The sense of superiority


6:15pm: The bus starts off from my workplace.
6:30pm: We join the tail of the never-ending traffic jam on hosur road (now all those who don’t use that road can stop feeling sorry for me. I’m used to it).
6:45pm: We are moving (I think) somewhere on hosur road.
7:00pm: We are still on hosur road.
7:15pm: Yippee... we just got off Hosur road. So... how much distance did we cover??? 6km. Ok... let's try and make it look long... we traveled 6000 m. wow!!!

Anyway... let’s carry on with the journey back home...

7:20pm: people start queuing up near the door to get off the bus... Lucky guys... they have finished with the bus journey...
7:25pm: the bus if getting empty, lots more people have reached their destinations.
7:30pm: we're at this traffic junction and some more people line up waiting for the bus to take a turn and stop so that they can get off the bus.

Now... this is where the actual content of this post starts... :)
The bus takes the turn and then, following tradition, stops bang in the middle of the road a little further away from the junction. The first guy getting off looks to avoid any passing vehicles and gets off. The next guy almost follows when this tempo which was behind the bus tries to overtake from the left and almost knocks off the guy. Seeing all this our bus driver, the oh so civilized guy, starts swearing to the tempo driver. Now... who is at fault? Is it the tempo driver for trying to use that available space to the left of the bus to go ahead? Or is it the bus driver for using his brains to stop in the middle of the road.
Well at that point of time... I was just amused at the way the bus driver was swearing to the tempo driver.
What is it that made the bus driver think that he was right and the tempo driver was wrong?? I think it's got to do with the sense of superiority. The bus driver thinks he is superior to the tempo driver so he cannot be wrong, the driver of a luxury bus feels superior to a BMTC bus driver coz he is not driving yet another of those regular busses... so on and so forth.
If superiority can make a person go blind to the mistakes he is making, then who is responsible to correct the mistakes this guy made which is the root cause in the first place?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You want the root cause??? Here it goes. The first person who stepped out of the bus even though it was not stopped at the side.

I will disagree that the tempo guy was right. You shouldnt overtake any vehicle from the left. Thats the basic rule of driving on the road. ;)

But you were right. The bus driver might not have sweared considering the mistake of the tempo guy. He might have just thought he is better than the others.

So who has to correct first???

'Smee! said...

hey nice thought. But quite often, people start to curse just to make themselves believe that they weren't wrong. in this case i think the bus driver knows that he was wrong to stop in the middle of the road, but he wants to cover it up, to himself, if not to anyone else, so he curses the tempo guy, shifting the blame to him.

and the second guy who got off should've checked to see that the road was clear instead of blindly following the first one. Herd mentality? :P