Chris Rea, obviously can't read a map.
Yesterday I had the car journey to Hell. Correction, even Hell wouldn’t want these roads. My driver told me the journey from Mumbai to Surat would take about four hours.
The road out of Mumbai was bad. Potholes, heavy traffic (even at 05:00), animals in the road (big ones, like cows) and just to complicate things, I have a myopic driver with poor night vision......how could it get any worse?
Well, the monsoon rain hit us just as we left the outskirts (or as I like to call it, "the rim") of Mumbai. By the time we reached the suburbs, I’d already suffered several prolapses of the spine and a mild concussion, just from the bouncing around from pothole to pothole. As we reached the main highway the holes got deeper and wider, the traffic became even heavier, the rain poured down harder and, as if it wasn't bad enough, animals were flocking to the road.
Are you one of those who believes shooting stars burn up entering our planet's atmosphere? You're wrong! Terribly wrong! The bloody things are impacting all along the road to Surat.
Anyway, after driving for a couple more hours, I have lost tooth fillings, bruised some ribs and blackened one eye. Eventually we reached the NEW part of the highway........and it got worse. The road surface was fantastic, not a pot hole in sight. However, the antics of Indian drivers and other surreal road users aged me rapidly. Forget anything you might have seen on Police-Camera-Action. The stupid, idiotic and dangerous antics of some European and American drivers is nothing compared to what happens in India. I screamed continuously for several hours but no one heard me over the constant noise of honking car horns.
The new highway has three lanes but that is irrelevant... but then so are all the traffic laws too. Lane 1 (the inside lane) should be the lane everyone drives in unless they want to overtake. Not here. Lane 1 here is for parking anything, gangs of squatting women brushing pebbles off the road with only a fat man sporting a bushy moustache to direct traffic away from them, cows, more cows, herds of cows, a donkey with a ten year old boy beating it with a stick, school children on their way to school, a camel (that’s right, a camel, in fact the biggest camel I have ever seen but that is another WinnieLeaks story to come!), mopeds travelling in the opposite direction, cars travelling in the opposite direction, trucks and buses travelling in the opposite direction, scabby dogs, dead scabby dogs and, finally, my myopic driver whenever he fell asleep at the wheel. Remember, we are on a national highway. Whilst drifting into Lane 1 asleep, my driver hit a scabby dog and the following conversation ensued:
My driver earned the name Lert after declaring "I am alert sir!" when I woke him up the first time.(When you read the Driver’s words, bob your head from side to side and raise your right hand up to face height and pretend you are screwing a light bulb in and out).
Me: Oi! Lert! You just hit a dog.
Driver: No problem Mr. Winnie. Dog is nothing. Nobody care.
Me: You avoid the cows though. Is it because cows are sacred?
Driver: No Mr. Winnie, cow is big and make much damage.
Me: Then why don’t you try to avoid the mopeds? They would cause a lot of damage if you hit them too.
Driver: Ah, Mr. Winnie. You see, moped driver’s family have to pay for damage if moped driver dies. You see, not problem!
It took eight hours to reach the shipyard and I could hardly walk when we got there. Our meeting was cut very short because we were so late. Also, I am sure I was slurring my words during the presentation I gave. You do that when you are punch drunk, dazed and disorientated. I decided not to use the flooded bathrooms at the yard before we made the return journey. Big mistake.
Hope springs eternal! I was optimistic that the traffic would be lighter on the return journey.....how wrong I was. The traffic was worse, the rain was worse, it was night time now and only 1 in 10 vehicles has lights, there were no markings on the road and there had been another major asteroid shower whilst I was in the shipyard. It took nine hours to bounce back to Mumbai. What made it agonizingly worse, was the increasing need to hold in both sets of bodily fluids.
I was almost successful in holding out. I staggered into the hotel during the early hours of the next morning battered, bruised, soiled, unable to talk and a left eye that wouldn't close. Tomorrow, I take the train.........if I can get out of bed!
Oh, and Chris Rea, your lyrics are fine with just one exception, it is the "Road to Surat"
