I’m horrible, aren’t I? Edging on three weeks here! One thing I realized is that you shouldn’t take internet access for granted in India. Or electricity (which, you know, if I had half a brain, I would have realized is probably a clear indication of whether or not internet access is available) or water in general. There are a lot of things you have to watch out for. Here, however, is a short treatise on Indian traffic.

Because I want to, dammit…

…is the general rule of thumb. From a pedestrian’s point of view, it’s easy to say, “Well, that man doesn’t care if he runs me over or not, he is clearly a poopty-poopty-pants (this is the height of my insulting career),” but when you’re in a car, you hate pedestrians because they’re slow and always tend to walk right in front of cars. Pedestrians call this “being sneaky.” Cars call this “dumb.” My favorite part of Indian traffic is the auto(-rickshaw), which my mom tells me runs on some elaborate combination of diesel, gasoline, and sometimes kerosene — basically anything that burns. You don’t pay for a smooth ride in an auto, but there’s a certain amount of fun in being in a vehicle that seems liable to collapse or catch on fire at every turn, or get hit by buses.

There are a lot of buses here. Did I mention that? And I hate them all. Huge lumbering indignities to—

Pollution can get pretty bad here. You can see the smoke coming out of all of the different exhaust pipes (some of which point directly at you — ahem, BUSES) every time the lights turn red. Traffic lights used to be a rarity, but six years later, not only is Bangalore obsessed with them (to the point where, if you run a red light, an annoying siren starts playing. Man, we just take photos of people’s cars and blackmail them! So much more fun.), but the city is also instituting a variety of “underpasses” — crazy dip-down ramps, and a light rail which is pushing most traffic into one lane. Not that that doesn’t happen anyway. Neither lanes nor the term “oncoming traffic” really mean anything, which is scary if you’re driving, but hilarious if you’re just watching the chaos from a safe distance.

There are these doldrums in traffic when you don’t smell the coal fires of Indian cars or the harsh firewood scent of everything else, but this soft sandalwood breeze, that might be just as carcinogenic as the rest of it, but for that brief moment, it feels like all of the trees and gardens of this city make a difference. There are some gorgeous gardens and parks in Bangalore, especially around Jayanagar where I’m staying. My one complaint?: I’m pretty sure they won’t let me play on the shiny-metal-ferris-wheel-dohickey, and I really want to.

It seems that I’ve caught everything except Swine Flu at this point (and I ain’t scared of no damn virus, but I am occasionally scared of pigs — you know, when they get bigger than me and there’s that scary glint of hunger in their eyes, and they just stare at you—), and providing I don’t get that and end up in a ridiculous quarantine — which here means that I’ll catch malaria in a hospital, find out I don’t actually have swine flu, and be declared some sort of drug smuggler for the large quantity of quinine I’m going to administer to myself over the hard months to follow.

Like you didn’t expect that though!