That advanced decay

I just finished shaking all over, thought it will never end. My mother says I should never have tried to confront anyone on the road. But, hell, this is Mumbai, the safest city in the world. Ok, let me go back a few hours in time to bring you up to speed. 

At 7 pm today, I was waiting at a busy signal on the worli sea face, with a sea of vehicles ahead of me, when a Qualis bumped into me from behind. A deep bumper dent. I was livid. And, somehow, I couldn't let it be. I got down to confront the driver of the car, MH 04 ES 5067. He is a big burly guy, this Daljit Singh, and he started yelling at me as I walked towards him, saying I was driving slowly and wrongly. I pointed out to him that I had in fact halted the vehicle awaiting a green signal. He didn't wait to listen, and that's when I noticed the Uber tag. So, I took a photo of the tag to keep a record of his name and number, telling him I would complain against him. 

And then, I got into my car, to get the signal, because the good people of Mumbai were in a hurry behind me and I didn't want to hold them up. 

No, it did not end there. As soon as I crossed the signal and the traffic police manning it, Daljit Singh came at me hard and strong. I was on the right most lane close to the divider and he came in from the left and tried to smash me into the divider. I was stunned, but not enough to get into shock. I couldn't halt because an Audi was coming down fast behind me. I tried keeping up the fight honking madly, and thankfully the next signal halt happened. I had very nearly died, but I couldn't give this up. I got down again and confronted him. He tried to hit me and I appealed to the passengers in the car. They grinned at me, they grinned at me as he tried to slap me. And this was in the middle of Worli Sea Face, that beautiful, wide, large, busy road. I gave up, and shaking, got back into the car, pulled up at the side to place a complaint with the Mumbai traffic police. As luck would have it, there was no traffic policeman at this one. 

So after dropping an email complaint to Uber and a Facebook complaint to Mumbai police, I came home and wondered about the decay of our civilization - not about that driver who would have killed me today, not about the cars behind me that ignored this drama, but about those two passengers who thought this was great entertainment on a Thursday evening. Someone who thinks it is entertainment to see someone else die doesn't really deserve a place in this world.