The drive from Mirpur to Lahore in the so called 'flying coach' is anything but 'flying'. Perhaps the descriptions 'shove', 'push' and 'bully' your way past traffic are more apt. But even words like these fail to describe the true horror of the journey. Firstly the word 'flying coach' describes a road vehicle (usually a Toyota Hiace) that guarantees to get you to Lahore in four hours. It does this by not stopping frequently to pick up itinerant passengers and driving very fast. Dangerously fast. So that when confronted with an obstacle (like another vehicle for example) instead of slowing down the driver keeps the horn button depressed until the obstacle moves out of the way. It's a wonderful technique and it works remarkably well. You should try it! All objects on the road are seen as mere impediments and obstacles to your forward movement. And the obstacles do come thick and fast and in a wealth of guises:
They include other vehicles (which is expected), motorcycles (also expected), a man on a bicycle (kind of expected) but you do think 'what an idiot', but before you've had time to contemplate his idiocy, you spot a bunch of school kids (4 year-olds with bags on backs) crossing the busy Grand Trunk road, and then a donkey, a black bull, a lone goat coming your way so the driver swerves to miss him, an old man in tattered pyjamas pushing a box-cart (when the driver horns in a vain attempt to force him off the road it's useless - he's stone deaf), a rickshaw wallah huffing and puffing at 5 miles an hour (because he has seven passengers when he can only carry two), another old man stooped over his walking stick trying to get to the other side of the road, another hobbling along with one and a half legs (his right leg a congealed stump above his kneecaps), and then there's an almighty bang and the flying coach comes to a screeching halt on the side of the road in a dust cloud - you've burst a tyre. But the other passengers don't flinch a muscle. They seem to be taking the trauma rather well.
The driver and his 'passenger fare collection buddy' (a straggly skinny youth constantly dangling from the side of the vehicle on perpetual look-out duties for potential passengers), get out remarkably quickly and proceed to mend the tyre - their speed of reaction reassures you but it also fills you with dread: they must do this fairly often. Whilst repair work is underway you jump behind some straggly wild-bushes besides a battered wall for a quick piss, but before you've finished you get chased out by a fierce looking man belligerently waving a stick in his hand and all the while swearing at you (swearing at your mother, your sister and your unborn children) - apparently you we're pissing in his front garden! How were you to know? It certainly didn't look like someones garden.
The journey continues but within five minutes another (or perhaps the same) tyre bursts again. With your ruck-sack in your lap, a book by Paul Theroux in your hand, you look at the other passengers and notice that none of them looks perturbed or even remotely bothered. So you stop worrying, why worry? Let it go. So you let it go and relax. But only a little. The tyre is 'fixed' again and you head off. Your feet are aching, your legs are cramped, your bum is hurting from the constant sitting and the bone shaking jolts, you've snatched not a wink of sleep on the aeroplane nor will you now. Outside you look at the knotted mass of humanity besides the road, the shops, the lean-to's on the banks of the stinking sewers, this constipated coagulated mire of people along this artery and your mind wanders.
Your wander and you think about all the accidents that must happen, the sheer number of people that must die or get maimed everyday on this road. Does it matter? Perhaps in a country with a population three times that of the UK it doesn't? Ahead you spot a police car beside a fresh accident site - this doesn't surprise you but what does is the street seller selling fruit to the people that have congregated around the accident. Yes selling fruit to those ogling and loitering around the crash scene to get a glimpse of the carnage! - like popcorn in a movie theatre. But this is no movie theatre. This is real life and people are really dying. Your mind is filled with one thought:
Cockroaches. Men are cockroaches and humanity is one big fucking cockroach.
