Road rage and our republican virtues
View(s):When it rains, it pours. And when it pours, the floodgates of human misery open. There is tragedy on the high seas, around open fields prone to lightning strikes, and by many swollen river banks island-wide. However, while nature continues to be ruthless in every aspect, the most reptilian behaviour of our metropolis’ humanity showcases itself on these traffic-thronged streets.
Witness this knight in-muddy-armour charge up to that windmill and ram its flailing arms with his cruel lance. (Except, it’s a motor-cyclist brutally pushing a lady – whose only defence is a wind-wracked umbrella – off her pedestrian crossing.) See these heavy tanks almost overrun those cavalry. (Except, they’re buses – like lumbering leviathans, busy as behemoths – butting bikes and bullying push-cycles off the rain-soaked roads.) Laugh loudly, but only as long as the puddles don’t spray-paint you too brown, when horse-drawn carriages sweep the peasantry off their feet. (Except, it’s remorseless motorists splashing hapless commuters who’ve just disentrained from a damp and crowded express.)
Why does the weather bring out the worst in Colombo’s commuters, suburban motorists, and blackguards who man public transport? You might say it’s more than mere low-pressure systems and monsoonal stress syndromes. It’s a whole climate of bad behaviour, impunity, and the decline and fall of old republican virtues. In an atmosphere where to barge in, blunder about, and be as badass as one likes comes from very high up the socio-political pecking order, ill-mannered manoeuvring on the road is de rigueur for tin-pot democrats, timid despots, and tyrannical drivers, riders, and peddlers of every ilk alike.
Wonder if our recently rapidly-falling barometer had anything to do with the more egregious non-climatic incidents of late. On the one hand, schoolboy sportsmen who really should know better sink to abysmal depths at time-honoured sporting events when they let their carnal natures get the better of their gentlemanly training and sportsmanlike character. On the other, two-bit thuggish politicos make schoolteachers kneel before them in abject apology for the crime of insisting that the former’s offspring toe the line of discipline, decency, and decorum.
While the action really is in the middle, and more often than not in the middle of the road at best – or entirely the wrong side (and sallying forth like bats out of a wet muddy hell) – are the road hogs. Add to this carnival those riotous convoys which still fly past like there was no tomorrow and it was only yesterday at the height of the erstwhile war. Also call in the clowns to complete the circus by introducing the motif of our self-righteous, er, traffic regulators who wouldn’t recognise any errant high-and-mighty motorists even if they bumped them in the gluteus.
Where have all our law-abiding citizens gone? Why do they assume these days that the poor example set by knaves and scoundrels in the upper echelons of petty thuggery must be emulated by the hoi polloi? When our leaders, elders, and betters prove to be the worst of the lot – full of passionate intensity, and drowning the ceremony of our country’s former innocence – it’s time to stop, take stock, and reinvent the wheel. Which, of course, is easier said than done when things are falling apart, the centre cannot hold, and mere anarchy is loosed upon our roads, highways, and expressways. While the flood-dimm’d tide is loosed, the best of us lack all conviction…
One day, hopefully soon, it will stop raining. One day, the reign of automotive and other autocrats and their apparatchiks will end. One day, our roads will return to normalcy – if, indeed, in any sense of the word, they could be said to have enjoyed it in the first place. One day we will all be able once again to walk (not wade through rivers of blood or tears); drive (not be driven round the bend); or ride (not be ridden like beasts by a wild ringmaster) to work, rest, play, study, school, or place of learning, industry, service. In peace, love, joy. Into that dream may my nation awake!
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