Tamilnadu
government has announced that everyone should wear helmet from July 1. This announcement came a month before and
people are frantic about the issue and the issue of buying and wearing helmet. Today when I stopped at a street vendor to
buy guava fruit, I stopped my bike and removed my long owned helmet. The vendor, a middle-aged woman, greeted me
as if she had known me for a long time.
She claimed that my helmet disguised me and that she was not able to
recognize me. Even I could not recognize
her, other than she being a guava fruit vendor and I am being her
customer. I bought a kilogram of guava;
mean time she complained that wearing helmet would give rise to roadside
burgles and chain snatchings. This would
increase crime. The criminals can easily
escape with their faces forged with a helmet.
She even narrated an incident of chain snatching in a street
nearby. People are coming out with many
such reasons to avoid helmet from their lives and driving.
When I drove
back home I thought about the goodness of helmets. Only next to saving your life in case of
fatal accidents, helmets in Indian roads would be a harbinger of spitting in
the roads by the two-wheeler riders. I
think our cities would be free of those thoughtless spitting of saliva.
