Levels – 10/13/14

                I’ve already briefly described biking here in the city, but the other day Caleb-ji had such a good thought I am going to write about it again. Biking is a lot of fun, but it’s also pretty stressful. You have to be on high alert the entire time. Besides, you never know when a cow or water buffalo might come charging down the street or when a motorcycle may come careening down an alleyway and onto the road. We each find ways to process the multitude of sensory input barraging our brains and maintain sanity where lack of order abounds. Caleb-ji, however, has created one of the most entertaining methods of coping.

                The whole premise of his method is that we are all characters in a video game set in Banaras. The goal of the video game is to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible, while also staying safe (you do only have one life after all). In this game there are different levels of difficulty. They are as follows:

Level 1: You are the sole biker on the road

Level 2: You plus pedestrians                     

Level 3: Level 2 + other bikers

Level 4: Level 3 + cycle-rickshaws

Level 5: Level 4 + cows

Level 6: Level 5 + motorcycles

Level 7: Level 6 + auto-rickshaws

Level 8: Level 7 + cars

Level 9: Level 8 + subji-walas on the side of the road

Etc. Etc. Etc.

The levels keep intensifying in difficulty as more of each of the above listed items (and other unlisted ones) crowd the roads. On a single ride you can encounter a broad range of levels, quickly changing from Level 3 to 10 to 6 in less than a kilometer. Thinking about biking like this helps keep you focused on the roads rather than on the latest daydream in La-la Land. Over the course of the year I’m sure our perceptions of what is a “Level 1” street will change, just as a “Level 10” street might seem like a “Level 6” in a couple of months. (To be clear here, even though the above list is technically the definition of the various levels, they are more based on overall difficulty in navigating a given road than on the system described above. After all, each road will always have at least one cow on it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s automatically a Level 5). It’s quite a silly thing that we have created, but it’s also a great tool to describe how our bike rides of the day have gone.