These days, stories of people killing each other over petty disputes are heard quite often unfortunately, sure the economy is flailing, there is an insurgency mounting in one part of the country, another part if embroiled in civil war while another is just become used to violence.
Patience is fast disappearing from our people. It is becoming an extinct trait we once used to find in our people. Though I am not a historian but our great ancestors used no violence to gain us Independence to form a separate country. Today, tolerance is alongside patience, is also a rare trait to find. And all of this, is reflected on our roads through not just literal quarrels among people rather through, horns, aggressive driving, etc.
Our drivers are more easily irritated than ever before and get into violent rage mode over petty reasons, those which could easily be resolved through a smile as mistakes happens. Blame it on the economy or the hot weather, the reasons are many. I see waiting for hours to get CNG as one of the main factors as well, which pushes our people over the edge for nothing. Here though, I’ll share an incident which happened with me.
Coming home from office, we passed a CNG station which had at least 50 cars in two lines, each waiting for their turn. It was a bright, hot day and time was about 2 pm. As I was passing by the CNG pump, we saw a person physically fight with the pump staff because the staff let two cars of different lane move up when it was his turn, and I thought “That is the result when a person waits for hours and gets delayed when it is his turn actually”.
Anyways we crossed the pump and a Santro driver, who just got his car filled with CNG joined the traffic ahead of us. There were two lanes each on the road and we both were on the right lane (had to turn right at the junction). As we were about to cross the signal, it turned red. Or to be specific just the signal to right turned red, and straight was a green. The Santro driver stopped his vehicle, and so did we. My driver didn’t see the Red sign for right turn and thought the junction was still a go. He just horned at the driver (For less than 0.5 second) once to move his vehicle. Immediately I stopped my driver and told him about the RED arrow sign to right which meant we couldn’t cross.
In the meantime, the Santro driver came out of his vehicle, red as blood and and bursting with fury. I agree that the fault was of my driver, but this did not warrant such an action. The Santro driver was a Man, in his 40’s and a relatively short height. He started to shout and curse “Dikhae ni de raha ishara band hai (Can’t you see the red sign)”, “Andha hai kia? (Are you blind)”, etc. And then he started to approach towards my car with a clear intention to beat my driver up to a pulp.
At this blatant display of aggression, I came out of my vehicle as well. He seemed surprised to see me, as he was expecting only the driver in the car (my car had shades, which makes it difficult to see who is sitting at the back). Now his mind must have calculated a fist fight of two vs one, his physique against me or something and he backed out or maybe just Went back to his car, did a burnout (right signal got green till then) and left, leaving me and my driver stunned at his behavior.
Therefore my conclusion is that waiting in heat for an extended period of time to get CNG really affects the temperament of the people. They easily get irritated and will get in frenzy over nothing. The government should either ban CNG completely or make it available during the night as well when temperatures are bearable. Waiting for hours in peak heat is plain torture for the people and affects their psychology as well. I wouldn’t go as far as talking about other people, when I personally, can’t be quite the tolerant person I am under the summer sun, so those waiting in long lines in this heat when we all know that what happens to your car when parked under sun.
We really need to calm ourselves, as a nation we are getting more hyper and intolerant. All I would say is learn to respect others and try to ignore mistakes that other people do because some day or the other you do the same thing. (I'm not generalizing)
Yeah! You are right. Our behaviours are becoming aggressive over time. And the sole reasons for that are economic conditions, inflation, hot weather and social issues.