The Helmet Saga

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.