge to communicate comes upon one, what does one do?

Honk.

Honking is not an expression of anger. It is an announcement – of existence, of intent, of happiness, of kinship, and only sometimes, of a pique.

Culturally, we Indians are pretty big on announcements. We announce everything and everywhere.

When Hindus go to a temple, we strike a bell, so it tolls, announcing to God "I am here, listen to me. Now it is my turn." We understand that in order for God to give, He needs to know and to know He needs to be told, and how do you do any telling without making sure you have His attention first?

Hence all the bells in temples.

Even roads have announcements in India – subtle ones that you can possibly miss, if you don't pay attention.

Zebra crossings on the roads. They announce the presence of a place where pedestrians may cross the road, but there are no special privileges accorded to them at that particular point. There is no button to press that might stop traffic, there is no warden who might help in holding up traffic while people cross the road, vehicles don't stop - in fact at most zebra crossings they can't stop since the crossings are made very conveniently at major junctions or just s few yards before them. All this points to one thing. A zebra crossing is an announcement that says people are, in principle, allowed to cross roads.

Another way of making announcements that is quite common is one of engaging the whole environment around you, for example, restaurant in a unique one-sided conversation when a person decides to answer his or her mobile phone. The whole scene plays out beautifully. It begins with the phone announcing its presence, loudly. The rest of the folks rummaging through various receptacles in their respective clothing till a person announces “It Is Mine.”

And then of course, you are hooked, being forced to listen to details that otherwise you wold never be privy to. With any luck you might get to know what the Prime Minister had for breakfast.

Honking while driving is a more casual kind of announcement - it is more a statement of my presence that an obvious indication of some misdemeanour on a fellow driver's part.

It might also be a result of the fact that road sense or courtesy, if one may, has been distilled to just two simple rules:

1. The bigger vehicle has right of way.
2. When an accident occurs, the blame is apportioned proportionately to the size of the vehicle

As you can see, the first of these rules is exceedingly simple and is naturally imprinted on all living things. The second flows from the first: 'With great power comes great responsibility,' as a superhero was once told.

Of course, you can also see that this puts pedestrians, to use a biological analogy, at the bottom of the food chain. And another reason to make everyone aware of one's presence (pedestrians wave).

Just like some people speak less and some people speak more, some drivers are bleaters - they are insecure and would like all and sundry to know that they are there. Once, many years ago, a friend was driving me home at about two in the morning. We were crossing a stretch of road that was absolutely deserted and he honked.

“Why?” I asked him.

“Because it was too quiet he said.”

That's the thing about announcements – the choice of “to listen or not to listen" is taken out of your hands. The announcer and the announcee hold an inviolable trust – you too, when the occasion demands should never shirk from announcing whatever it is that you can. It is your social responsibility.