Discipline

The last flight from Mumbai was, as usual, late. By the time I sat in the prepaid taxi and handed over the slip to the driver, it was a few minutes past midnight and I was tired. He must have made many trips that day and considering the congested roads of Bangalore, he must have felt drained out but it was not visible in his body language or the facial expression. He wore a very neutral expression. Without a word he pulled out and picked up speed along the main road.

I could see that junction in the road ahead. Not many vehicles around. Just a few more prepaid taxis following us. On the other side, a white Santro was coming from the opposite end, had slowed down near a median and was slowly taking a U turn. The road at this stretch is quite wide. Each half of the road can accommodate three cars, quite easily. The Santro, after taking the U turn, can easily go in our direction with enough room for another car to zoom through. I was lazily watching as the Santro almost completed the turn and we were moving parallell in the same direction.

I realised something was wrong. The Santro was veering to the left pushing our taxi to the edge of the road. First it appeared as though the Santro guy overshot his turn and will correct the steering soon, but then I realised that he is stopping our taxi. In few seconds, our taxi was blocked completely by the Santro. The Santro man came out and started shouting:

"Why can't you wait till I completed the turn? Do you want to kill us? Don't you have any road sense? You are ....."

He went on a long lecture on civic sense.... wanted to see the driving license, wanted him to come to the police station for lodging a complaint on rash driving ...he was quickly deteriorating from shouting to abuse.

Two more prepaid taxis stopped and the drivers got out to enquire what went wrong. My driver quietly smiled and told them, "nothing, you all move on, I can handle this".

On seeing the others join, the Santro guy sobered up in a flash.The same guy who was shouting at the top of his voice suddenly became a gentleman! He hesitatingly walked back to his Santro and pulled off quickly. My guy resumed with a faint hint of a smile on his lips.

I wondered, "who disciplined whom?"