To add to the woes, there are the ubiquitous motorcycle riders, tilting so precariously towards my car that one would think the car has a bloody gravity of its own! I see the bike to my left jerk forward diagonally, and instinctively swerve my car to the right. Won’t give you the satisfaction of putting a scratch on the car body, you jerk. Other bikes close in, smothering my pretty car from all sides. I look around, beyond the bike riders, and every other car is suffering the same misfortune. Some car drivers are lucky and keep on swerving left and right to avoid jerky bike movements, while others are…well, not so lucky. A bike leaps ahead and makes a fresh scratch on the white Alto directly in front of me, another one bumps softly against the SX4 up ahead, while a third one zooms past (I don’t know how, considering the space-crunched road and traffic jam!) and makes a forceful contact with the side-view mirror of a red Maruti 800, dislodging it from its carefully-arranged position.
Same old sight. I begin to get bored. Still forging ahead at a painstaking pace, I idly switch on the car radio. The songs being played are about as uninspiring as they get…
Suddenly a silver Sumo overtakes me from the wrong side. The modus operandi is almost “bully-ish” in nature, taking no more that a second! In the blink of an eye, I’ve got a gigantic Sumo (which is, incidentally, the vehicle of choice of criminals and B-grade politicians in my city) in front of me now, completely blocking my view of the road ahead. I look in my rear-view mirror; there are two more similar Sumos tailgating me. Perhaps a motorcade of a wannabe politician, I surmise. I am almost on the verge of forgetting about the offensive overtake when Sumo no.2 (just behind my car) does an encore! The second Sumo too does a dangerous overtake- routine from the wrong side, effectively sandwiching me between the second and the third Sumo. I’m almost blind with rage. I will not let them get away with this. My Chevy Aveo may be a delicate white sedan and no match for these callous Sumos, but she deserves a lot better!
Swearing under my breath, I shift the gear back to first and plunge headlong into the fight for supremacy. Spotting a small, clear area on the roadside, I accelerate with a vengeance and take over the Sumo ahead from its left (that’s the wrong side). Needless to say, I make a clean overtake, my rear bumper missing the front bumper of the Sumo by barely a whisker as I overtake it and swerve sharply to the right directly in front of the Sumo. There….that’s better. Look who’s the master of overtaking now! To add insult to injury, I make sure I keep my car bang in the middle of the congested road, giving no leeway to the Sumo behind (which must be reeling from a hurt ego right now) to try and pull off another under-the-belt overtake like the last one. It’s immensely satisfying…almost poetic. The short drive home has suddenly acquired so much more meaning and become a novel confidence-building exercise.
I don’t know what reactions my unnecessary act of bravado are earning me - did not care to look back into the (humiliated?) faces of the Sumo’s driver and passengers - but I know one thing…I won’t tolerate anyone bullying me, literally, or figuratively. I will give back as good as I get, maybe more so. It’s good, at times, to make your point. You feel confident… Happy…. Rrefreshed…. And… a bit gleeful.
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