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A pleasant, somewhat relaxed saturday morning, I was heading to work, not in a terrible rush. I boarded the bus and grabbed the last available seat, looked over my shoulder and saw an elderly gentleman, promptly stood up and offered him my seat. A couple of stops down, the bus came to a sudden halt, on a normal day I would have cursed, but since the temperatures were low, and time was aplenty, I just looked on curiously.
Sure enough, there was some VIP (Very Impudent Person) and his cavalcade of SUV's crossing, and traffic had been stopped by seven (yes I counted!) policemen. Just as I was discussing the insensitivity of the civic administration to the common man, I heard another siren wailing, I looked up again, just behind the cavalcade seperated maybe by 3-4 car lengths was an ambulance. As I stared, my unbelieving eyes saw all seven policemen let the cavalcade pass and then flag and stop the ambulance to allow the cross traffic (which had been waiting for a full 5 minutes) to cross.
I'm rewriting this, simply to make myself believe it happened, Bad enough that the policemen stopped traffic for 5 minutes to allow a VIP to pass through, but even more shameful is the fact that they did'nt have it in them to wait another 10 maybe 15 seconds to let an emergency vehicle, probably carrying a critically ill patient to get across. Nothing short of murder. I looked across at my co-passengers, most of their eyes mirrored my sentiments.
If the bus driver had stopped, I'm certain the cops would have been lynched there and then!
Wake up Delhi, there is more to life than a priority passage to some impudent arse who probably overslept. Be human.
The above is a third person account of a real life incident experienced this morning at the Sheikh Sarai BRT intersection.
