Bengaluru’s traffic and the Man who had to pee

Being a lady is a tough job. Ask one. Just being one comes with it’s own set of issues. Periods, pregnancy, delivery being top of the list. He above had to gift ALL of these to us poor women and make us look like the “weaker” sex. But I am not talking about that today.

At least as a consolation He could have given us the “preferable” way to pee! The luxury of not going through the exercise of squatting as well as exposing ourselves.

I was once a witness to an incident , which made me ponder more on this.

One fine day I was driving down the roads of Bengaluru with my father. And we got stuck in the traffic.

Which is a very common phenomenon on city roads in India.

And so, here I am sitting, stuck in one, with radio and the whining of my father playing simultaneously in the background.

Nodding my head and mumbling acceptance, I look around to check out my fellow-sufferers. We Indians do a lot of that since we find ourselves in such situations a lot- waiting at the signal ( and miles away from it). To the extent that we make traffic friends! Anyways, I see the usual mix of cars, bikes and autorickshaws garnished with some buses here and there.

Still nodding my head senselessly, I sense some movement to my left. As my cerebrum commands, I turn to check it out. I see a gentleman in the backseat of the car to my left open his side of the door and step out. Ah, must be stretching his legs. Lucky him. You see, in a traffic situation like this, each inch of space is precious and gets you that much closer to the destination- the signal. Usually you won’t have enough space to open the doors. But lucky for him, we were on a flyover and his side of the door opened to the wall. And yes, our flyovers also get jammed.

As I keep my gaze at that direction, the man steps out, closes the door moves ahead a bit and opens the door again! That’s strange. Now he has got everyone’s attention, including my father, who, luckily for me, has stopped cribbing. Something interesting happening in this drudgery.

As if choreographed, the driver side door also opens. Are they trying to block the man? But the general spirit of the other people in the car was cheerful. In fact they were in a fit of laughter!

The man is motionless now, facing the wall and his hands are not visible anymore.

Is the man peeing?

Yes!

He has left the door of the car open, giving him the privacy from the cars behind his. His benevolent friend/driver has opened the driver side door resolving the issue for the other side. All sorted, this man is just experiencing utter bliss.

But just so it would happen, the cars started inching forward. The man was not ready to let go of the happiness, yet. The driver urges to him to get inside and cars behind honk aloud to show the agitation ( or out of sadistic pleasure to interrupt what they themselves are unable to achieve): but he is not to be deterred .

And on Bengaluru roads, every inch you move ahead is measurable in minutes. Seeing their precious time being lost as well as sensing the agitated mood of the fellow travelers, the driver of this protagonist car inches the vehicle forward, seemingly ending the whole show.

But hats off to the determination of this man, he continues his act and inches ahead in synch with the speed of the car, doing all the math while he is at it. And meanwhile my father is having the time of his life. For an onlooker, all you see is a car crawling ahead with both its left doors open, the back of a man sans his hands moon walking sideways. On the wall there is a mark made when a large amount of liquid is poured onto it preceded by a straight line of fluid.

Since the lane our car was in did not have anything that interesting happening, we had to disconnect ourselves from the episode and move ahead. But my father had a lot to talk about. Before he started to feel the suffering of the endless waiting in the traffic again, we reached home.

That got me thinking. The man must have been at the end of his capacity. He was willing to go to that length to do it in presence of so many people.

But, what if it was me, a lady. What then?

And hence the chain of thoughts of how unfair He has been.

N.B: If the person is reading the article, I don’t remember seeing your face.