The Khudiram Boses of the streets of Kolkata …

It’s queer. If it’s the same everywhere else, I do not know or whether it is, as I think, just another idiosyncrasy of Kolkatans, I don’t know either. But leaving aside the fact that it’s dangerous, it’s also extremely annoying and more often than never I get an overpowering urge to ask my driver to pull over, get out of the car and give the bloke a smack on his head. It’s a different thing that I do not actually do it.

It’s an established fact, more like an aphorism that the people’s traffic sense in Kolkata is less than nil, but I am talking about the way roads are crossed here. It’s appalling.

Contrary to the general idea, displays of near suicidal attempts to cross roads can be witnessed when the streets have rather sparse traffic. Our subject waits for the nearest speeding car to get dangerously close and then dashes across suddenly, leaping, bounding and lolloping across the road, barely missing the mudguard of the passing car by mere inches he managing to keep his balance precariously, his toes just about touch the banks of the pavement on the other side and he salvages himself as the car whizzes past him missing him by centimeters. Clothes fluttering in the strong draft of the vehicle just passed, he leaves the driver shocked and often disoriented. He prefers to risk his life and that of the car driver’s rather than wait for it to pass and then comfortably walk across. No, where’s the fun, where’s the rush in that, where’s the challenge?

Would it be fanciful to assume for a moment that such impulsive actions have something to do with ambitions of martyrdom engendering from deep rooted frustrations, that these spurt from, a burning realization of failure seething in some hidden corner of the blood pumping appendage of this city’s inhabitant’s? Do such brash and irresponsible heroic acts help allaying, by some unknown palliative, the agony inside? A badly mistaken and decontextualized idea of martyrdom we have then. If you have a yen for Adrenalin-pumping action, the streets are not your playground.

On the other hand, there are drunks, the handicapped and unfortunate imbeciles who are incapacitated inherently from employing good judgement. Sadly, not much can be done about them.