The Mystery of the Lines

We were waiting at the carousel for our luggage and we could see through the door. Crowds of people waiting much like any other airport. Finally collected our bags and stepped through the door and the first big surprise – it was not the door to the welcome lounge but the door to outside the terminal.

The crowds were there alright, all over the footpath, road, just everywhere. Cornelius grabbed us, presented Lynn with flowers, me with a purple thingy that was hung around my neck (I am still trying to find out the official name for this). We lined up and the CSI driver (Church of South India not Grisham) took our picture.

What happened next is hard to describe. I have been at the football at the MCG and exited with 70,000 people and it was a reasonable experience but at the Chennai Airport with a lot less people is a completely different thing thus the Mystery of the Lines.

The footpath, road and car park were covered with lines, arrows and words. They were in English, Tamil and Hindi although I do confess that a Tamil arrow looks very much like an English arrow. But the mystery was that all these things apparently meant nothing to anyone except me.

We put our luggage in the car and reversed out into the one way lane, well it looked like one way to me with the large arrows painted on the ground and on the signs. We were pointing the wrong way, or so I thought. It seemed a normal two lane path with all cars, bikes, autos (small three wheeled transport vehicles), motorbikes with five people on them, supposed to go in the one direction with those on the left turning left and those on the right turning right.

The people of Chennai had transformed this very ordinary two lane one way corridor into a five lane two way major highway. The way you do this is to ignore all signs and road markings, continue to have strong self belief that you are in the right, blow the horn continually and in the midst of this remain calm and cooperate with the other drivers.

It is one of the most amazing pieces of cooperation that I have seen. Vehicles snaked left and right, wove perilously close to each other and the hundred or so pedestrians who were also using this thoroughfare to walk to their car, plus those who had decided to park their cars on the road because there was nowhere else to park.

We got out unscathed and unworried, or most of the occupants did.

My workplace at Brisbane Catholic Education has a car park with not enough room for everyone. When I return I will be proposing that we implement what I am now calling ‘The Chennai System’. If we do I believe we could fit at least 350 cars in our 75 car parking spaces and be able to get in and out with no trouble at all.

Upon exiting the car park we breathed a collective sigh of relief, and squeezed hands a bit tighter and thought that all was OK and we were on our way to Cathedral House, the guest house of the Diocese at St George’s Cathedral. WRONG!!!!!

Apparently the car park was only a small practice run for the roads. The footpaths of Chennai are so badly broken up that they are almost impossible to walk on so as well as all the types of transport listed above travelling considerably faster than the car park, we add whole families walking as well.

It appears to me that there are some rules:

If you can go faster then you can hold your hand on the horn until people in front of you get out of the way

The speed you travel has no bearing on which lane you travel in

Ignore last rule. There are some lanes marked but they are immaterial

You can drive where you want and pass on any side you can get through

If you are travelling at the same speed but are in a larger vehicle then you can hold your hand on the horn until people in front of you get out of the way

Red lights only apply if someone is coming at right angles to you

When you do have to stop you cooperate with others and try to form the maximum number of lanes possible. (At one particular stop on a road marked with three lanes we counted three cars, two autos and six motor bikes lined up)

It is a pedestrian’s responsibility to get out of the road

The large wide white lines that at home I used to call pedestrian crossings have no meaning or purpose at all

We did arrive at Cathedral House safely and slept soundly on our first night even though our beds are hard as rocks.