It was another night of our daily ritual of chatting after I tucked my daughter into bed. She is now all of 15 and the content of our chat has changed over the years, barring a few all-time favourites. J.K. Rowlings’s Harry Potter tops that list, and somehow the chat drifted to centaurs. "Wonder whether they ever existed, daddy?" she thought aloud. I chuckled, and was instantly about to say no, and then I stopped. I wonder, I said, and was about to explain when I was stopped by a soft gurgle. My little miss sunshine had called it a night.
Her question kept me awake, though as I wondered. Why, only the other day, I had seen one whizz past me on the wrong side as I drove down our street. Another swiftly overtook me on my left, raced ahead in front of me and then suddenly stopped, to gaze at the stars, I guess, as they are generally known to do, causing me to screech to a halt. The proud creature looked back upon me in indignance before bolting off down the road without even a hint of an apology.
And a couple of days ago I saw a couple of them speaking excitedly to one another across a gap in the road median, their rumps annoyingly blocking the street for most of us, not that these proud creatures cared for our thoughts. They are a common sight using street-crossings among the lesser human pedestrians who look upon them then with cautious awe. They undoubtedly exist and live among us. One only has to take evolution into account to see them for what they truly are.
The human being experienced speed, agility and a sense of liberation when he or she first mounted a horse. Centaurs were the answer to the human fantasy of being able to overcome their locomotory disadvantage by harnessing the power and agility of horses while retaining the feeling of liberation, intellect and manual dexterity of the human form.
With the Industrial Revolution, the trusty internal combustion engine replaced horses and a pair of wheels replaced hoofs, heralding the return of the centaurs! The fantasy of liberated mobility, and as Hunter S. Thompson famously said, the thrill of going "faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death" became reality. Thus liberated, the new-age centaurs proudly stake claim to their uninhibited freedom in today’s urban wilderness, often with disdain to the rights of others who share this space.
"Bike-riders and centaurs? Really? You blithering idiot!" said my good friend of many years when I discussed my musings, beginning to dismiss my ramblings as those of a disgruntled road-user. But I would implore others as I did him, to look deeper than the obvious. This line of reasoning of the urban two-wheeler rider being distinct from the mechanised centaurs of today seemed to answer many questions that seem to vex us.
My thoughts come in the backdrop of the motor vehicles department in Kerala reporting a staggering statistic of road accidents-related suffering concerning two-wheeler users. In most cases they are victims, and in countless unaccountable instances, due to lack of evidence, they have not been named the perpetrators. This is because they were unaware and so were onlookers as to their role in precipitating a calamity on the road. There is also an inherent bias in the system against drivers of larger vehicles who are automatically deemed negligent and their pleas ignored.
The urban two-wheeler rider is a practical person who chooses his ride for a variety of reasons; work, passion and need to travel with economy as part of their jobs. The individual acknowledges the vulnerability intrinsic to a human body hurtling down a road, unprotected at speeds beyond unaided human tolerance. They undergo suitable training, protect themselves with recommended armour of helmets and guards and choose to follow regulations and rules of engagement on the roads with due consideration to fellow-beings. We see in these actions the hand of a rational member of the human race. It is difficult to imagine these cautions, well-trained riders as contributing to the staggering statistics of carnage on the streets.
And then there are the centaurs. This group, gender irrespective, choose to take to two-wheelers for reasons distinct to them. Here, it is often social peer pressure, a personality statement, easy mobility and convenience. They often use their machines for short rides and chores. To them their machines are a mere augmentation of their god-given locomotory capabilities. They feel one with their machines, and their own legs to them become mere instruments to control their beasts. In this oneness, they feel empowered and consider their human abilities augmented.
This bond is often sealed by a friend or a member of the family, who are themselves loyal to the cause of the centaurs. A few words of encouragement and flamboyant demonstration of the liberated life of a centaur is often enough to recruit the fresher. This followed by a short tuition by another centaur on learning to feel one with their ride with only enough instruction about the requirements to wrestle out the all-important riding licence, and a new centaur is born. They are carefree in their being, thriving in the bliss of ignorance of responsibility and regulations, which link them in unseen bonds with everyone else who share the streets.
The offshoot of their initiation is a misplaced conviction that they are mere pedestrians with augmented mobility. They therefore assume in their ignorance that they are still privy to all the privileges afforded to pedestrians on the streets. Primary to the problem is a deep conviction that it is others who are responsible for their safety and that they owe no concessions to others on the road.
Hence it is commonplace to see these centaurs trot down the wrong side of the road against the flow of traffic to access a gap in the median rather that drive with the traffic and take a safe U-turn. Their pedestrian mindset is apparent when you see them swerve across the road to take advantage of a break in the line of traffic flowing in the opposite direction and drive down the wrong side to access a side road to their right rather than waiting to reach the junction and turn into the side road as other vehicles do.
We see them mingle with hapless pedestrians at street crossings and zebra lines, growling menacingly every so often to remind the pedestrian of his place in the pecking order. The wind in the hair as they zoom past both sides of other vehicles with scant respect for the rules governing safe overtaking fills them with a sense of speed and power, often encouraging them to challenge and often tease cautious human drivers of slower larger vehicles. They are so big in their pride that they do not realise that they are small enough to be hidden by the many blind spots inherent to the vision of humans driving larger vehicles.
Their lack of formal training is often evident in their lack of appreciation of the fragile relationship they share with their rides, which unfortunately continue against their will to obey laws of nature and physics. They display surprise when gravity brings them down at extreme angles of turns or when their wheels lose the grip on wet roads under extreme torque. They also allege other vehicles are speeding up to threaten to hit them when they change course, demonstrating their ignorance of the concept of relative velocity and safe overtaking. They cry foul and are also ignorant of the effects of inertia when they pull out of side streets suddenly in front of other hapless drivers who, despite braking hard, cannot avoid hitting them.
They are certain that they are different and that helmets and regulations intended to keep human two-wheeler drivers safe do not and cannot apply to them. Their refusal to accept their vulnerability can be the only reason for this contempt for well-meant regulations. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they account for a large proportion of the dismal safety figures put out by the motor vehicles department with regard to accidents involving two-wheelers.
Mythology has it that the centaurs by nature of their free spirit and pride found it difficult to integrate with society. Maybe the centaurs of today too need socialising through education and integration into civil society in the interest of safety for all. They too need to be educated about their responsibility as any other vehicle-users on our roads, be reminded of their human vulnerabilities and made accountable for their safety and of others who share the roads with them.