Transcript of  'Straight Talk'

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Interview with Ms. Jayashree Mundkur
You want me to narrate a story about people breaking rules and my trying to tell them 'look you are not supposed to do that'. Its happening constantly.
Now the traffic getting into the Sai temple road and getting out of the Sai temple road is a constant nightmare. Because there is enough room at the mouth of that road for just one lane traffic either side. But people will make about four lanes, especially with two wheelers, sometimes even the larger vans. And so the person trying to get in is stopped right at the mouth of the road and then the traffic is piled up. But by the time the poor single policeman who is trying to take control of the traffic leading to Marathahalli, leading to ITPL, leading to Varthur and also down our road, that poor chap is far away from this chaos. So what do we do because we are getting late to go to school in the morning, I get down often and I tell these guys “Don't you have eyes in your head, don't you have some brains, can't you see you are blocking traffic”. They look at me as though I am some kind of an idiot myself, I am the biggest imbecile around. What needs to be done is for them to get ahead and get to their work in time. Why should they care about anybody else? In this city nobody cares about anybody else.
The policeman don't think it is worth their time or effort or their lives perhaps to try and control any traffic. That's exactly what is happening in this city. So people on pavements, they have just recently built beautiful pavements on two sides of the road. They spent tax payers money on that. And what is that pavement used for? For shops to come up, for tiny stores to come up, very often the policeman himself is sitting at one of these stores and two wheelers to use it as another lane. They couldn't care less who is walking down that road. At the crossing itself you will see, ever so much rubbish going on.
What can we expect? Are we as citizens meant to stop it or is there somebody who we citizens pay for whose duty it is, whose work it is to stop this. Does every other citizen jump out from his car and tell the fellow you are not doing the right thing. No, why should we? We are paying for it, we expect it. That's how it should be. There are no, there is no recourse to law; to take either the offender to court or get the matter settled then and there. The police very often takes the side of the fellow who is making the problem. And this happens all the time.
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Interview with Ms. Nirmala Babu Nair
There are morning times when there is less traffic actually, many people break the rules, come on the wrong side of driving without light and with one light, four wheelers coming with one light. This causes accidents.
I was going to Jayanagar, I was on the left side, one of the cars came from the second lane, he came to the left side, he crossed and hit me and I fell down and in a fraction I could see the back side of the car, just put a sudden break and I escaped because of my helmet or it could have crossed me. The man did not stop, someone shouted and he stopped and just gave me fifty rupees and said, 'nothing happened, you can get up and go'. No one came to help me.
Police?
No, there was no police at all to help me. Luckily nothing happened, that is a different thing, not even a scratch. I just escaped.
And the second incident was early morning I was going out and all the street lights were off. Even though it is winter or summer, they switch off the lights at correct time. It was pitch dark and because of the digging, entire mud was put in the centre of the road. We couldn't see it, it hit it and bike was on one side and I was on one side. But that time, other drivers helped me to get up.
Without helmet driving, zig-zag driving on bike, there are many times youngsters I have seen doing zig-zag driving ...causes accidents...and wrong driving and mobile phones. I have seen people talking on the mobile and just driving car or bike. It hits some people. That also is one reason. And the rash driving. Once we were going, I was on the left side. One wanted to overtake me from the right and there was a bus to my left and I was in the middle, and he was pushing me to the side and there was very little gap, if a little more I would have gone and hit the bus. But that man, for him it was a joke. He just went ahead of me, turned and laughed at me and went. He was just playing. That also causes accidents. There are so many things like that. I feel that people only have to change.