BENGALURU: Try spotting a single vehicle in Bengaluru that is at least a few months old and which doesn’t have scratches or dents on its body. Take it as a challenge. Some among the superstitious intentionally dent their vehicles on buying a brand new one. They make it really small — something like a teeka on a baby’s face — in the hope of inviting divine protection. And that is much needed in Bengaluru while on the roads, right? However, in Bengaluru, you can be relieved from taking the pains of denting your own vehicle while seeking that divine protection. Others do it for you.
But be prepared for the dents to be of any size, depending on the proces s by which i t happens — bumper-to-bumper (while the one in front brakes suddenly, or the one behind forgets that vehicles do come with brakes), side-to-side (one trying to overtake the other, assuming to be a Formula One driver), side-on (“I won’t let you cross my path before I do yours!”), or the head-on one (“My car strongest! Bring it on!!”). In Namma Bengaluru, it happens by itself.
The moment you take your vehicle out on the roads, rest assured of a thousand others who are crossing your paths, going alongside you, or coming at you, ready to do that to your vehicle using their own. Lucky are those who live to see the dents on their vehicles. Bangalore never knew Bengaluru would offer its motoring citizens the privilege to have their vehicles dented (any size will do), disfigured (beauty lies in the eyes of the steering-wheel-holder!), or right royally crumpled.
See? Bengaluru motorists offer a wide variety in the denting process. Today, we are neurologically and psychologically engineered to disfigure others’ vehicles, just as much as expecting that to happen to our own on our city’s roads.
In some way, there is conviction in assuming that Bengaluru’s motorists have fallen in line with the Pauschian observations. Late Randy Pausch, who was the professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, in his book The Last Lecture makes an observation after his wife, Jai, crashes her vehicle into his parked convertible while trying to park her car in front of their residence. She badly dents it, and feels guilty. Pausch is not at home. Wondering how to break the news to him, she prepares his favourite meal (in the hope of cushioning whatever reactions she expected) before breaking the news to him.
When she does, and promises to get the vehicle repaired the next day, Pausch tells her it is not necessary if it is still in a good running condition, which it was.
He reasons that automobiles are there to get people from point A to point B. “They are utilitarian
devices, not expressions of social status (that the dents and gashes on a vehicle could damage)....
we’d just live with the dents and gashes,” he narrates in his book.
It’s not difficult to conclude that Bengalureans appear to be in complete agreement with Pausch in practice. They are “living with the dents and gashes” on their vehicles, which explains the challenge of finding at least one fairly used vehicle in the city without dents or gashes.
They agree on one more point. For Pausch and Jai, the perception about dented cars became a statement in their marriage: “Not everything needs to be fixed”. For Bengaluru motorists, too, not everything needs to be fixed – the only difference is that they don’t want to fix their skewed perception that vehicles and the way they use them are there to express their social status and their aggression. That is the root of the ongoing car-denting process. Welcome to the car-denting fest in Namma Bengaluru!