Mosquito Wars and the Roads of Mumbai

They have electric-powered anti-mosquito devices here that operate while plugged into an outlet. The advice I received was, “Yeah. Just plug ‘em in, close the door, wait an hour, and the mosquitoes should be done when you get back.”
“Done?” I asked.
“Yeah, man. It kills ‘em. Totally lethal to mosquitos, but totally harmless to us. Luckily.” Well, any doubts I had about the safety of these devices regarding humans were assuaged after several trials of following the usage advice. Plug it in...close the door...wait an hour, two, or a whole day - doesn’t seem to matter. The only thing killing mosquitoes in my room is type-2 diabetes.
It is clear why there are so many Indian taxi drivers in the U.S. What is surprising is that they seem to have stopped there. The auto rickshaw drivers (separate from the taxi drivers who drive cars – not in their driving styles, but in their vehicles, in the frequency with which you encounter their vehicles, in the price of their fares, and therefore in the frequency with which everyone uses each...but I digress) the auto rickshaw drivers here would make great ambulance drivers, because that’s how they drive. Ambulance drivers pass in and out of lanes without a turn signal, using whichever route is the most expeditious. I bet if you asked an auto rickshaw driver if any of the roads here had lanes, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. (The surprising answer is that many major roads do.) But these guys approach an intersection with the awareness of racecar drivers. In the U.S., say, ambulance drivers have to worry about other drivers who aren’t alert. That isn’t a problem here, because if you aren’t alert, you’ve probably been in an accident within 20 meters of your starting location. Same goes for pedestrians. Here, you only have to worry about someone else who thinks their time is more important than yours. More like auto racing than ambulance driving, I guess. The motto here definitely seems to be “If you ain’t rubbin’, you ain’t racin’.” That begs another question. Forget ambulance driving – why haven’t these guys looked into auto racing? The Italians seem to be good at it, and their streets are known for a similar level of pandemonium. Actually, the Indians have thought of that. I read yesterday that there will be some kind of auto-racing training facility, or something like that, built in India, and that the plan is to have an Indian formula one racer by 2012. I find the roads scary, worrisome, and incomprehensible. The autorickshaw driver approachs an intersection (few have traffic lights) quickly but cautiously. Some unclear-to-me but commonly understood law of nature allows one to go while another stops. Sometimes, however, there is a miscommunication, or a difference of opinion, which causes both vehicles to continue toward what, unretarded, must eventually be a collision.
From these situations, I have noticed that the option of last resort, when a driver feels he is almost certainly bound for a collision, is to stop. Right there. Never mind that the collision is with a car approaching from the right, and that you are stopping in the middle of his path. I guess the logic is that he can then swerve around you, instead of having to guess your speed and whether or not you will begin to slow down or even swerve yourself, to avoid something in front of you. Anyway, so far, when I’ve been in such situations, the other driver has stopped as well, so that then my driver and the other one just accelerate and pick up from there, and everyone's happy.
Another interesting thing is the turn signal. Not a garish blinking light on the front and back corner of an autorickshaw – you’re happy to get one that has headlights – and certainly not those crazy things I started to see in America a few months before I left – those additional turn signals implanted in the side-view mirrors. No, the auto rickshaw turn signal is a discrete partial extension of the hand out the side (and it’s to the side to which you are turning, which is contrary to the bicycle-signalling rules I learned, and impossible in a car, of course, because you’d have to be able to reach across the car if you were going to turn that way). No need to be overly enthusiastic about it. Just a little hand signal, like a demure biddor at an expensive auction, with the hand only extended out of the imaginary window of the auto rickshaw a couple of inches past the wrist or so. (Truly, any more might be hazardous to the driver’s health.)
However dangerous auto rickshaw riding can seem sometimes, I still often have the urge to get in one, point right out the side (there are no windows) and tell the driver, "the other side of the street," because that's one of the grandest adventures available in this city. Though old women and dogs seem to be rather adept at it, I'm still pretty sure it's the most dangerous thing ever. As I've said elsewhere, I usually try to find an Indian blocker and walk downtraffic from him or her (preferrably her, as I feel more confident that I'll be able to keep up). The rule of crossing the street is, never go back. Sprint past swerving auto rickshaws, walk slowly and confidently in front of buses, or stop dead in your tracks in a busy intersection – but don’t step back. (this is what I was told, and it seems to me good advice) the assumption is that no one’s going to actually retreat – this is Bombay, not Chattanooga – so vehicles will swerve to your rear to get around you. You might ask why I don't just go to an intersection and cross with the pedestrian signal at a crosswalk. You might also ask why we have to worry about crime when we have already written down the laws. However, traffic signals remain, the vast majority repeatedly blinking their unnoticed ritual without fail, their faith either an admirable or pitiable thing; having been rendered vestigial structures of some aberrant evolution, they nonetheless soldier on, perhaps as much out of a need for purpose as a desire for usefulness. Much like the appendix. Or the Pittsburgh Pirates.