Adil Shah
The traffic lights were a welcome sight for someone who was returning to the valley after a year. The conflict-tattered city was seeing some much needed modernization after all. It was 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning; I was driving down the streets of Srinagar. My first encounter with the traffic light occurred at the Gojwara chowk. A silver Alto car in front of me had stopped at the traffic signal waiting for it to turn green.
The traffic lights were a welcome sight for someone who was returning to the valley after a year. The conflict tattered city was seeing some much needed reconstruction after all. It was 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning; I was driving down the streets of Srinagar. My first encounter with the traffic light occurred at the Gojwara Chowk. A silver Alto car in front of me had stopped at the traffic signal waiting for it to turn green.
Gladdened at this sight, I pulled up alongside the car .The timer showed a good 45 seconds for the signal to turn green. I switched off my engine (thanks to the congress, wanting to wash its hands off the petroleum subsidies and the subsequent sky- rocketing petrol prices). Back in Delhi, when I had heard about the installation of traffic lights in Srinagar, I had my reservations about its utility.
Seeing images of the chief minister’s motorcade following rules had given the impression of a gimmick to me. But here I was, in Gojwara chowk seeing an “aam aadmi” follow traffic lights when he simply could have slipped through. I had just started my lecture to my friend on the traffic lights as a welcome sign and how people have started to accept these rules to my friend when I was startled by a brazen and vulgarly loud horn behind by ears.
The driver of the car next to me and I, both started to look back… (For a second, I thought there was some ambulance with some kind of a medical emergency). I was surprised to see a near empty minibus honking away gesticulating both of us drivers to make way for him. I rolled down my window and pointed towards the traffic light. This seemed to make the Driver of the minibus very angry.
I could not hear what all he was saying, but I could make out clearly that whatever he was saying was not pleasant. The clock still showed a good 30 seconds before the lights could turn green. Why was he getting all angered? Such was his reaction that the thought of having done something wrong came across me. This was aggravated by the pedestrians looking at me and smiling at me …as if i had committed some blunder.
Had I done something wrong by following the rules? Why was I being harassed for following simple traffic rules? By now I saw, the minibus backing up. I feared, he would rear end my car and hence was alarmed. He started to move his vehicle forward, made a cut to the right and starter honking behind the other car. Frustrated by this act, the driver of the alto car just moved ahead and sped past the red light the timer still had 15 seconds to go for it to turn green. The driver of the minibus triumphantly moved his vehicle ahead and before moving past me, he stopped and said, “yi chye kasheer…Yeti chye ne red cross wed cross (The traffic lights) chalaan kyeh…” (This is Kashmir…these red lights don’t work here…) saying this he sped away leaving me waiting for the light to turn green in a cloud of black smoke.