Traffic Gita

Ya nisha sarva bhutanam tasyam jagrati samyami - Krishna in Gita

Literally, this means, while the rest of the world is asleep, the wise person is awake. Naive interpretations of this point to people who have transcended the need to sleep 6-8 hrs per day. I believe thats really silly. Such people are simply biological freaks and is no sign of any kind of spiritual evolution. In fact such abilities often hamper spiritual evolution.

I believe this actually points to how a wise person will always possess discriminative intelligence and will know right from wrong no matter how much madness there is in the rest of the society. Lets take the example of traffic in Indian cities.

Any sane person will certainly be outraged by the madness called Indian traffic. Most of us have resigned ourselves to the fate of indian traffic. Due to constant exposure to it, we have also stopped noticing the madness. Worse still, we totally partake in the madness. Can we heed to Krishnas wisdom and stay awake to this traffic madness and stop partaking in it?

Every time we drive in the indian roads:

a.) Can we yield to competing traffic / pedestrians?

b.) Can we stop at the stop sign when its red and refuse to move until its green (unless there is a real danger of being overrun by a speeding bus behind)?

c.) Can we realize the dangers of overspeeding inside the city and drive appropriately - irrespective of whether you have a powerful bike /car with disc brakes?

d.) Can we consciously try to minimize the number of times we honk?

e.) Can we stay calm and compassionate towards people who dont do this?

f.) Can we make conscious effort to avoid taking private transportation as much as possible?

It really needs a lot of svadhyaya, or self introspection, and courage to accept that we have made a mistake every time we partake in the great indian traffic madness. Most often, we justify our madness saying every one is mad. We also justify the madness saying otherwise we will never reach our destination in time. I think these are just naive excuses. Can we listen to what Krishna says when it comes to driving on Indian roads?