rantings of a traffic victim

hmm, another effort at letting the world know what goes on inside the brain of the organism called chaitanya takes off. bless the guys (and girls, to be politically correct) who have made blogging what it is today, enabling anybody with access to the internet to put out all sorts of stuff, useful and otherwise!!

i was going to the howrah station by taxi to catch a train to ranchi yesterday. it was then that a few thoughts occurred to me. traffic in metros (generalizing, possibly in any decently-sized town, with adequately insufficient infrastructure) seems to be very intelligent. it has a mind of its own. it regulates its speed such that it achieves its ultimate aim, i.e. to not go anywhere. unfortunately its human components live under the mistaken impression that they are traveling from one place to another (and have to do this asap) which results in not-so-desirable temper swings.

aiding our hero, the traffic in its quest are the traffic signals, designed by somebody who thinks a vehicle should wait at a signal for it to change for at least the time taken for a single cell to evolve into a complete human being. the hapless humans can but pray for the day when their movements are not restricted to the ground (for illustration, refer to a good science fiction movie).

moving on, i used to pride myself on the fact that i read quite a decent amount. a conversation i had yesterday with a friend of mine and a list sent by another of TIME's compilation of the 100 greatest books were humbling experiences. it reminds me of a story i read once.

one day indra was thinking to himself how learned he was and how much he had read. along came narada ( i think) and showed him a huge pile of books. when asked what it was narada told indra that those were all the books that indra had read. this gave indra's already inflated ego a great surge. then quickly narada pointed to an even larger mound in front of which the first pile was infinitesimal. that, he told indra was a collection of books indra had not yet read. no prizes for guessing what the outcome of this was.

watch this space for occasional stories from indian mythology too. for now, adios!!