Seconds after getting into one of Delhi's many yellow-and-black Ambassador taxis, I realised that I had made a mistake. The driver grinned at me profusely. He then frantically revved his cab, before shooting off on the wrong side of the road.
Things then got worse. After successfully negotiating my local roundabout, with its blue-domed Mughal ruin, we turned left - cutting inside and almost hitting a Maruti car.
Ahead of us, some 500 yards away, I could see a private, white Ambassador car that had stopped ahead of us in the outside lane. Though it was blindingly obvious, my taxi driver somehow failed to see it.
Twenty yards before impact, he pressed on the brakes. There was a feeble response and we shunted cartoon-like into the back of the stationary car with a sickening crunch. After seeing that no one was hurt, I cursed my bad fortune and walked away.
My taxi driver was, of course, completely drunk - an all too common occurrence on Delhi's dangerous and profoundly lawless roads.
Reflecting on the incident this weekend, I realised that I had in fact got off lightly. The front pages of yesterday's Indian newspapers showed the maimed face of Pareksha Vihar, a four-month-old girl injured in the capital's latest road horror.
The baby and her family had been standing on the pavement when a speeding Maruti car hit them. Pareksha flew out of her grandmother's arms, crashed through the windscreen, and landed somewhere between its dashboard and the bonnet.
Instead of stopping, the driver sped off. He finally stopped five kilometres away, dumped the child on the road and fled. According to Delhi police, there was nothing particularly unusual in his behaviour: one in three Delhi-ites involved in an accident never bothers to stop.
The driver, Shravan Arora, a chemist, later claimed to have no recollection of the incident. "The accused refuses any part in the drama. He says he does not remember anything about the baby in his car," one police officer said.
Though charged with kidnapping, rash and negligent driving and causing injury, the police admit there is little prospect of him serving more than six months in prison. No breath test was carried out, so the police have no idea whether Mr Arora was drunk at the time.
Given the state of the other drivers, then, it is hardly surprising that most middle-class Indian families choose to employ chauffeurs rather than drive themselves. Whilst driving in north America or Europe is a straightforward and often tedious experience, in India it is rather like going into battle.
You would no more sit behind the wheel, if you had the option of paying someone else to do it, than drive a tank. There are de facto road rules in India: smaller vehicles always give way to bigger ones; with cyclists and rickshaws at the bottom of the heap.
However, the situation is always complicated by the unexpected: a herd of cows sitting in the middle lane, perhaps, or a tractor at night driving full speed down the wrong side of the road with no lights on.
Such is the congestion, it is hard to go faster than 40mph- the only reason why Delhi's appalling road fatality rate is not higher.
There is one piece of good news, however. A ruling by Delhi's supreme court forcing commercial vehicles to switch from diesel to less polluting compressed natural gas does appear to have made a difference.
The order provoked chaos earlier this month, when angry commuters set fire to buses and blocked highways in protest. But the air already tastes sweeter; the trees seem greener; and the pre-monsoon rains have come.
Perhaps Delhi may finally be on its way towards losing its deserved reputation as one of the world's most polluted cities.
Email
luke.harding@mantraonline.com
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