On the road

For about a week my driver decided to go off to his village, leaving me to drive myself to and fro between home and work, sprained/pulled/strained wrist and all. While I have no idea how I damaged myself in the first place, I do know that driving in Mumbai traffic made it worse to the point where even brushing my teeth or dragging a comb through my mop of hair made me wince. But in the driving, I learned a lot that gave me more to ruminate on, both about myself and about the world around me that has any kind of impact on me.

Perhaps what really made it to the front of my consciousness was the most obvious. One night, driving back alone, fairly late, after a long day at the most dreary routine of page-making, I was switched off in my head but fully focussed on the road and traffic. Suddenly there was a flash of light that bounced off my tired retinas. It came again…and again. And then I heard it, that sound that never fails to make my hands go cold and my mind blank. There was an ambulance close behind me, demanding passage. Even though I know well that ambulances in this country tend to sound their sirens just to get through traffic jams – and less for the urgency of getting its passengers to emergency medical care – the sing-song blast of noise always makes me freeze, first emotionally and then intellectually. The rest of me works fine, but on auto-pilot.

The siren blared incessantly, unforgivingly, mercilessly. It demanded a route past me and others in its path, or even through us or over us…just beyond us. It loomed up against my back window and its lights showed me my fingers gripping the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles were white, just like in the bad description of stressful murder-chase scenes in bad thriller novels. Trained to give way almost automatically, I started to edge towards the lane where there was less traffic – well, one less car or motorbike or truck than the zillion that clamoured just around my little car – and, sweating gently in the blast of the air-conditioning, finally managed to get out of the way. the ambulance roared past me, not going too far ahead, but far enough for the sound and light show that it was putting on to fade a little from my immediate sphere of attention.

I am not normally phased by things like this. Ambulances are a normal part of everyday life in a crowded ever-commuting city like Mumbai. But it takes me back to a traumatic early morning when my mother was taken to hospital and we never brought her back. It was a bad time, one I should learn to get past. One day, when I can face – or hear – an ambulance yell for through-way without flinching, I will know that I have. Until then, I just grit my teeth and pretend it is all just part of a life I have to live.