In Chennai, all cars are bumped

You see those nice car ads on television and ultimately decide to take the plunge. You drive off a spanking new, shiny, smooth piece of metal from the automobile dealership, the celebratory tape on the bonnet telling the world that you have decided to make the traffic jam worse by at least one car.

In Chennai, you then realise that your shiny contraption is destined to soon look battered and bruised. Your relatives don't see the point in avoiding driving into the mad whirl of T.Nagar. So you inch along, with autorickshaws that look like noisy garbage cans threatening to test your nerve. Large garbage trucks crowd you out, semi-literate drivers in three-wheeled carriages rush at you...you feel that you and your new car are in a nasty PC game that could be called "Monster Chennai Traffic" or something.

THUMP! Your rear bumber has finally been put to the test. Behind you is either a crazed motorcyclist who wants to drive through you, or an Indicab taxi, or sadly, a very literate stupid middle class moron driving, mostly, a battered piece of junk.

That's what happened to me in my new Alto today. There was this stupid out-of-towner in his white junk-like Maruti 800 (TN 38 F 4955) who just thumped his car into the back of my stationary Alto in front of Chennai's nuclear traffic generator, Saravana Stores, in Panagal Park.

"Sorry," said the culprit. He was so nervous that he quickly sped away.

Luckily, the Alto has been designed for backside hits from middle class morons driving mobile junk. So it showed only a couple of scratches, although the laws of Physics tell me that some of that energy from our moronic friend's Maruti 800 has indeed been transferred to the bolt holding the Alto bumper. It won't hold very well if it is repeatedly targeted by more morons.

But it is not just me in this sort of position.

The next time you are on the road, or better still in a parking lot, look at all the cars and you will find that they all have that bruised look, particularly in the bumpers and on the fenders.

Which is why I believe that many of us should be abandoning the car and taking to the bus and the train. Those who insist on driving should be made to pay extra, so that the money will go towards buying more Metropolitan Transport Corporation buses and suburban and MRTS trains and operating them at sane fares.

Until that happens, we will have only bruised cars, new and old. Don't be fooled by all those girls who feel a little naughty and want to rub some sun tan in an Indica...or by the leather jacketed girl who is overcome by the sexuality of the widebodied Logan. Neither the girls nor those roads exist in real life. On the road with your new car, it is morons that are behind you, ahead of you...all around you.