The headline should not suggest that I attempted to drive in India. Perish the thought. My various hosts always made sure to schedule transportation to get where I needed to go (if not necessarily always at the appointed time). One way Indian Drivers compensate for traffic congestion is to refuse to be bound by the concept of lanes, even when these are clearly painted on the tarmac.

This creates a terrifying spectacle to the eye of the uninitiated, especially as vehicles range in size and type from the occasional large truck to significant numbers of medium-sized trucks, to the usual complement of sedans, to three-wheel motorized rickshaws, to cantering cows. Yes, cows. Added to the visual assault is a sonorous one, owing to the constant honking of horns. One is struck by the sheer frequency of their use and also by the fact that, whether by industrial happenstance or government decree, they all appear to have the same pitch and amplitude.

But one soon gets past the sensory menace of the scene and begins to see signs of order amid the chaos. If one were to temporarily establish this regime in, say, New Jersey, the result would be destruction—and probably homicide—on a grand scale. What makes it work in India is a code of conduct whereby drivers acknowledge that everybody is simply trying to get where they’re going and don’t take offense at whatever maneuvers support that objective. This results in drivers being very alert to any possible moves on the part of fellow drivers. The code includes an imperative to use one’s horn to let the guy ahead of your know you’re coming. Like the trucks in the U.S. that encourage motorists to pass on the left, the backs of Indian trucks say “Horn Please.”

Once one understands this, the constant sounding of horns ceases to sound like an unmitigated orgy of screaming hostility and transforms itself, aided by the tonal monotony of the standardized horns, into something more like a field of contented motorized crickets.

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