Shillong driver wins driver of the year award!

As most of you know, Shillong is a beautiful city with vibrant, friendly people all around. It is known for its music scene, fashion sense, modernisation but perhaps we can also tag Shillong as a city who have the most reckless, careless, clumsy drivers ever!

One evening as I was leaving my work place, I took a walk with a colleague of mine and we were conversing as we carefully walked on the side of the road when suddenly an anxious cabbie from far-away came speeding and almost took my legs off, as if I had fallen victim to GNLA planted IEDs! And if that wasn't enough, there's more to it, he shouted "Iaid bha ioh iap!" (Walk carefully else you'll end up dead), let's see who hits the wall first.

Moving on, the incident was forgotten within 10 minutes after cursing the fellow. As we reached our destination to split, we talked for a bit, and he went his way, I took a cab home. Initially the moment I got in, I took out my ear phones and listened to music leisurely after a hard day's work but to my dismay, this cab driver is another hero, who failed his audition to get featured on a Bollywood action movie, the role of a 'Gang iap last' (a criminal who mostly dies at the last scene of a movie because he's too tough to get defeated at the first encounter).

The reason I say this is because he didn't even bother to slow down when pedestrians were zebra crossing; he owned the road. He was speeding as if there was no other car besides his, moving about on the street. A massive jam throughout Don Bosco square and this fellow was incessantly honking all the way and I thought he had just installed a new horn system.

So, we slowly proceeded to Cathedral road, where he showed me why he should be given driver of the year award! He crawled the car through the corners of the road and the look on the other driver's face was just to die for! Wide open-mouthed sighing 'Whoa' and I asked him if he was trying to repaint his car. He confidently replied back, "Em phi bah, dang biang ka rong kali, nga tieng ioh duh passenger" (No Sir, the car's body paint is perfectly fine, I'm just worried that I'll lose customers). Yeah with that kind of driving you'll eventually end up in the garage repairing and repainting your car or even worse.

Anyway that was done, nothing happened, but the moment we crossed Dhankheti, he accelerated the car even though it was congested and I felt so lucky that I was going to end up dead in a Formula One car; I thought he was a failed candidate for a movie but wait I found out that he was Michael Schumacher's long lost twin brother!

If that wasn't enough, when we reached Police Bazaar I thought he was going to ram the railings on the footpath to which I told him to let me get off there. I was not ready to die as yet!

Is there a solution to all this nuisance? What can be done to stop such reckless driving? Even private cars are not exempt, they too can manipulate the road as if the roads are their playground and people are their targets, whoever hits the most targets wins? What a game! But unfortunately such an event is not held at the Olympics or on motorsports events. There should be an award for them though, two years free accommodation, luxury penthouse suite at Meghalaya district jail. As Meghalaya already has topped the list of crowded jails, let our State hold the position for another year or two.

(By Mebanaibor Nengnong)