Simon & Garfunkel Test

I had realized it the first time I tried it. The feeling was reinforced when I did it the second time last week. I am talking about listening to Simon & Garfunkel (S&G) while driving on city roads. It just doesn't work.

The best place and time to listen to the soothing melodies of S&G are sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon'. Not amidst the hustle and bustle of the city traffic where people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening, go about in their mindless chaotic paths. There are frequent meeting of bodies, of vehicles that is, and more than a new niceties are exchanged. Do they ever feel that all my words come back to me, in shades of mediocrity. Probably not.

The noise of the engine within the car also does'nt help - even with the windows rolled up.
I hereby propose a new test for automobiles - to see how 'silent' their interiors can be.

1. Roll up the windows
2. Start the car up and move up to 60 kmph speed
3. Start playing Scarborough Fair and note down the complete lyrics
4. If you get all of the song, the automobile passes the test.

Crazy, you might say. Crazy it is driving through all this madness. So I thought S&G might help but I was proved wrong twice.

Honk !! Honk !! Honk !!

Disturb the sounds of silence

Possibly one of the biggest ironies of life.

MetaPost Four lanes of misery

Where did this come from ? Not much to guess here. A frustrated driver feeling miserable - watching people shamelessly filling up the wrong sides of roads.

"India lives in its villages" said Gandhi.

I think in the 21st century "India will on its roads". People would have migrated from villages settle along the road sides while the rest of us will be stuck in traffic on the roads !
I am sometimes amazed that many of us still manage to be sane after all the crazy driving on the roads !!

Four lanes of misery

Yet another day. The same story repeats on these city roads. I am one such road. Countless vehicles seem to be using to reach somewhere. But many a times they are just stuck in the same place. There is a semblance of progress once in a while but it takes quite sometime before everyone has moved forward a bit. The situation is much like the nation's itself is what I gather from conversations of some occupants of a vehicle plying on me.

There are vehicles of all shapes and sizes. The ones on two wheels seem to be moving like ants around the giant old trees that were once along my sides. Vehicles on the left lanes seem to be moving the fast inspite of being the wrong lanes to overtake. Again a reflection of the state of the nation itself is what I gather from few other travellers using me.

All these vehicles make an awful lot of noise as well. Most of the noise is supposed to be coming from their 'horns'. Kind of funny since some of the cattle that occasionally manage to come over me also have these things called 'horns' but they never made any noise apart from their usual bovine chatter.

The whole procession looks like a giant millipede heaving itself across a vast expansive desert. Just because the tail section can see the head moving forward, it becomes impatient and starts using its 'horns', conveniently forgetting that there is still a middle section that has to move as well before it gets a chance ! How silly.

"Oh Traveller" I bemoaned, " I seem to be leading you all somewhere but I never seem to reach anywhere. I feel miserable".

"Oh Road ! is that you ?" replied the travellers in chorus.
"We never knew you had feelings and not just potholes" wondered the travellers.

The travellers continued in chorus -

"The misery is equally ours - all the four lanes of it."
"We all seem to be taking the road to somwhere but actually go nowhere !"