Risk: how we blind ourselves

As is rapidly becoming the normal course of events, the rains have arrived, Mumbai is up the creek in a leaky boat and no paddle; and we're slogging through all of that trying to meet deadlines. It is undeniably beautiful outside and yet, there is a new fear of the falling rain that I don't remember having felt before. But that's just a thought I wanted to toss up into the air and so I have.

Anyway, the other day I was riding home on the CBZ X-Treme with The Wife perched on the rear seat. It had been raining earlier, so the roads were wet and Mumbai looked shiny and quite pretty actually. We stopped at this traffic light and ahead of us was another couple on their Pulsar, clad in casuals, lidless, it goes without saying. I saw the chap pull out a bottle of water from somewhere, and take a long swig. Having emptied the bottle, he dropped the bottle with practiced ease and kicked it half-volleyed over a barrier into the deep hole dug up for a subway. All without rocking the bike or upsetting his pillion. Admirable skill and deplorable civic attitude in one shot.

For an instant, I thought I might point out the latter to the chap, but it would have been futile. You know how they are. They shrug, smile and moments later they will do it again. It sucks. I'd like to believe you can change the world one person at a time, but frankly the path is steeply uphill and I'm increasingly leaning over into the cynic side. So I pointed this chap out to The Wife, muttered something like, 'What a total, effing idiot!' and continued.

Once the light changed, and we crawled back into the rush hour traffic, I more or less forgot this chap. We were having a good ride. Then I hit my favourite stretch. This almost five kilometre stretch of road is wide open, well-surfaced, safe to speed on when empty and well lit too. I love the CBZ X-Treme's two-up buzz around 80-90 kph on this stretch and feel very happy when I come to a stop on the front row of the traffic light that just precedes this stretch.

Normally, I am the second or third of the lights – making sure no one's jumping the lights across – but once I hit my stride, very few vehicles come past. To my surprise, the first bike off the greasy line was, you guessed it, our lidless hero and his hapless pillion.

As I saw his bike weave wildly in the wet before gripping and shooting off into the night, it occurred to me that we humans are conditioned to ignoring the risk of daily activity. As in, we use the sharpest knife casually without considering the damage it could cause for no better reason than because we use it daily. We forget, in this chaps case, that you are endangering at least two lives. That a simple fall could kill him or worse. That full throttle when two-up in the rain is the same as asking for someone to come and clobber you with a blunt object. That a lid not only protects you when you fall, but it restores your vision at speed and in the wet.

That four kilometres of unbridled speed is not worth a human life.