Civic sense is not rocket science

THEY say the city never sleeps. I think it doesn’t even breathe. The other morning, as I inched my way through the neon jungle of the NCR’s traffic, I wondered whether the metropolis was less a city and more a circus — with us, the clowns, performing our daily show of civic indifference.

Now, don’t mistake me for a saint. I, too, am a card-carrying member of the “MNC millennials club” — corporate badge dangling, coffee cup in hand and eyes glued to the glow of my smartphone. But it’s when you live in this corporate cocoon, shuttling between glass towers and gridlocked roads, that civic sense — or the absence of it — slaps you in the face, louder than any car horn.

In our city, horns are not instruments of caution but weapons of mass irritation. A red light is merely an invitation to orchestra. Drivers behind you unleash a symphony of sound, as if their collective cacophony could persuade the traffic light to turn green. I once heard a harassed biker mutter, “Yeh horn bajaake kya Chandrayaan ko bula rahe ho?” (Are you calling the moon mission with your honking?) It was so absurdly true that I nearly applauded.

But horns are only the overture. The real opera of disorder begins with lane indiscipline. We drive as if road markings are decorative doodles made for aerial photography, not for actual adherence. My cab driver once drove so creatively that Google Maps sighed, “Re-routing,” as though giving up on humanity.

And then comes the pièce de résistance — littering. The other day, a man in a luxury SUV, his shirt crisp enough to star in a detergent ad, casually flung a banana peel onto the road. I couldn’t resist rolling down my window and quipping, “Sir, planting trees for tomorrow?” He glared, muttered something unprintable and sped off. Perhaps in his universe the road is a compost pit.

Civic sense, it seems, is like Wi-Fi — everyone wants it, but nobody is keen to pay for it. Once in a while, though, hope sneaks in. I remember watching a group of college students stop traffic at a crossing — not to protest, but to escort an elderly lady across. Their act was small and unscripted, but it silenced even the most impatient honkers. In that fleeting moment, the city remembered its soul.

Our city doesn’t lack infrastructure as much as it lacks introspection. Civic sense is not rocket science — it’s just common sense rooted in everyday discipline. But like gym memberships, we buy into the idea without practising it.

So what’s the solution? Lectures don’t work, sermons are boring and fines are easily negotiated with a folded note. Maybe it’s time to make civic sense fashionable. If we can do the ice bucket challenge, surely we can try the dustbin dash.

Until we stop treating civic sense as someone else’s responsibility, the city will keep suffocating under its own success. After all, it isn’t metros, malls or MNCs that make a city modern. It’s manners. And until we master that, we’ll remain horn-happy, litter-loving, rule-evading residents of a restless metropolis.