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Goa's Wailing Mothers...
By Valmiki Faleiro
Many a Goan mother will today wail for her departed teenaged son. She had
borne the pangs of motherhood, nursed the infant to a toddler, tended him into
childhood, sacrificed to give him the best home and formal education, watched
him grow into late teens or a young adult -- when suddenly, a cruel quirk of
destiny snatched him away. Horribly, in a macabre motorcycle mishap. Only a
mother can suffer such pangs multiple times every year ... on his death
anniversary, on his birthday, on his graduation day, on Mother's Day. To
mothers, I dedicate the saddest piece of this series.
"Expired under tragic circumstances" is already a trite Goan idiom in
newspaper death notices. It invariably implies that the (invariably) young
life was lost in (invariably) a road accident -- and (invariably) riding a two-
wheeler. The frequency of such obits turned idiom to cliché.
It's the most tragic irony of Goa's road scene. Riding a bike is tougher than
driving a car. I've done both. Riding takes far more skills than driving ...
and far less rashness to snuff out one's soul on the road. Besides doing all
that a 4-or-more wheel driver does, a rider must reckon with Newton's law of
gravity and maintain balance. He will fall from steering jerkily, unlike a
car, and skid more easily on slippery roads. He is unprotected by side crash
bars, air bags and anti-skid brakes. He is the most vulnerable of all
motorized road users. In today's traffic, he ought to have been the most
careful of them.
Of the 952 road accidents reported in the 1st quarter of this year (an average
of 10.58 accidents per day) Transport Minister Pandurang Madkaikar, in an
interview to *Herald* this week, admitted that 75% accidents involved riders
(more-than-not also the cause.) Of the 82 fatalities, two-wheelers account for
precisely 41. More riders die on Goa's roads than all other vehicle categories
combined. Now a confirmed trend.
Goa's most susceptible road user is NOT the most cautious one. Road rashness
is highest among riders. Speeding, weaving through traffic, overtaking from
any side, piercing thoroughfares without as much as a look either side, riding
bang on the median (with other innovative ideas of road hogging like two or
more riding abreast), stopping without indication in midst of moving traffic
and live displays of acrobatic skills-on-wheels.
Our kamikaze riders have turned the *tragic circumstance* idiom trite. The
stereotype may not chew gum, sport an earring or two, tattoos by the dozen,
tattered jeans or even a ponytail that puts a Brahmin's *shendi* to shame.
They need not necessarily regard themselves more macho than the devil himself,
or ride bikes with silencer mufflers loosened, revving the accelerator and
handing you looks that pierce like an argon flame. Their doting parents need
not be in the Gulf, or be unaffectedly blissful of Goa's road realities. The
tribe exists, but is not the majority. The majority of riders dying, as we
know, are below age 40. That is the crux.
No formal training exists for bike learners in Goa, zilch literature. (In the
*Herald* interview, Madkaikar promised getting guidelines ready in three
months. Do that, *Mantri-ji*, but do things even more effective in the short-
term: e.g. mandate 2-wheeler licence holders below age 40 to undergo the one-
day course developed by ex-Factories & Boilers Inspector, C.V. Dhume, before
their next licence renewal.) Driving tests are a *No.8, no-foot-down* joke. As
UK-returned Dr. Pascal Pinto of Panjim said, "This has produced a whole
population of riders who feel it is OK to weave, swerve and come under the
wheels of a Kadamba as long as one does not place one's foot down."
Speed, as John Eric Gomes of Porvorim put it, has become the new mantra. Goans
are so dismissive of slower bikes that manufacturers no longer market gearless
mopeds below 50 cc (even if these are being sold in the rest of India, as a
trade friend reveals.) While mopeds are history, the generic *scooty* -- a
hybrid between a moped and a geared scooter -- rules the Goan market. And
scootys in the range of 100-110 cc ... until recently, an industry standard
only for geared motorcycles ... are the rage. Oh, mother!
TAILPIECE: A woman who must be a mother, Arlette Azavedo, recently posted an
analytical piece on Goanet, the cyber forum. I will quote just one (abridged)
anguished cry: "Speeding and racing is now the in-thing with teens. It's a
craze which takes them nowhere but their tomb. It comes like a bolt, when life
seems all happy and promising, and plunges us into sorrow and despair, making
us wonder why it should happen to us at all. There is nothing sadder than
parents having to bury their child. A child's death defies the natural order.
We are supposed to die by age, the oldest first. When death occurs out of
order, the world turns upside down. Nothing makes sense any more."
P.S.: Friend from Portugal, Antonio Palinha Machado, a regular reader by e-
mail, sent this weblink to a Bruno Bozzetto animation on driving behaviour:
www2.omnitel.net/smirlis/tmp/schedule.html. At its hilarious best. Obrigado,
Senhor Antonio; in these bleak road times, you made my day! (ENDS)
The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at:
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330
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The above article appeared in the May 14, 2006 edition of the Herald, Goa
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