The Idiot's Guide to honking on Indian roads

Over the last couple of years, I've been a regular user of a "slow-moving" locomotive for my daily commute to my office. I either use my electric bike or my bi-cycle, depending on my mood. More so, because the traffic is irritating, and maneuvering bigger vehicles requires too much concentration. I soon realised that slow-movers are objects of ridicule on the road. Even while I go about travelling on the extreme left of the roads, I was seeing that people come behind me and start honking, maybe they want to say something to me? Well, as they speed away staring at me, I hardly get time to ask them what they really wanted to tell me..."Get out of my way you.....*****?"

One honk, multiple uses!

My neighbour starts his car/ bike en-route to his office, and as he approaches the apartment gate in the basement, he starts honking. Our building, with the great acoustics that we have, starts vibrating and resonating with this great musical tone, and in this case, the security staff promptly opens the gate for him.

Once we are out in the open road, we honk at every turning, because we do not want to reduce our speed, but instead expect our fellow road user to reduce the speed upon hearing our honk.

Youngsters, who are on their flashy luxury sports bike, honk when they see a good looking person from the opposite sex, so that they can grab attention.

You are driving and the person in the front car is on the phone, you ought to honk to tell him that he is breaking the law, irrespective of the fact that you are neither wearing a helmet nor wearing a seat belt!

The vehicle moving in the front has applied brakes because he noticed a speed-breaker, but you go behind him and honk, trying to tell him that he's done the greatest crime.

There's an elderly person walking on the footpath, and we start riding our bike on the footpath to beat the traffic, go behind him and honk, to indicate that grandpa is blocking our way!

We are driving, and we notice a huge cow standing right in front of us....and we honk! Luckily, cows have learnt to pick up the meaning of our honks, and unlike homo-sapiens, they slowly and graciously move out of our way.

We are moving on the extreme left of the road, and there are people trying to overtake other vehicles from the left, and you happen to be blocking them due to your slow speed, then you've had it boy!

Honking as a communication tool

One could go about describing various uses of honking, and also various styles of honking, with special emphasis on the duration between honks. But the fact remains that honking has come to be a language of its own, and is largely used as an attention seeking technique. You cant really assign a specific meaning to a certain style of honking, but my experience says that it has become purely contextual, and hence a very universal language for communication.

In software parlance, we can notice that there's a publish-subscribe design pattern that we can apply here. We've subscribed our minds to listen to the publishing of a honk. And the correct recipient will receive it properly. In case the receiver doesn't respond in timely fashion, there's a retry mechanism that ensures that the notification is sent, and the subscriber receives it. Human mind is now accustomed to it.

Honking is also used as a bullying tool, where bigger vehicles try to intimidate you with their fancy honks. A smaller vehicle is always seen in lighter vein when compared to a bigger vehicle, and if you happen to come in the way of a bigger vehicle, you are bound to be ejected from his trajectory by means of a very loud long honk!

Why complain?

This is such a wonderful communication mechanism, I wonder why people complain about this! Except for the fact that exposure to high levels of honking can cause hypertension or other related psychological problems/ mood swings, this is not known to cause any environmental pollution, still people like to categorise honking under noise pollution...crazy!!

Conclusion

When in Rome, be a Roman! None of our spiritual/ philosophical ideologies work on the road. For the newer people who are going to drive/ ride in Bengaluru (or anywere else in India), its to be noted that as per law, unwanted honking is an offence, but we do not have provisions yet to define "unwanted honking". So, you need to wade through the traffic with constant honking, whether you like it or not.

I'm reminded of Mother Teresa's statement; "If we cant love the person whom we see, how can we love God, whom we cant see?". So lets all try to post a small smile while driving, and give some love to our fellow road users by forgiving them for a few of their mistakes, and hope they too will reciprocate in a similar way, for our mistakes!


The way we honk is an indication of the society in which we live. The prevailing honking style is an indication that nobody respects the other. The minds of people are so restless, they can hardly think of being considerate towards their fellow travellers. A little bit of compassion/ love towards the city and the people around you can drastically help in making each others' journey far more enjoyable.