These Witty and Humorous Road Signs

Driving a personal car on Indian roads can be quite a harrowing and hair-raising experience. The Indian roads are so well-equipped with liberal potholes, unmarked and unpainted camel-hump-sized speed-breakers (rather car-breakers), and so much blessed by meditating or wandering cattle heads, sleep-walking buffaloes, sky-gazing goats and blindly-moving sheep that a person begins to wonder whether he is driving on a tar-road or in a Herculean stable! As if this alone were not enough, he has to be watchfully cautious of inebriated, liquor-blind, honking truck drivers, passenger-hunting, greedy bus-wallahs, straw-packed, mobile mountains of tractor trolleys, stub-nosed, roaring tempos, blissfully singing bullock-carts drivers, and you with your puny car may become as nervous and frightened a being as Hemingway’s old Santiago with his small boat must have been on the Gulf Stream! But if a person has a positive and humorous attitude to life, and can imaginatively interpret some of the road signs, driving on these primitive roads with all these hurdles could be fairly pleasant and enjoyable. Such interpretations could leave ripples and residues of fun and enjoyment throughout the journey–lending a silver lining to the otherwise sable cloud–giving him a transitory feeling that all is not drab and dull on the well-cluttered Indian roads!

A large number of road signs deal with avoidance of drunken driving which is the single biggest threat on roads not only in India but all over the world! Indians can have a sense of pride in the fact that more Indians are killed in vehicular accidents in their poverty stricken country than in a developed and affluent country like the United States. A series of advertisements in newspapers, magazines and even on television channels warn the automobile drivers of this menace. This is more so in the case of truck and taxi drivers whose haste in reaching their targeted destinations implies more earning even if it results in equally faster accidents in which drivers are fatally injured or killed. Some of the road signs which warn of this threat are worded not in a straight forward language to which drivers would not even care to look at but in a memorable language, somewhat diplomatic, ironic with tongue-in-cheek type of humor which sinks in one’s heart, stays in the head-something that one turns over and over again in one’s mouth, munching as it were-while its fragrance, like that of mint, electrifies the entire being, thereby turning a painful warning into a sugar-coated, pleasant reminder. The road signs say: “Drink and drive. You won’t survive,” or “Drive on horse power; not on rum-power.” Such witty expressions stay pleasantly in the memory without diluting the gravity of the dangers to which they warn and which are inherent in drunken driving.

Over-speeding of the vehicles by the drivers on ill-maintained Indian roads, too causes accidents, deaths and disasters. Naturally, a large number of road signs are related to this phenomenon. The death of a bread-winner causes numerous problems to the immediate family as well as to neighbors and relations. Even though it is common among most Indians to talk of the next life after death, one thinks of doing so in the old age after completing all earthly duties and liabilities, and certainly not prematurely through vehicular accidents. Some of these warnings are mildly, somewhat pleasantly, hinted at in the following road signs.
1. “Driving faster can cause disaster;”
2. “Your hurry may cause my family worry.”
3. “If married, divorce speed.”
4. It is better to be fifteen minutes late in this world than be fifteen minutes early in the next.”
5. “Be slower on earth than quicker to eternity,”
6. “Fast, won’t last.”

What strikes the reader in these road signs are the rhythms and rhymes, besides some play on words. Thus “hurry” rhymes with “worry,” “faster” with “disaster” and “fast” with “last.” The word “divorce” has been used playfully by creating suspense–first by relating it to marriage and then by spelling out that if a person is married, he must not divorce his wife but divorce the “speed” (that is, over-speed) of his vehicle. Humour is also generated here through contrast: a delay of fifteen minutes in this world is preferred to one’s reaching the next world fifteen minutes earlier. Careless driving on the roads has often resulted in serious injuries, bloodshed and even deaths. This fact too has been shown in some of the road signs: “If you want to donate blood, do not do it on the road. Donate it in the blood bank” and “Always drive in such a way that your license expires before you do.”

There are other activities too which engross and divert the attention of the drivers. Exchanging gossips with others, looking at captivating scenes of nature, particularly while driving along hilly areas, eying attractive passengers sitting behind in the vehicle or going on the road, sleeping behind steering wheel, indulging in day-dreaming, making love to others, and talking on a mobile phone are some of the diversions which cause serious accidents. Some road signs take cognizance of this fact as well:
1. “Love thy neighbor, but not while driving,”
2.  “Don’t dream; otherwise you will scream.”
3.  “If you sleep, your family will weep.”
4.  “A cat has nine lives, but not the one which drives.”
5.  “Mountains are a pleasure; only if you drive with leisure.”

Here the sense of humour originates from high sounding idioms, phrases and sayings which have long been associated with serious activities of life but which here have been employed to rather insignificant activity of driving. Hence by adopting the method of contrast, good neighborliness, acts of sleeping or day­dreaming, and nine lives of a cat have been torn out of their contexts and yoked to the practice of driving–comparing things great with small–almost in a manner of metaphysical conceit–and this results in a mild humour which may not provoke laughter but leaves freshness in the mind of the reader.

Of course, drivers alone are not responsible for all the road accidents. There are defective roads and poorly-maintained vehicles as well. Many accidents take place because of mechanical failures, such as, failure of brakes, deflated tyres, jamming or steering wheel, and so on. Many roads in India exist only in name, while in reality the drivers have to search for the shallow pot-holes and ditches–with or without water-through which they could allow their car to wade through. Such problems too have been taken care of by humorous road signs which make one momentarily smile: “If brakes not fit, you’ll land in shit” and “Be cautious; road in dangerous condition. Survivors will be suitably punished.” While the first road sign is catchy because of two rhyming words “fit” and “shit,” the second one becomes striking and even memorable because of unexpected contrasting. Expressions–”Survivors,” rather than being rewarded, “will be punished.” The implied meaning is clear: the road is so bad that the driver will either die or in case of survival might have suitable punishment in the form of broken bones and dislocated discs! A road sign on a narrow bridge disallows the movement of two cars simultaneously. This message is conveyed in words which have sexual implications and hence cannot but provoke humour: “Cars will not have intercourse on the bridge.”

It is true that every driver is not gifted with the capacity for such creative and humorous interpretations but it is also true that these road signs have been written on boundary walls, on bridges, on road-side monuments and occasionally on electric poles and tree trunks only for the drivers with the good intention of conveying them the message loud and clear. The composers of these road signs must have been gifted with a sense of wit and humour to give a gentle warning to the drivers of motorized vehicles so that the idea reaches without hurting them. Such road signs also disprove the myth that Indians are normally a grim lot and no sense of humour. India still abounds in such glaring contrasts, mind-boggling peculiarities, holy whimsicalities, political immaturities and panoramic vistas of life that a careful scrutiny yields abundance of humour in every-walk of life.