Thirty days since touchdown in the old hometown! Time has sped by in a dizzy whirr. But it also feels like the carousel is slowing gradually, which is good. A sense of balance needs to return to things.

A sense of balance is definitely not what one feels when riding pillion on a two-wheeler in India, on the very democratic ‘free-for-all roads’ without a single white-painted line to direct those going in one direction away from those travelling in the other.

Seen from above, the traffic must seem like a flock of birds in utter disarray with no fixed compass point for guidance. The thickness of paint may be an apt measure for the distance at which one vehicle may pass another.

Yet, in this domain, amidst all this chaotic, anarchic mayhem, there is a ruler, a powerful emperor overseeing all. ‘King Horn’, whose benevolence is so manifold that he has given a little piece of himself to everyone: A beep, a toot, a cicada whirr, a honk or a stentorian clarion call (reserved for those majestic leviathans, the blue buses that, already bloated to capacity, make their way through this eddying tide with a speed that would do a snail proud.) It is here that one sees what the humble sardine in the seas cannot: The swarming, overwhelming power of the ‘little thing’, the ubiquitous two-wheeler, the mechanised ‘sardine’ that gives the motorised ‘blue whale’ no chance.

How do bus operators fix accurate start and finish times for the town buses is something best left to the realm of mathematical conjecture, for precision it would seem doesn’t reside there. Yet, in what seems a paradox, it is a version of precision that helps everyone stay upright even when slanted at alarming degrees.

The skill of avoidance is a supremely mastered art governed by a two-handed, multi-fingered dexterity that may at first defy belief, for both hands even while being needed to steady the handlebars, must allow the fingers freedom to participate differently. Thus, one thumb is reserved for the horn button, a couple of fingers are delegated full-time duty to braking on the one hand while its siblings on the other have a full-time shift dedicated to accelerating with care.

All of these, at all times, are placed on high alert and after working these shifts from day to day for years, everything slips into the hidden grooves provided by routine travel over asphalt, so that even amongst the perceived chaos of what seems like a random but incessant meteor shower, there is a sense of order.

Undoubtedly everyone goes home feeling like they’ve won the lottery of life. At least I do, for after it all, after this haphazard journey through a forest of whirling wheels spurred on by a cacophonous orchestra of horns, I am still alive and breathing. And tomorrow, I will do it all again, take life in both hands, whisper words of confidence, walk out the door, jump up on the seat behind my helmet-less friend and bare-headed sally forth into the maelstrom.

What keeps it all ticking? Why is it that statistics of accidents register far lower than one would expect, given this scenario? It is hard to explain. Someone suggested that it has to do with speed or the lack of it. The slowed-downness of things.

Riding pillion, swaying rhythmically from side to side, however, it is hard to imagine that speed is lacking in any way. The explanation must lie elsewhere or be coupled with other factors. Like collectiveness, crowdedness and, in the middle of it all, heightened awareness — for one’s self and for the other man, although again paradoxically that is not most apparent as one whizzes by.

Maybe, in a strange way, you consider the condition and safety of others a lot more in a crowd than when barreling down a highway in a foreign land at an amazing rate of knots. Not many commentators, I know, pitch a defence in favour of over-population. This may well be one.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.