A Blessing in Disguise

 In the Army, double riding on a bicycle was an offence and was not just frowned upon but invited strict punishment, especially in the training academies. Although a "fireman lift" or a "baby carry" where we were supposed to carry our buddies on our shoulder or in our arms like a baby was par for the course for obvious reasons. Should your buddy need assistance you were expected to bail him out. But on a bicycle, no way! As opposed to the single riders, these days it is rare to see a person riding his motorcycle by himself, so much so that I think may be the authorities here have a declared policy where each one carry one at least, otherwise the more the merrier. Invariable there are three on these motorbikes or scooters, sometimes four and I have seen even five of them riding on just one poor two wheeler. More the number of riders/passengers greater is the misadventure with twists and turns, over-speeding and jumping traffic lights with impunity. May I am not correctly informed, for all you know it might be an offence to ride single on the bikes. After all it is a measure for economising on our precious fuel, on the contrary, the four wheelers are often with just a single occupant.

One can understand a family of four, parents and two kids riding on a two wheeler, as we have ourselves been there done that. On our Lambretta scooter, four of us, sometimes five would be commuting quite comfortably with one on the carrier, sometimes two and one in front, we went merrily from Dhar to Indore to and fro and on picnics in and around Dhar quite often. The traffic was miniscule compared to today and ours was the only vehicle on road for miles together at times, so obviously the risks were negligible. Thank God I am no Ratan Tata else, even I would have undertaken to produce another Nano for these bike families.

The other major observation is the absence of helmets where thousands of two wheelers are plying daily. I think the hapless traffic authorities have probably decided against the provision of helmets, with four-five of them on each bike, helmets are just not workable, so jettison them. It is more important to provide the youngsters the freedom to roam freely with gay abandon and no restrictions, unless someone can invent a suitable flexible helmet which can fit any number of heads into it at the same time. The Traffic police must be on the lookout for the helmeted riders and they must be getting booked for adding unnecessary weight thus compromising on the mileage.

Girls are more conservative by nature and rarely cross the barrier of three and even here true to tradition, they keep their face arms and the whole body nicely covered, not in any helmet but by their 'chunnis', nicely wrapped around. Each one resembling a Daku Rani ( bandit Queen) Himmatwali, this provides them multiple benefits, firstly, from pollution, secondly identification and thirdly eve teasing.  This veil is a voluntary one, with just the eyes visible and these days the Romeos are not Rajinder Kumar, the yesteryears celluloid superstar, who fell in love with a burqa clad Sadhna in "Mere Mehbbob", having seen just her eyes. A real blessing in “disguise!”