Shore temples and Indian driver software!!

Well it is my second morning here and I am waiting for some friends to stp by and pick me up. We are off to Mahblipurham (sorry if I screwed up the spelling) about 80 km south of Chennai. They have an amazing shore temple and there are 5 others that have already benn swallowed up and now lie in the Bay of Bengal. The town is also a center for stone carving and sculpting. 

I am going with JS Bhangoo a former Cat colleague and two of his cousins who are from Punjab but here for some regional sports competition. Suffice it to say that one of them is in the shot put competition and was the National runner up a couple of years ago in his age class  70-75!! He is competing in the 75+ category this year!! We met them for dinner at the Madras Cricket Club last night. Good food and some good discussion.

I was reminded again yesterday on the way to dinner about the driving style that prevails here, and I suspect much of India.

It is not an aggressive style but most certainly “edgy”. The only way to make progress is to appear not to notice the myriad of other drivers in cars, large and small, trucks, busses, and of course, auto-rickshaws motorcycles and mopeds. I would say that all of the motorcycles are under 250cc, but seem to carry multiple passengers. I saw one with a young family, dad driving, Mum on back with a two year old between Mum and Dad, and a five or six year old sitting on the tank. I will get photos maybe today.

All Indian drivers/Riders must have some conflict resolution software built in. It always looks like you are (or they are) headed for a certain collision and yet it always seems to get resolved within the last few inches or cm if you like. At one point yesterday I was convinced that we were going to hit a car turning from our right. We got within the prescribed 3 inches and finally gave way to him. I recognize that if we always gave way we would be sitting still. Horns beep constantly and rear lights on trucks busses or anything else seem purely optional and there are many vehicles with no lights at all.

Pretty much all expats have a car and driver assigned to them and these guys are experienced at the whole process, and we are able to sit back and observe the process.

There are over a billion people in India which, while a large country is not close to the same size as the USA. I just checked and it is roughly 1/3 of the size of the USA (including Alaska) so the population density is about 10 times the US if my math is correct. That presents a whole different set of challenges and opportunities.

There are some very very wealthy people here and a growing middle class but a huge urban poor population and a huge rural population who’s living standard is very variable by state. Some states like Kerela in the southwest are very good with literacy and general living standard, and then there are states like Bihar that are consistently poor and making progress at a slower rate for multiple reasons.