Indians are constantly negotiating peace. My friend Hamza said this like a proverb while guiding me around Bhopal, the city that served as my introduction to India. The phrasing is appropriate because while you might say that Americans metaphorically negotiate peace together, Indians are often literally negotiating.
Negotiations of peace are as literal as those of price. Some people are quick to scam, fight, and curse but, as Dalits and Muslims have learned, they can also be quick to much worse. This keeps the negotiations constant, sometimes unsuccessful, and always necessary. They occur daily in the market shops and rickshaws, the ballot box and tea stalls, and over the dinner plate. (What tool of mediation is as ancient as the well cooked meal?)
However, negotiations occur most frequently and successfully on the urban street. There, the cautious habits of rule-bound American drivers would put them in danger. In most aerial videos of the urban Indian street, it looks like an incomprehensible sea of shuffling fish. By American standards, the drivers seem so unconcerned with safety that the whole of New Jersey would see its reputation rehabilitated by comparison. (I’ve never seen five people on a two-person motorbike in New Jersey.)
But in truth Indian motorists are highly skilled, creating order where safety regulations either don’t exist or aren’t enforced. Whatever rules of the road are followed, I identified only two.
- Drive on the left side, although you may use the right side if there is space.
- If it fits, it ships. You’re free to move between any vehicles where there is room for yours.
The song of the Indian street is a chorus of honking horns. In the US, car horns are heard less often and they’re usually deployed as an act of aggression. In India, the horn is used to tell pedestrians you are approaching, or to let the traffic streaming through an intersection know that you’re about to weave through it. It’s used to say hello, to let someone know you’re in their blind spot, and, of course, as an act of aggression.
A system as complex and unregulated as the Indian road can only function with this constant communication. Like the cities themselves, it’s best seen from the backseat of a rickshaw or scooter. There you can appreciate the fluidity and awesome efficiency, all arising from two rather elastic rules and a car horn. If American roads are like a scripted rehearsal, Indian roads are an improvisation.
“Spontaneous order,” Hamza calls it. “It’s a libertarian paradise.”
Also read: The Language of Traffic
Negotiations on the street might occur on unequal terms but still result in a kind of peace. One day Hamza and I were in Bhopal’s Old City sweating through our clothes as we searched on foot for the markets in the middle of a heat wave. We knew we’d find them near the Moti Masjid, but we lost our way back to the Moti Masjid.
At one point we came upon a busy fork in the road where we had to wait for a chance to cross the street. I checked my surroundings and noticed two young men approaching from our right on a motorbike. Nothing unordinary there, until they pulled over and the passenger dismounted and slapped the seat with an anger that was evidently meant for the driver, not the bike. Right then Hamza found our opening and pulled me into the street by the hand like a mother leading a distracted child. I only managed a few looks back along the way, but it was enough.
The passenger was soon back on the bike holding one hand to the driver’s lower back, as if brandishing a knife, and appeared to be giving forceful directions. The driver was slightly stiff, looking a little cautious but not scared. When we were perpendicular to them I looked once more and saw the angry passenger was not holding a knife like I had thought. Instead it was a black pistol with an unusually long barrel pressed into the lower back of the driver who, to my confusion, remained inexplicably calm.
Then the passenger checked the pistol’s chamber, looked satisfied, returned the barrel to the driver’s back, and they drove away together. Nobody cared to notice and neither of them were animated about it either. It was like watching two actors who could not be cajoled into actually convincing the audience of their roles. I took a moment to process what I saw, assuring myself I actually saw it, and told Hamza.
“Hamza,” I said as he continued directing me by the hand, “I think a guy back there on the motorbike had a gun to his driver’s back.” Without surprise or concern for anything but the pulse of the traffic he said, “Probably.” The word sounded like a shrug of the shoulder, his reaction as unsatisfying as theirs.
Was my own surprise out of place? But guns are very hard to acquire in India, nothing like the United States. The pistol was itself worthy of intrigue or a raised eyebrow at the very least. I considered that Hamza might have simply been too preoccupied by protecting me from danger to spare any attention, but my confusion remained. I pressed him once more.
“So, do I get an explanation to why I just saw someone with a gun to their driver’s back?” I asked. Replaying his response in my head now I can imagine the smirk that must have crossed his face, but in that moment I couldn’t see his face. As if it really were this simple – and maybe it was – he said, “He must have needed a ride.”
A libertarian paradise indeed. But at least they negotiated their peace.
Brandon Ray Langston has a degree in Biology and History from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. His writing interests cultural comparison, inter-group conflict, and anything that inspires wonder. You can find him on Twitter @B_R_Langston
Featured image: Om Prakash Sethia / Unsplash