Carelessness and Accidents

Believe it or not! First time after coming to UK, we spent Diwali in a nice way. All these years, we never knew that the next day was Diwali unless we received any phone call /mail from relatives and friends. It was a great surprise to see the sky illuminated with fireworks on the night of the Diwali day. We could hear the and see the fireworks for three nights even till 11:30 p.m. To be honest, I did not see this much of pomp and show even in Chennai when I was there last year. Normally in places like Chennai, it does not last for more than a day after Diwali. But here this coincides with Haloween and so keeps continuing. I was bit surprised to see them being done till Midnight, though there is a rule in this country too about the timings. But still the place I live consists of plenty of desis and no wonder about the ways rules are broken. I was just wondering, how people of other beliefs could tolerate, when it was a nuisance for a person like me who celebrate the festival. In fact during a brief chat with one of my English neighbour, who was already irritated by one of her Asian neighbour who frequently parks his car on her driveway, said that these kinds of behaviour and attitude increase the racial differences. I totally agreed with her.

Yesterday, I saw an Asian youth, stopping his car in the middle of a major road, and angrily getting out of the car, and rushed towards the car behind him and abused the driver in the most aggressive manner. The gentleman who was abused was quite old and was worried whether he will be hit. I wondered at the young man’s anger. Whatever would have been that was not the right way to behave. This kindled my thought and took me back to the careless way our people travel and the ‘don’t care attitude’. The picture in this post shows few careless men travelling in a van. They are vegetable vendors and they buy vegetables from wholesale market and return back to sell them in their shops. This is a common sight in the morning. None of them seem to be caring about their safety. This was the first shot I took when I was out of the Airport during my last trip in June.

One of my friends was a good musician and used to play keyboard for familiar troops. One night he was returning back after having played music in a neighbouring town. He had his lovely young daughter on his motorcycle, in the front and his wife as a pillion rider with the keyboard. This cannot be considered safety according to international rules. But this is a common condition in India. Unfortunately, there was a Lorry on the highway, without any hazard lights on. He hit the stationed lorry, and his poor little daughter collapsed on the spot. He died on the way to hospital after hearing about his daughter’s fate. His wife escaped with minor injuries and is living with her son now.

I used to get on my nerves, when I used to see couple riding on motorcycles, with their baby fast asleep and hanging on them. I know few families who lost their breadwinners due to accidents which would have been avoided if a bit care was shown.

Also, some of the parents never used to bother about the way children communicate to their school. Lot of hue and cry had been made in newspapers regarding the way children are transported to school in rickshaws and autorickshaws. I still remember one of those ghastly accidents that happened on the Chetput Bridge. One of my friend’s wives was having her bag hanging on her shoulder and travelling along with my friend. He never wanted to learn riding a two wheeler fearing for the safety. He used to accompany with me everyday to work. Finally, he had his Kinetic Honda. On the fateful day, a water lorry, with its iron plate body protruding pulled her bag while on road, and she was under the wheels. It is needless to say, the aftermath. Again, if proper care had been taken to see the condition of the lorry, this would not have happened.

We live carelessly and blame the fate later. Life is not that cheap and a bit care and safety shown can avoid such things.