Road rage
For a long time, I thought it was just me. So, feeling a bit guilty, I told no-one about it. Thought it might fade with time. Then I realised it was here to stay. I’m talking of course of my secret fantasy of driving down Dhaka’s streets in a massive industrial digger. Yellow: it has to be yellow. Every time I come across an irritating driver, I simply scoop him up with my steel grey claw and hurl him, car and all, into a bush. Or alternatively roll over his vehicle like a tank and squash it.
Imagine my relief when, in a moment of weakness, I disclosed this to a close friend, an urbane and respected professional, only to have him reveal that he too had a personal fantasy. His involves having football stadium floodlights attached to his car. Each time someone comes up behind him with their headlights on full beam, he turns on his extra lights and dazzles them, He’s obviously thought this through in some detail, and adds, with a touch of relish, “I’d actually like to burn their retinas”.
Then, at a sophisticated dinner party one evening, I am chatting to an articulate woman, who seems the embodiment of politeness and charm. But in the course of the conversation, when I discuss my intention to write this article, she discloses that she has her own demonic side which only emerges in Dhaka traffic, letting slip that she occasionally dreams of having an automatic machine gun fitted to her car, so that she can simply wipe out those drivers who annoy her, in a hail of bullets.
It seems that Dhaka traffic brings out the worst in us, proving our careful cultivated social demeanour to be a thin veneer. Underneath all of us, the psychopath lurks, brought to the surface by the driving habits of our wonderful metropolis.
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