An Anxious Nation Waits Silently

By Vishwamithra1984 –November 30, 2016

“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.” ~Abraham Joshua Heschel

It is indeed a great experience to commute between work and home in Colombo. The traffic jams, the painstaking waiting in traffic lights which are turned off during the worst hours so that a live constable could direct traffic without allowing the undisciplined motorists to beat the red light and thereby cause new jams which are beyond the realm of road-discipline and to unscramble the traffic gridlock is a herculean task, whether the duty officer is an experienced one or not. To move again is a dream come true. Day in and day out, those who use our roads are confronted with this awfully distasteful task of navigating in a stormy ocean of traffic, motor and pedestrian, trying one’s way. A moving nightmare, this spectacle plays out without a break, mirroring a nation whose compass is lost for some time; sometimes, never to find it again in this lifetime.

Photo via Colombo Roads Traffic Facebook

This pitiful panorama of life at large is being displayed out for all to see and experience, reflecting a people’s impatience, their callous disregard for law and order, failure on the part of those who charged with maintaining a semblance of order and discipline on road, the Traffic Police. Politicians of the last regime who used to whistle past helpless ‘others’ to their unknown destinations, official or otherwise, may be absent today, yet the absolute indiscipline of the subject people is no less than it was during any time. This unadulterated road-rowdiness is in display wherever one chooses to travel- an incredible agony for the onlooker and an excruciating wait-and-run for the motorist. All those who use our roads suffer a collective suffocation of life, commute and everything else that really matters in day to day existence. But the inconceivable human stories that surround all those who use our roads, the traffic and other outfits of travelling, are never told in full mournful detail. So I decided to make an attempt- with my own humble pen.

The mass of commuters waiting at bus stops, hundreds of school children in their own personal hordes chatting and joking about the various goings-on in their respective classes, a Buddhist monk hurrying back to his temple before dark; some in three-wheelers, some in four-wheelers and yet others treading the good earth, for they are nor fortunate, or yet unfortunate, to use mo-bikes, and other commuting paraphernalia that populate our narrow streets of the urban and suburban Colombo.

Their needs, their wants, their weeping and laughter, their comings and goings, their daily struggle to put food on the table for their families, all these and more make an integral part of the glorious mosaic of life. Its splendor, its lamentation, its begrudging complaints and its magnificent celebrations, its snail-paced drag and its nauseating speed and its waits and insufferable disappointments and its hidden jealousies and hatreds, its wicked motives and cruel executions, all these play an enormous role in a man’s day, whether he travels by bus, three-wheeler, mo-bike or on foot, the core does not change. Deep inside that core resides humanity’s essentials, its values and those values’ validity and vitality. This great human drama is being played around every corner of this globe. Not only in Colombo, not only in other urban cities, not only in the great suburbs. It’s being enacted in the remotest hamlets and villages.

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