Blow Horn! – India

Blow Horn!
India

Horns are everywhere in India. The stick out on the heads of one of my favourite animals, the water buffalo, and of course are to be seen on most roads protruding from cows and bullocks. I love those horns, particularly when they are flamboyantly painted at festival time. It’s the other variety that I find not so pleasing, the noisy and incessant type. You know the one: the ubiquitous vehicle horn.

“Blow Horn at Night” is painted on just about every truck in India, and for good reason. The vehicle horn has a definite purpose. On more than one occasion I have avoided oblivion thanks to a vehicle horn warning me that I am millimetres away from being mowed down as I attempt to cross an obstacle courses which passes itself off as a road. But people tend to blow horns at the drop of a hat: night, day, wherever and whenever.

I have been walking along a side street on numerous occasions where I am the only living object around. There is not another person or creature in sight and a vehicle is approaching me from the opposite direction. I can see it and I can hear it. Yet this doesn’t stop the driver from giving a series of deafening blows on his horn, almost splitting my eardrum. Try as I may, I have never been able to fathom the logic behind this.

And “sleeper” buses – one thing is guaranteed throughout the night: you will get no sleep at all, with klaxons blowing every few seconds. I am sometimes asked whether I want a sleeper or non-sleeper bus by the travel agent – like there is a choice – they are all non-sleeper to me! In certain areas there are traffic signs indicating that horns should not be used. But this has no impact on the horn-obsessed Indian driving public.

Is it the case that when someone buys a vehicle in India that the first thing to be checked by the potential buyer is the working order of the horn? The brakes, the accelerator and the engine � they don’t matter as long as the horn is working and loud, very loud. It kind of gives everyone carte blanche to drive like madmen: why use the brakes at all when you have a million decibel horn at your disposal?

Perhaps I’m missing the point here. The next time I am left with a perforated eardrum from someone blurting a horn in a “no horn” residential area, I should probably consider that horn blowing is part of a national competition. The driver who uses it most frequently and who has the loudest one wins a prize. And the prize? � the largest, loudest and most annoying horn ever invented. This would certainly explain why the decibel level on Indian roads seems to be spiralling out of control.

I once boarded an Air India flight and half expected the next four hours to be punctuated with frequent horn blurting. Of course it wasn’t. If I can’t get away from the noise by escaping to the skies, then please give me the water buffalo anytime. Those lumbering mammals with their massive horns, which will thankfully forever remain silent. Splendid serenity.

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