An experience that made me feel proud

While traveling abroad, one thing that strikes you is the value that they give to human life. There are clear paths for cycling and no biker strays there; pedestrians can walk freely without a fear of getting into a pothole and when you are crossing the road, you can be rest assured that motorists would stop and would let you pass. 

Back in Delhi, if you are pedestrian, you can be rest assured that if you don't wait for the road to be empty, your next stop is going to be the hospital. Drivers (employed by the car owners) are in more hurry than their owners as if they only have to chair the meetings. Honking comes natural to us and we can do it even on the empty roads. All this becomes very frustrating when someone calls us one the oldest 'civilizations' of the world. Are we really civil?

By my disbelief in India's politeness got really shaken by a recent incident while I was driving down from Delhi to Varanasi. The highway is really a great one and in the middle of the night, I was comfortably doing around 140 km/h till the time I reached Etava, a small town about 170 km before Kanpur. On the highway, I got to know some accident had happened and few people advised me to take the wrong side as some other vehicles were also doing the same. I took the turn but that side was also blocked by a trucker. It was irritating as I was moving at a great speed and I had to cover a greater distance. But soon after I realized that the driver of the truck which met the accident got stuck up in the driver's chamber and was still alive. 

The truck drivers created that jam so that more people can gather and rescue the truck driver. 

Sure enough, few car guys gave the necessary lighting at 230 am on no moon night and many of us gathered to do the rescue operations. After three and a half hour of huge struggle, the crowd with the help of a police crane towards the end finally managed to take him out of the cockpit.

But this experience truly sobered me down. In a country when there is no system, we have to be the system. Its that truck driver that day, God forbid, it could be any of us another day. But we Indians do come out and help. And that's civilization.