Learning the Indian impact method

I’m in a Delhi hotel room waiting to head back to the airport for my flight home. It’s my second time in the city and it seems to have got crazier since I was last here 5 years ago.

The most mind boggling thing is the traffic. Not the volume of it (although that’s pretty impressive too) but the sheer mentality of the people driving.

There are cars going the wrong way down the road against the direction of traffic. Cars park in the middle of 4 lane highways, jacked up as their wheels are changed. There are horses, dogs, cows and chickens in the middle of streets. Every bus looks like it’s trying to beat the ‘most people in a bus' record. Cars cut across sandy dust bowls to make short cuts. Tuk Tuks clatter in and out of traffic like buzzing wasps trying to find the quickest way into a jam jar. More people than feasible undertake you on motorbikes. Trucks (only allowed out after 9 PM and driven by people who stopped drinking at 8:55) oscillate each wheel over white lines on the road and occasionally brush concrete central reservations, sending sparks flying across their highly decorated paintwork.

But it isn't the things you see that alarm you the most. It is the noise.

Over the incessant burble of two stroke engines and tyre noise is a constant interruption of horns, beeping their different tones against each other to fight for attention.

Back home, I hear one car horn a day.

It surprises me every time because it happens when I’m not expecting it.

In Delhi, it’d be a surprise if I didn’t hear a horn honking.

If somebody honked a horn at me in England more than twice, I’d become angry and have to take a few deep breaths to calm myself. Here, the noise sends me off into a distant trance like state, allowing me to drift off with my thoughts.

In Delhi, people just ignore the honks despite their frequency.

I think that choosing when to speak is just the same - you can either rant and rabbit constantly, hoping your message will get through above the noise of everybody else doing the same.

Or you can wait patiently for a moment of silence and say exactly the right thing.