Bangalore Honking Addiction

It’s another late Monday again. And yup; my driver was 20 minutes late. When I tried calling him, he only managed to utter “2 minute! Sorry”. It was good having a driver with poor English command, then he would not speak much and I could enjoy writing my blog…emm… except for the honking part.

I don’t know about other places in India but drivers in Bangalore are really addicted to honking, they honked almost every second. It was like during the driving test there was this mandatory honking test to test how many honks you could do in 10 seconds.

(Below: Just wanna show the honking sound, but why not some graphic also! Hope you don't get dizzy!)

Once when I was crossing the road, a car was speeding at the speed limit. I was about 100m away, and the driver was honking madly at me. Okay, now I seemed to put the fault on me, because I left out an important detail. Bangalore speed limit was only 40kph! What was that driver thinking? That I might have changed my mind and suddenly slept on the road?

Soon I realized that it was a normal thing in Bangalore; driver honks when:

1. They are angry at you and raising the ‘finger’ would need you to be looking at them;
2. They know you and just to want to greet you;
3. When you look like a foreigner, and auto-rickshaw driver want to offer their service;
4. When you are too pretty, sexy and attractive or the other extreme end, and they would like to express their liking or disgust;
5. When their doctor said to relieve stress, you have to learn to express yourself through honking. and
6. When the honk seems like telling them “Press me, press me!”
   

Okay, I was kidding on the last 3 reasons but the driver here are really multi-talented. With one of their hands on the gear, the other one on the top handle of the steering wheel and they seem could find the time or hand to honk every second; some even has another hand to raise their finger to express their anger at other drivers!

Well, reaching my work place now. I had a super aggressive driver today who made the car fly over the bump, talked on the phone when driving and sped on the road (60kph is a big thing in Bangalore!).