Our Tehzeeb's ugly underbelly

By K.V.S.Madhav

HYDERABAD, FEB. 9.

One slip. An enraged mind and a momentary lapse of reason. On the road to ruin, a fall takes no time at all and the damage can never be undone. A harsh fact that hit three city youngsters on the Uppal highway recently when they allegedly sprinkled petrol on an RTC driver and drove away seeing the leaping flames.

They have company in this youngster who revved his motorcycle on a hapless traffic constable and even rained abuses and blows on him at Chaderghat X Roads. The reason? An RTC bus had grazed his mobike's rear and the constable remained mute. Curious onlookers joined gleefully and hauled up the weary constable manning the junction all day. The ugly underbelly of the angry Hyderabadi had never been so brazen.

Who are these people? And why are they angry? Aren't these acts typical of hardened criminals and not your respectable-looking road users. Unfortunately, the angry ones are your average citizens unleashing pent-up furies on the streets and on others. There are thousands of such angry men rubbing shoulders with you on the roads, suffering from an agitated state of mind called `road rage'. Education, proper social upbringing or not, everyone seems to succumb to it.

For example, among the youngsters involved in the L.B. Nagar incident is an executive director of a private software company, another a hotel management graduate and the other a PG diploma holder in computers now pursuing a management degree. The angry young man who manhandled the traffic constable is a Dubai-based software engineer on vacation.

Startlingly, these motiveless crimes are resorted to on small provocations -- an accidental nudge by a passing motorist or just a simple stare by a man in the queue is enough to make tempers fray, fists fly and a flurry of expletives explode. Indeed, today's Hyderabadi is cynical, angry and more dangerously, frustrated like never before.

Doing a tightrope walking between office and home with all the attendant pressures, the road to his destination is choked with frustrated souls and armies of vehicles belching fumes. The race is to pip everyone else at the post. The pot-holed, cratered dirt tracks only worsen matters.

"It is not the choked roads alone, even their minds are choked. Behind this aggression lies lots of frustration," says the noted psychologist, Dr. P. Raghurami Reddy. So alarming is this `road rage' that it left police and psychologists perplexed and people back home anguished.

Alas, where has the famous Hyderabadi `tehzeeb' gone? "The struggle for survival and recognition, frustration stemming out of non-performance, insecurities and weaknesses... all are showing up on the streets. Roads give them a kind of anonymity which gives rise to unbridled aggression," says the DCP, Traffic, Mr. M.V. Dinakar Prasad, adding pithily, "they are also aware they can get away with it".

He throws up his hands as his personnel can in no way control these aggressive characters. "People are opposed to any kind of regulation. They would like others to be controlled, but not them. Mistakes are never accepted," the harried officer analyses.

So, what is the solution? The realisation that a duel on the road is impersonal and to remain sober. "Instead of yielding to other's aggressive nature and getting into fisticuffs, it is practical to coolly note down the vehicle number," says Dr. Reddy. Of course, a smile in those tense moments will always help.

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Section  : Southern States
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