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Indian roads demand something Indians are not properly trained to handle - Equality between strangers.
A traffic signal in any modern society means that people with unequal money, class and muscle mass have to accept the same rules. A Fortuner and an Alto must stop behind the same white line. This is disappointing for a man who bought an SUV and who srongly believes higher ground clearance is synonymous with higher hierarchy. His philosophy of a public road is private propetrty with other people on it.
Hence, the constant restlessness to prove, to himself and to everyone around him, that he is a VIP, a very important person, stranded among VOP - very ordinary people.
This phobia of ordinariness turns his car into a low grade art installation. The windows are blacked out, the number plate has an official looking red strip, and the rear windscreen displays the ultimate Indian brand: caste. You might mistake this for a thoughtful gesture towards overworked caste census workers, saving them from the trouble of going door to door.
Every slight inconvenience injures his ego. Every driver who refuses to move aside becomes a junior artist wandering into the hero's frame. The back ground music is supplied by popular songs that scream, "We will go where we want, turn as we please and break every traffic signal."
Caste supplies the most important assurance behind this VIP performance. He wants to announce the protection available to him, where the surname announces the possibility of ten men arriving after one phone call, if you dare to say anything to him.
In that sense, the Delhi- NCR man is the freest of all men in the world.
In a viral Thar reel, the driver who drives proudly on the wrong side explains with the calmness of a meditation practitioner, "The biggest benefit of a Thar is, you can drive on the wrong side and no one will flash their dipper or say anything.
The car has five star safety.
Everyone, outside it, is on their own.
Recently, a video from Pune showed a Fortuner fitted with a button operated device that concealed its number plate. My first reaction was reluctant admiration. At least the man had worked to hide his identity. Across NCR, so many vehicles don't have any number plates at all.
It's no surprise that lane discipline remains such an unfinished project in India.
Civic sense demands a small surrender.
It asks a man to believe that a stranger's claim to the road is as valid as his own
But surrender is not something the NCR man practices.
He has spent his whole life learning to occupy space, not share it - or in some cases collecting rent from it.
This attitude is so difficult to fix because, for this particular variety of men, the white lines marking traffic lanes are the bars of a cage and a traffic signal turning red dares the bull inside him to smash through whatever stands ahead
The Times of India
20 September 2026
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