India, road safety and cricket
Two weeks working in Vizag, the 'City of Destiny'
I started writing newsletter in India, early last week, sitting at the dining room table in our air-conditioned apartment and listening to five lanes worth of traffic jostling for space on a two-lane road outside. The roads in India kind of mirror the country, for me: noisy and busy and so much going on, yet somehow peaceful at the same time.
Horns are used liberally - there are literally signs by the roadside instructing drivers to “use your horn!” - but mostly without any aggression. They mostly just serve as a warning. Hello, coming through. Which is probably necessary given that it seems to be acceptable to drive both ways around a roundabout. It takes a bit of getting used to if you learned to drive on British roads, where a horn generally means you’re about to receive an onslaught of road rage. Yet I didn’t really see any road rage in India. Our driver Seshu simply shrugged when he got c…