At the Charlotte Airport

A lady wearing blue jeans and a pale yellow jacket walks across the Food court area. She is carrying a black background, white polka-dotted handbag on her side. She heads straight for McDonalds and stands in line to place her order. So, that is her favorite amongst all of Pizza Hut, Subway, Quiznos etc. Her standard fall back option. Mine would be Quiznos. (Any guesses why? Because I can expect a decent vegetarian meal from it). Another woman joins the line soon. This time its a a blue shirt over embroidered jeans. Good taste I think. After spending a few hours of shopping in New York over the weekend, my fashion buds are certainly excited. I can see myself taking special interest in watching what people wear, specifically women. I remember we used to do this often as a pastime during our college days, it was a lot of fun. Another woman just crosses my table. She is carrying a multi-colored Jaipuri printed bag. With blue and brown as the foundation colors on the bag, I notice that she wears a coffee colored skirt and a light cream top alongwith it. Everything matches so well. Would she wear any other dress while carrying that bag? Or is she one of those who have a matching bag and a sandal for every dress they own. I see that she also wears a white pearl necklace. Definitely fashion conscious, this woman, I think.

Amidst all this, I hear the siren of a moving cart. There are two old ladies and one young woman sitting on it along with a lady driver. They have a smile on their faces. A smile as if they are I class travellers in a train. Other class people have to walk on their own feet carrying their luggage. They would also give them way as the cart moves across. All the driver needs to do is blow the siren constantly. In another cart, there is another old family with a small child and a bunny (a person impersonating a bunny). The bunny smiles to everyone nodding and shaking his head. Some people smile when they look at him. Everyone knows its not a real bunny. But some smile. I would too if I was in its line of sight. I am not. A question arises in my mind. Why doesnt everyone smile when they see a bunny?

A guy comes and parks a cart close to other carts and takes out his 25 cent reward from the machine. I think some thing at the moment. I then start reminiscing about how Tom Hanks earns his money in the movie Terminal (its a must watch). I calculate, 25 cents * 10 (carts) = 2.5 dollars. So, you can at least get one burger a day if you can get hold of ten empty carts and park them here. Then I go a step ahead and calculate 25 cents * 20 (carts) = 5 dollars. So if he can manage 20 carts then he should be able to get food twice a day. How difficult would it be to manage getting 20 carts in a day, my mind prods. Somehow, I want to be settled that it is not difficult to do that. I want to be settled that someone doing this can easily manage to have food at least twice a day. If he remains hungry, it would be sad.

By now, I feel a slight pain in my wrist. I realize I am not using any hard board or support for the paper. I am scribbling uncomfortably on my lap and my hand posture is not good. Deciding to take a break, while I take a short glance around exercising my wrist, I see people looking at me suspiciously. They seem puzzled about what this woman is upto - looking around and scribbling something constantly. My neighbour even sneaks a peek into my writing but I am sure at the speed with which I scribble, my handwriting is so illegible, that she would only worsen the suspense for herself. For a moment, I feel like a criminal. I try to look normal and make a casual conversation with someone. I am not insane or prodding into your lives is the message I want to get across. Finally, I choose to stop writing.

Prologue: Yield? What yield?

The word Yield never found much place in my vocabulary until recently. And since then it has been written all over in my head. Any guesses to what this is all about? Well, we recently bought a car. The lazy woman that I am, I never bothered to get my US driving license until now. And mind you, if you laugh or smirk I will defend myself to the core. Why do I need a license if I do not have anything to drive around? Yeah I know it's all about being prepared and all that. My roommate Jenny used to tell me it is good to have it as an identity proof when you are travelling around. Well, I have my passport, I would reply. Why would you move around with your passport? Would you not like to keep it at some safe place? she would insist. I would retort back with a why would anyone steal my passport? And since it is my passport I am going to be extra careful carrying it around. Of course, she would give it up knowing it was no use cracking a nut which was already crack.

Back to topic, I have had an Indian driving license for almost 10 years now and have driven around quite a lot while in Delhi. And just to keep the perspective, I love driving. So driving or being comfortable with the vehicle was not a matter at all. What was the matter, was driving in US after driving in India. It's a complete shift in perspective. The first couple of times I drove, I committed blasphemous mistakes. I still remember I drove right across the intersection into the wrong side of the road (on the other side of yellow line) and expressed innocent confusion on why vehicles from the opposite side were coming right onto us. Thankfully, my friend's shocked expression quickly communicated the mistake and its seriousness and I understood just in time. Incidentally, I wasn't caught. Similarly, I took a couple of free left turns.

The concept of Yield is something I was completely new to after driving in Delhi for two reasons. One, there is no traffic rule that mandates that you have to yield. The signals take complete care of it (that is if you are following the signals which is a completely different question altogether). Two, if you try to yield in Delhi traffic, you will never get to your destination. The dynamics are very different there. So the message you learn is "NEVER YIELD". Being aggressive in fact, is essential for survival in Delhi. (If you subscribe to Gandhian school of thought, you could argue here, agreed.) So, it was a complete turnaround here.

My early US traffic experience began as a pedestrian and I was pretty humbled by the Tehzeeb and Izzat shown to the pedestrians (at least in NC, although I have seen the New York city traffic to be pretty similar to Delhi traffic). Here, if you mere pedestrian, happen to be in the middle of the road and a car is speeding towards you at 45 miles per hour, you have no reason to panic. Just hold your head high and keep crossing the road (bindaas hokar cross karne ka, kya?). The car would come to a screeching halt just to let you cross. And the driver would not complain. If you just step out of your house and see a car parked 20 meters away from you in the middle of the road close to your house, you need to hurry a little because the car driver is waiting for you to cross. He does not mind waiting at all. He has all the respect and patience for you. He will cross only after you cross. Initially when this used to happen with me, I often stopped confused as to let the car go. And then the driver would either just keep waiting till I understood or indicate through some gesture and then I would hurry only ending up wasting the time. It took me a while to grasp the equation, status(Pedestrian) > status(Motor vehicle).

And so back to car driving in US. I found it difficult to break my old habit of aggressive (read oppurtunistic) driving to a humble toned down one. And initially I almost never yielded while turning left. It was never deliberate. In fact, it was very natural for me to do that. The first time I did that, I did not get any hang of why, when I had a green signal, traffic was still coming from the opposite direction. Slowly, I programmed my mind with two messages - "YIELD" and "WHEN CONFUSED BE ON THE RIGHT". These two messages helped me uncode my older habits of not yielding and being left-aligned on roads. Sadly the YIELD message has been over-learnt. Now, when I am on a signal planning to go straight across the intersection (having the Right of way), I stop to YIELD for turning traffic. I keep waiting after my signal has turned green and then after a patient wait, either on hearing a honk from the back or seeing the vehicle in front of me NOT turning for long enough, realize my mistake and move straight on. Guess it would be a little time before I can unlearn the over-learnt. I also chuckle at the thought of how I would find driving back in India after driving for a while in US. So much for traffic and all that.

Update

Just yesterday. I am driving back from Downtown to my univ area. Like generally is the case, the streets in Downtown are one way. So once I am on the street that goes straight into my univ, I set the cruise button of my mind to KEEP MOVING STRAIGHT, and let it indulge in the more important trivia of life. After about a mile of driving, suddenly an oncoming car emerges out of nowhere. It is only then that my almost absent mind sends flashing brain signals WRONG SIDE WRONG SIDE!!! (ONE WAY became a TWO WAY once out of downtown). I immediately shift to the right and completely ignore the expression on the driver's face.