A day before the verdict on Salman Khan, I was out on one of my infrequent evening walks, trying to pull all my thoughts on him together and my mind was wandering: Sallu certainly makes the Incredible Hulk look like Kareena Kapoor in comparison and he could make each of his muscles do a different dance—simultaneously: his biceps would be going Gangnam style, his triceps would be doing the Moonwalk, his pectorals Cat Daddying and his glutes Twerking, all at the same time. I almost failed to spot a man spread-eagled half on the road. I could barely make him out in the feeble glow of the streetlights. It was only when I drew up did I notice that his slippers were lying higgledy piggledy a little distance away from his feet. His mouth was open and his eyes were closed, and upon closer inspection I saw a small rivulet of drool coming out of his mouth. He was sleeping the sleep that the very drunk sleep. It then struck me that a sober Salman Khan driving his gigantic Toyota Land Cruiser wearing his trademark shades could have just as easily casually run him over—without even doing the serious off-roading he was doing when he ran all those people over in Mumbai. I doubt if you can see the road properly from the great heights that the SUV driver usually sits at. Cynics will say that in our country the minute you bring your car onto the road, it is all off-roading anyway, but seriously what’s the point of owning an SUV if you can’t occasionally drive on a few pavements? I am given to occasional bouts of SUV envy even as I am half-tempted to advocate the boycott of Salman Khan’s movies.
I am sure you get this feeling too, whenever you are driving and one of these motorised monsters muscle you out: you are not safe on our roads unless you are driving one of these monsters. I wonder: How much bigger are they going to make these SUVs? I am sure they are planning one with a water bed and a golf course in the back, and a movie theatre as well, one on the roof of which a small plane can comfortably land even as the SUV is cruising at a hundred kilometres an hour. That is if it is not at that time long-hauling a medium-sized submarine on its roof; a car so big that, as Dave Barry famously said, would be easily visible from the moon. Will they put in sensors that will bring the monster to a dead stop the nanosecond it senses a human form within a hundred striking metres? I think SUV makers marketing their cars in a country where millions sleep half on the roads not through choice have a social responsibility for this. Or will the government instal gizmos on our pavements that will automatically emit stop signals to the wayward SUV that will alert it to stop, failing which the gizmos will automatically send messages to television studios, assorted ambulance chasers, prospective lawyers, the president of India, Twitter, the nearest hospital, in that order.
But look at the comments that are being made: Kutta road pe soyega kutte ki maut marega... footpaths are not meant for sleeping... not the driver’s or alcohol’s fault. Or that it is like penalising a train driver because someone decided to cross the tracks and got killed in the bargain. Again I digress: That evening I briefly considered moving the drunk’s legs out of the road, but I am ashamed to report that I failed in this civic duty, thinking, today it is this road, tomorrow which road would it be? Being human?
Sudarshan is the author of Anatomy of an Abduction: How the Indian Hostages in Iraq Were Freed
sudarshan@newindianexpress.com