It only took the taxi ride from the airport to Kochi for each and every one of us to get smacked in the face with our first cultural challenge. It was evident within mile one that we were not in the U.S. anymore….not at all. We were in India – where, at first blush, driving appeared to be pure chaos, likely to result in very bad outcomes. To say that traffic in India is different than in the U.S. is a gross understatement – as you can see in this video.
(Here, if the video doesn’t load.)
In short:
- We (in the states) have traffic rules – and lots of them. They have a few suggestions that may or may not be adhered to. There is a middle line that roughly divides traffic in two directions; although anyone at any time is free to cross it.
- We sort things out by conveyance – pedestrians on sidewalks, bikes on bike paths, cars on streets, animals on leashes. Indian streets accommodate goats, cows, walkers, bicycles, motor scooters, rickshaws, cars, busses and trucks.
- We have one lane, two lane, four lane and six lane highways. One line of cars in each of them. They have roads that are divided roughly in half – and the more that fit, the merrier.
- We start and stop and start and stop – there are red lights and stop signs at even a hint of an intersection. In India, traffic is one continuous flow. Even in the large cities we visited, stop lights were evident at only a few select intersections.
- In the U.S., horns are loud, angry, and infrequent. They blare when you’ve cut someone off, when you are not going fast enough, when you want to let someone know they have made a knuckle-headed move. India drivers use little toots – and use them continually. These toots are to alert you to their presence, to ask you to step aside, to suggest that they’d like to get around you.
- We have major pile ups, high speed crashes, injuries and fatalities. I don’t know the statistics, but I will say that we traveled many, many miles and I only observed one fender bender.
Once I got more comfortable with traffic flow in India (which took several days), I found myself both fascinated and marveling at how well it worked. It very much reminded me of the flows we see in nature – of streams moving down a mountainside, of white blood cells moving through our veins, of schools of fish swimming in concert.
And I was reminded that complex systems will find their own order, even if none is imposed upon them. I see this when I present a group with a challenge and a timeline and then step out of the way. They may not be initially as efficient, or get off to a quick start. But they get creative, get it done, and often in novel ways that were far superior to my way. They self-organize in a way that fits them, the task and the timeline.
So perhaps there are times we need to impose fewer rules rather than more. Perhaps we need to allow things to find their own rhythm and path. Perhaps we need to get comfortable with self-organized chaos, and let go of the belief that orchestrating every last move for every single alternative may not always work. And perhaps in our complex, interconnected, quickly changing world, give up the idea that we can control/manage/prescribe every circumstance.
