{"id":216,"date":"2006-08-31T14:25:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-31T14:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2006\/08\/side-effects-of-law-enforcement.html"},"modified":"2011-06-30T20:35:43","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T20:35:43","slug":"side-effects-of-law-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2006\/08\/side-effects-of-law-enforcement.html","title":{"rendered":"Side-effects of law-enforcement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chockful ! Chockful of cars. Bumper-to-bumper traffic. That’s how I’d describe it, and I’m sitting in it. All 5 lanes are the same. If you need to travel by freeway<\/a> you must travel like this. Not that the feeder road<\/a> is any better. However there is a bright side to this story. Since it’s 2 of us in the car, we have the option of taking the HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane<\/a>. And ah ! the HOV lane lies empty. Well almost. There are a couple of cars ahead of us, as we swerve into it. As we speed along (because now we are speeding compared to the crawling traffic next-door), I’m thinking what nice people these other car-drivers are (you know the ones stuck in traffic) because this HOV lane is a “diamond” lane, that is it’s a part of the freeway, and there are no barriers around it, preventing other non-car-pooling vehicles from entering. But still no-one enters the lane that is not supposed to. In the cars ahead of me, I see atleast 2 heads bobbing.<\/p>\n

My husband is more pragmatic. He doesn’t argue the “nice-people” theory. To him, the niceness is a side-effect of law-enforcement. I mean, it’s better to be law-abiding and reach a little late than to be handed a $200 traffic ticket, no ? <\/p>\n

I tell this HOV lane story to a distant cousin while we are in India. At my obvious “admiration” for the law-abiding citizen, he looks at me like :<\/p>\n

a. I’m demented, or
b. I’ve gone soft in the head<\/p>\n

As he tells me, to him no road law applies. If a guy in khakhi objects, he can be stopped right then and there by a hand-ful of notes. See, so easy. So, that’s that. I don’t argue with the guy. I mean, is there a point ? Plus, I’ve got to be polite, even though the guy is an odious creep, else I’ll get the whole “you don’t live here, we do – maintain relationships etc.” schpiel from my Mom again.<\/p>\n

A couple of months later, I hear of him again through my Mom, who is the ordained bearer of masala news in the family. Apparently the cousin and his brother had come to California to setup a business. He was driving around going about his business – so that was good. But is now unable to drive, because he was caught driving under the influence of alcohol, and had his license suspended for 6 months.<\/p>\n

I’m guessing the offers of financial remuneration didn’t work this time.<\/p>\n

Categories : _india , _culture_and_society<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chockful ! Chockful of cars. Bumper-to-bumper traffic. That’s how I’d describe it, and I’m sitting in it. All 5 lanes are the same. If you need to travel by freeway you must travel like this. Not that the feeder road is any better. However there is a bright side to this story. Since it’s 2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-society","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Chockful ! Chockful of cars. Bumper-to-bumper traffic. That’s how I’d describe it, and I’m sitting in it. All 5 lanes are the same. If you need to travel by freeway you must travel like this. Not that the feeder road is any better. However there is a bright side to this story. Since it’s 2…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}