Monday mornings

For two blessed months, May and June, the regular traffic heaves a sigh of relief. No dropping off children at school, no impromtu traffic jams and no double and triple parking. Then the schools reopen. And a sweltering mass of school kids make their way to school bent under their backpacks. Its as if learning is an uphill climb and each class is a long wait at base camp before climbing up to the next one. Then they get to the twelfth standard and the expression 'no room at the top' takes on a whole new meaning. The first rankers are separated by fractions of marks like formula racers at the finish line. Lose more than three or four marks and you blow your chances of getting into engineering or medical college. The report card reads like something out of Nadia Comaneci's gymnastic routine. 100,100, 99.5 Anything less and you can bid your future goodbye.
Or that is what the children are told. So, striken by terror, they study, take additional tutions and learn to deprive themselves of sleep by the time they are barely thirteen. I wonder who benefits from this tragic treadmill. Not the kids. Not their parents who are terrified that apart from not 'making it' they will have to shell out large sums of money if they have it to enable their children to get in through a backdoor of the colleges. And what a big backdoor it is. It's as if degrees have been kidnapped and held to ransom. They can only be released by parting with vast sums of money.

Sunday Evenings

Every Sunday, the cops put up barricades at the road leading from Besant Avenue to the beach. The only people who get caught are the motorcyclists moving at a sedate 40 kmph. The others, who weave between the thickening traffic are oblivious to the curses of car and other drivers. They have developed their own early warning systems. The have scouts to see where the police barricades the road. Then , they just discover another side street and blaze a noisy trail through a calm and quiet neighborhood. They move in packs of eight or ten. All the riders carry a pillion, all of them believe they are a reincarnation of the cult of the Mad Max films.
They don't believe they will ever get injured or even crash. They have complete faith in their bikes and their abilities to ride. If you ever get caught in the middle, all you hear are the drones rising, flashing and then fading away.
The police have done everything. They have put up speedbreakers on the main beach road, they have patrols out in the evenings, they have a whiole bunch of policemen stationed at various vantage points. Yet, they have very little sucess. It's almost as if the riders are engaged in a cat and mouse where they are the cats and the policemen are the mice