Crazy Roads, Take Me Home

If you ever want to test the limits of your patience, just venture onto any random road in an Indian city. No amount of soothing music or mindful podcasts can steady your nerves once you’re swept into that chaotic river of traffic. It’s truly wheeling into the maddening crowd.

If Thomas Hardy were alive today, he might be tempted to rewrite his classic as “Far from the Maddening Crowd—Delhi Edition.”

Bumper to bumper, car to car, the city’s tangled web of roads can drain the cheer out of anyone’s soul. On my daily commute, I manage to finish an entire bottle of water, polish off the fruits and salad meant for lunch, listen to Osho, hum a few Jagjit Singh ghazals, scroll through sizzling political updates—and after all that, I’ve barely crawled five weary kilometres.

Perhaps those driving automatics have a slight edge—their left foot and hand rest easy—but for those behind the wheel of older cars, every joint protests by the end of the ride. Locked knees, twisted ankles, stiff backs, aching wrists—each muscle cries out for mercy.

As the car inches forward, you get subtle reminders that the festive season is near. But one look at the gridlocked lanes, the endless honking, and the long, stubborn red at every signal is enough to turn that festive excitement into a nightmare of fumes and frustration.

Then arrives the wedding season—Delhi’s own carnival of chaos. Picture the poor groom, layered in finery and floral garlands, stuck in the same suffocating jam. Between the heat, the horns, and the halt, his real test of patience begins long before the vows do. Perhaps, Delhi’s roads are every dulha’s first lesson in endurance!

And of course, the roadside drama never ends—someone stops to grab a single box of mithai, another parks wherever they spot a gap no wider than a shoebox. Autos and rickshaws dart through the mayhem with fearless flair, their drivers wearing invisible crowns of confidence. The smaller the vehicle, the larger the ego—as if navigating the gridlock were an act of gallantry.

Ironically, even as the traffic crawls, the economy seems to zoom ahead. Who says growth is slowing? It’s alive, thriving, and honking—right here on the streets! Just look at those serpentine queues of cars outside jewellery stores, undeterred by skyrocketing gold prices.

And while your car guzzles fuel and empties your festive pocket, you’ll still need to budget for that fender-bender repair and a shiny post-jam polish. My car now resembles a Van Gogh canvas—each scrape and dent forming an abstract masterpiece of urban survival. Yet the eternal dilemma persists: should I first take my creaking car to the mechanic or my cracking joints to the doctor?

As the frustration builds, even your music and podcasts fade into oblivion. What lingers in your head is John Denver’s tender voice—only now, it hums in your foggy languid mind…

Country roads… take me home… to the place where I belong…