Now on the roads of India, one never realizes just how thoroughly engaged he is to
his death. No sooner than he has inched, tentatively, at once fearing for his life (and
rightfully so), onto the markedly pitted pavement has he nigh had his foot’s appendages
cleanly torn off at an alarmingly close proximity by a madman on a scooter-bike. He will
utter an oath quite loudly, his heart haring faster than a cavalry-horse, and stay rooted
to the spot not a bit unlike the trepidating muntjac, perhaps; poor, small, pitiable thing
that it is does it not realise its mortality, staring in the face of its assailant, almost
defiantly.
      After such an experience I have seen that he becomes drunk on his luck– and what
luck he has, having cheated death in a foreign land!–, flippantly going about crossing
the streets as if he has been granted of perpetuity its boon. He will pause, unflustered,
leisurely, in the midst of the bottleneck, and feel as if he is vindicated to dance about the
lanes, to sing and cry to himself that he is perhaps the chosen one. Such nonsense he
is not– but what the deuce does it matter to him? So he carries on, romping heedlessly
through the dirty roadway, his backing chorus being the native, dulcet tones of the
street’s cacophonous trumpets and horns, until such rashness meets a sober end just
short of the eager nose of a white Hyundai and the irascible temper of a taxi-driver.
      Then, at last, his moment of wonderful whim extinguished, and his pride very hurt by
the incomprehensible chastisement of the cabman, he begins to shuffle ashamedly to
the opposite end of the road width. As he goes he sees a little stray, and he begins to
wonder how the mangy street-dog may so effortlessly negotiate its way through the
gauntlet without being snuffed out, as if God himself– by some way of compensating the
poor devil for its unsparing life of mercy at the hands of good folk and fate– allowed it
passage absent of man’s world of peril.