EXHIBITING THE SELF WHEN YOU DRIVE - PART 2

Driving is not a college/university degree hence a taxi driver is not considered a professional but it seems they have bigger brains. Navigation and the ability to plan routes between places is an important skill to have. My driver was referring to some recent research on London cab drivers who were found to have a larger hippocampus compared to non-taxi drivers. This is interesting as this brain region shrinks and becomes damaged in Alzheimer's disease, leading to symptoms of memory loss and confusion associated with the disease. A study is on as to how the hippocampus helps to navigate and is larger while for others this part of the brain shrinks and is involved in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.” He could not find any research content with Mumbai taxi drivers though.

There were moments of laughter as he shared few experiences of passengers in drunken conditions, the husband & wife quarrels and the love bird’s kind. Night driving nowadays he avoids, because driving at night is about communicating with lights. Most drivers do not understand the feature of a dipper light when an oncoming vehicle is coming. They actually blind the person with full lights putting both vehicles to risk. An interesting statement he made which as drivers we all may have voiced whenever behind the steering wheel. ‘If the other is driving slower than you, they are idiots and anyone going faster than you is a maniac’.

He was happy to enjoy vehicles beyond the fiats and ambassadors. Earlier he had 5 black yellow fiat taxis but post 2015 adapted to the changing trends and now owns 3 App based private sedan taxis. His right to opinion, that owner driven expensive cars have poor motoring discipline and are common offenders especially honking. To honk is just a display of arrogance and ego and for some a substitute to hitting the brakes. Besides the air pollution it is known to cause health problems such as deafness, anxiety and hypertension. Honking is symptomatic of an anxious and impatient driver behind the wheel, often resulting in road rage incidents. As a corollary, a driver who consciously avoids honking drives more carefully. Kathmandu for the 3rd time has initiated a No Horn policy; Mumbai a matter of time.

You look fit for your age; he thanked me for my comment and went on to say some of his fellow drivers blame driving a pain in the back but it is not so. Unfortunately they fall victims to their own actions; hostile attitudes to people, emotional instability, the unpredictability of their reactions, low tolerance of frustration and resistance to stress, poor self-control, tendencies to irritability, and aggressiveness. He was proud of his work innings and actually thanked someone called Friedrich Greiner who founded the world's first motorized taxi company in Stuttgart way back in 1897.

People who dream of cars have a meaning. It is about a reflection of control of life, achievements of goals and who has control in their life. Just when this was getting interesting we arrived at our destination. Not to block the driveway had to hurry out. We both were grateful to each other; he had a listener and I was learning from him. I stood a while watching him go by correcting myself how wrong I was to always think cab drivers are living proof that practice does not make them perfect. There are exceptions we do not see to know them, but thy surely are there.