Apparent altruism

Any body who has travelled on Airport Road (in Bangalore) to office would know how the traffic moves (or should I say it doesn't?) in the morning hours. One such morning, I was fortunate enough to get into a mini bus supposedly meant for the private use of a MNC, but was made available for the general public by the benevolent driver (of course, for a price!). As usual, the traffic was seemingly in a state of perennial infinite static inertia.

At this juncture, we heard the siren of an Ambulance van behind us. The remnant humanity in us plus the very nature of the siren made us look back anxiously. Our driver commented in Tamil that the ambulance driver seems to be inept in pushing aside other vehicles and moving ahead. As he was saying this, he started doing some exceptional driving stunts and after repeated honking, eye contacts with other drivers and some verbal abuse, he cleared the way for the ambulance and signalled the ambulance driver to go ahead.

I was overwhelmed emotionally on seeing his act just when he commented "every day if I get such an ambulance to tail behind, it would be great i.e. all signals will be thrown open for the ambulance, which can be exploited by me".

I sat speechless ...