Of all the Things to Forget…
Now, its been a long time since I blogged.. But today something happened, that compelled me to blog. No no, this is not the outrageously unfair serious kind of happening. On the contrary, it was outrageously funny..Something I saw on my way back home in a bus.
I’ve seen passengers miss their bus….
I’ve even seen the bus miss its parts…
The one thing I’ve not seen is the conductor missing his own bus..(man…) Thats a difficult one to pull off…
The bus had started off the stop when suddenly a passenger walked up to the driver and asked him to stop the bus, since the conductor had been left behind….And the poor chap had no clue about this… Was quite a sight… Now, beat that…
Of Helmets and Lifts
(Warning: General rant coming up)
Recently, the Tamil Nadu Govt. made wearing of helmets compulsory for all bikers in Chennai. (Of course, later, the classical dilution of rules happened with the CM announcing that women and children pillion riders are exempt from this, as if they have steel skulls). I usually don’t like the way the DMK Govt. works, but when this rule came about, I felt that for once, they have done something right.
Ironically, they never bothered to implement the rule in reality, with the CM giving statements like “The police should not harass the public over this” etc. and people generally stopped wearing their helmets after the first day. But then came a random someone who petitioned the High Court of Tamil Nadu regarding this, which in turn asked the Govt. to respond. As a result, the general order of affairs, where the public and police had an implicit understanding that helmets were rather pointless, changed and out of the blue, the police have started fining people for not wearing helmets. Yesterday, hundreds got caught (lol).
But what triggered this post is a different thought. Right from my childhood, I’ve been in the practice of asking for lifts from people on the road (mainly bikers, since cars don’t usually stop, maybe due to security concerns). I still continue to do this. This is where my dilemma came in. That’s why this occured to me. From now on, the concept of lifts will become extinct. Since you can’t foresee whether you will actually need/get lifts from (unknown) others, there is no point to carrying helmets wherever you go, and its going to become rather impossible now to take lifts now. What a pity…
Moral of the Story-cum- purpose of the post: Bikers should always carry a spare helmet just in case someone asks them for a lift. Its that simple 
