India's superhighway

Marilyn sez, "In a country that until recently had barely 1,000 km of 4-lane roads, with more potholes than roads, suddenly there's the magical Golden Quadrilateral superhighway, linking Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata. 'Much as the U.S. interstate highway system mobilized American society and grooved the postwar economy, India hopes the Golden Quadrilateral will push the country's economic engine into overdrive—bringing the benefits of growth in its booming metropolises out to its impoverished villages, where more than half the population lives.'"

As the priest works his way down a long line of vehicles, Menaka's older brother Dhana lights a coconut, circling the motor scooter three times with the smoking husk before smashing it to bits on the pavement in front of the scooter. He places a lemon under the front tire, which Menaka will try to crush when she rolls forward, a most auspicious beginning.

"Do you have a driver's license?" I ask her.

"No, sir, no," she giggles. At that moment Mr. Deekshith appears and drapes a garland of yellow flowers over the scooter's handlebars. He sprinkles holy water from the shrine of Lord Ganesh over the bike while reciting a mantra from the Hindu Vedas, and finishes by flicking droplets of red kumkum, an extract of turmeric, over the front of the scooter and dabbing a bit onto Menaka's forehead.

In thanks, Menaka hands him a gift bag of bananas and turmeric powder. Then she starts the ignition and guns the engine. She seems briefly baffled by the controls (Which one, again, is the throttle? Which one is the brake?) and struggles to keep the bike upright once she's pushed it forward off the kickstand, crushing the lemon to raucous cheers from Dhana and other onlookers. An auspicious beginning, but it looks as if she might keel over sideways into the traffic rushing by a few feet away. Alarmed, I grab hold of a handlebar.

"Do you have a helmet?" I shout over the sputtering engine. She shakes her head, grinning.

"Do you know how to drive?"

"No, sir, not really," she shouts back merrily, "but I'm planning to learn!"

With that, she jerks forward, peeling rubber as Dhana races alongside and nearly gets clipped by a passing car. She accelerates and plunges into the madness of evening rush hour in Bangalore with only Lord Ganesh to help her. As she passes under distant streetlights, I can just make out the top of her head bobbing along in the seething current of 21st-century India, one more swirling pinpoint in a moving river of light..."

Fast Lane to the Future (Thanks, Marilyn!)

[#1 posted by Kieran O'Neill , September 17, 2008 4:01 AM]

Thanks, Cory. This article, like most National Geographic features, is truly wonderful.

With mixed feelings we stand aloof, observing the rise of the new giants.

[#2 posted by OM , September 17, 2008 8:16 AM]

...What that part of the world needs isn't a spaghetti bowl, but birth control and terraforming. Over a billion people crammed into a region that, due to the chaotically uplifted terrain resulting from the Indian penensula slamming into the Asiatc main continent, doesn't provide enough land to farm and support that many people except for just above starvation. It needs population control and agricultural engineers who specialize in landscaping for food.

[#3 posted by MarlboroTestMonkey7 , September 17, 2008 9:29 AM]

Don't worry Om, they have been doing fine for some (9k years or so, wikipedia says) time now.

[#4 posted by Rossifumi , September 17, 2008 12:43 PM]

Ok, The population of Indian only went berserk like half a century ago...After British rule. So the orgy of life you see there is not really sustainable...not forever anyway.

[#5 posted by zuzu , September 17, 2008 12:50 PM]

I'm more intrigued (and a little worried) at the juxtaposition between ancient superstition and modern technological engineering.

Human beings are simultaneously capable of splitting the atom and decoding genomes, and believing in magic and ghosts.