Guest Column
PAUL YOUNG
Chaos Theory
I’VE BEEN IN India a bit lately, and this has led me to a honking
(quite literally) realisation about a rider’s rite of passage, of
the heightened skill and awareness which early exposure to
motorcycling awards us, and how important this is for survival.
Witnessing inner-city Chennai traffic has left me beyond
bewilderrment at the lunacy on display, yet amazed and fascinated
by the obvious order within this extreme chaos. What occurs on
urban Indian roads must be seen to be believed – if you’ve got the
stomach, that is.
Lumpy, broken tarmac with no lane markings, packed tighter
than Chaos Carolinensis’s chuff with cars, buses, trucks, dogs,
chooks, ducks, tuk-tuks, buffalo, bicycles, tricycles, pedestrians of
all stripes, and millions of motorcycles.
Everyone is going their own way, doing their own
thing, making their own lane wherever they want
and in any direction, caring not a toss for any
road rules and guided purely by the instincts
only survival or procreation can deliver.
Wrong way up the wrong side of the road
or footpath, be-thonged, over-loaded,
under-helmeted, high on asphyxiation
and supremely talented, motorcycling on
the subcontinent is an abject lesson in
“learn quick or die young.” And there’s no
shortage of elderly riders, of all genders
and generations.
You start out as an infant, wedged
between mum and dad in a shoulder bag,
and before your second birthday you are up
front, riding on the tank, hands on the handlebar,
staring bright lights and your entire family’s
mortality in the face. This is how life on two wheels
starts in India.
Although India may not produce world champions yet, the
average rider in India is skilled in survival – they have to be. And
the average western rider wouldn’t last five minutes in this heaving,
red-hot mechanical herrang without suffering a monu...mental
meltdown. Those who survived would come away a sharper,
calmer and better rider. It’s a harsh way to humble big-helmeted
hubris, and the bad habits endemic to India wouldn’t transfer
well to our ‘civilised’ streets, but the skills, awareness and mental
fortitude born of necessity are more likely to save your skin than
any roadbook of riding tips regurgitated in a classroom.
I’m not talking about super-high-speed bike control – finding
an Indian who’s cracked the metric ‘ton’ in their lifetime is rare,
and mostly their saddle-time is barely faster than they could run.
Yet the skills they have in spades are far more impressive than any
sunny-Sunday road-warrior finally getting a knee down on the
tenth lap of a roundabout.
Everywhere you look in India, riders perform extraordinary
feats of perception, balance, precision, expert timing and extreme
daring, with remarkable equanimity from both riders and their
sari-wrapped, sidesaddle pillions.
When last did you take your better-half plus three
kids through a moving flesh-and-steel slalom
course with millimetres between bar-end and
oblivion, and just a pair of thongs and a horn
for protection? Did I mention that one of
the kids is a goat your missus is holding by
its hind hooves? I’ve seen this and more
acts of motokhana mayhem with my own
eyes. And the most amazing thing of all?
No one appeared remotely panicked or
concerned, except me. Not even the goat.
Horns are the constant backing track
to city life, and have an entirely different
meaning than in the west. Where ours say
“f*** off you f***ing f***!” in India a friendly
‘peep-peep’ is an unwritten road rule. Road
users are 50 per cent guided by sight and 50 per
cent by sonar. The horn is a proximity sensor in this
mulligatawny soup of mankind, metal and beasts.
Indians aren’t much fussed about tuning engines. Getting
from A to B with all your limbs is better served by having your horn
amped. Yet survival is not determined by he who honks loudest:
all road users have superhuman spatial awareness, like a great
ethereal doona of understanding cast (no pun intended) over the
country. Even the street dogs are traffic savvy.
And the cows? Sorry, they may be sacred, but they’re still
stupid. Luckily, they don’t move that often.No-one
appeared
remotely panicked
or concerned,
except me. Not
even the goat