We left Bangalore on Thursday and drove to Vellore. The drive in the country looked much like Nepal, driving through busy little villages and past farms, animals, people walking and driving oxen, etc. We kept seeing cattle and oxen with their horns painted blue or green, and sometimes little gold crowns or bells on the tops of the horns. Nelson told us that the cow festival had just passed, the day people express gratitude for all that the cattle give them in work and milk (not food, since Hindus don’t eat beef). It’s the day they don’t beat them, and they decorate their horns to be festive. The paint stays until it wears off.
We got on a toll road on which we could actually make progress. Not like an American interstate, but perhaps like a state road. At the toll both was a sign that said:
ATTENTION PLEASE! DO NOT SPIT!
The highway was enhanced with many signs promoting safety, such as:
SAFETY GEARS ARE PLACED BETWEEN EARS
DON’T LEARN SAFETY BY ACCIDENT
SPEED THRILLS BUT KILLS
BE ALERT; ACCIDENT HURTS
SAFE DRIVING IS LIKE BREATHING. DO NOT STOP.
FAST DRIVE COULD BE LAST DRIVE
Every once in awhile there were randomly placed red STOP signs, but they didn’t seem to mean anything in particular as the driver didn’t even slow down. Sometimes there was a sign (also randomly placed as far as we could tell):
GO SLOW, ACCIDENT PRONE ZONE.
But the one that seemed to quarrel with all the others and gave us much food for thought was this one:
DEATH IS NATURE….YOU DON’T CAUSE IT.
We wondered which was true in India. If a reckless driver dies or kills someone else, was that nature, or karma? or is the universe structured around at least some cause and effect even in India? Do time and chance happen to them all?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete