What drives them?

I saw something the other day the reminded me of one of the reasons we love, and at the same time dislike living in a place like South Asia. It can be a fascinating and yet confusing place.

I was sitting in the car waiting for my son to get dropped by his school bus. Every day we park by the side of the road in the same spot, waiting for him. Just ahead of where we wait is a moderately busy intersection where a traffic policeman is often standing and guiding traffic or catching offenders. While sitting there waiting I often take notice of various cultural things going on around me.

This particular day I noticed a number of people who were breaking laws with impunity. As an example, I will use motorcycle riders. Here there are helmet laws for the rider (passengers are apparently not worth saving), as well as limits of only two people per motorcycle, etc.

One bike pulled up right beside me and stopped. I noticed three guys riding on it. One deftly hopped off the back and began walking while his friends causally rode through the intersection, with the cop standing right there, and waited for their friend on the other side of the intersection. All three did not have helmets on. As soon as the friend got through the intersection he hopped back on the back of the bike with his other two friends and off they went, totally unnoticed by the cop. They were obviously more scared of triple-riding than of riding without helmets. Or perhaps the logic was if they were doing both they would get caught, but only breaking one law at a time was ok.

Another bike pulled up and stopped near the side of the car. This time there was only one person riding, but he did not have a helmet on. As he stopped, he casually reached down and grabbed the helmet sitting between his legs and on top of the gas tank and slipped it over his head and then proceeded through the intersection. Again, all of this done in plain view of the cop, but no action taken by him. As soon as the rider was through the intersection off came the helmet and he was on his unencumbered way.

This got me thinking. What is the value system that determines how these people behave? Safety does not seem to be the priority like it is for some cultures. And it does not seem to be guilt that drives them since they clearly knew they were doing something wrong (hence their stopping before the intersection to correct at least part of the wrongful behavior) but kept doing it anyways as soon as the immediate danger of the traffic cop was passed. Was it expedience? Avoidance of an awkward situation? Did they somehow know that the thing they were doing wrong would be excused if they appeared to be at least ‘trying’ to do the right thing? So many possibilities, and so little understanding of what drives them to do what they do.

Where did you learn how to ride a bike?

Our son, aged 7, recently learned how to ride his bike sans training wheels. We had tried raising the training wheels up a little some months ago, but he has not ridden much in the last couple of months. The other day he decided he wanted to try riding without training wheels. We first tried raising them a bit more so he could try learning to balance, but still have the ‘safety’ of the training wheels to catch him. Within a few minutes he was riding all around on only the two main wheels, so off came the training wheels. It was literally minutes until he was riding all over on his two-wheeled bike, with a joy that knew no bounds. Incredible, really. It was like he simply decided that it was time, and knew he could do it.

However, this whole process made me realize one thing that was fundamentally different about my son’s bike riding learning process than most. Certainly different than my own. The big difference? He learned all of this on the roof of our house/apartment building, six floors up.

Now, before you freak out at the imminent danger we placed our son in while letting him ride on the roof of a 6 story building, let me clarify. We live in south Asia, where most buildings are made of cement and brick, and have flat roofs. Our apartment building has this, and the half of the building across from our apartment is known as a terrace. It is quite wide open and smooth and flat. And there is no animal or other traffic to contend with while learning to ride.

So, where did you learn how to ride a bike? On the top of a 6 story apartment building? I bet not. This is one of the many, many things we love about living here.