A good street fight

Walkning around in the intensely foggy Delhi evening I saw up ahead of me a car go a little out of control and suddenly, BANG! He'd had an accident. My friend ran up to see if he was ok. I didn't look bad from where I was, and so I took my time. When I showed up to the scene 15 seconds behind my friend I examined the car, and noticed that he'd basically hit a small wall and dented his front bumper and probably flattened a tire. All in all not a bad accident at all. That however, was not the surprising part.

When I arrived to see what was happening, one man (probably early 20's) was kicking the crap out of another. My friend was brave and went in to try and stop this man from raging. What had happened apparently is that the dense fog obscurred the driver's vision and the driver himself was probably a teenager just learning. He was going a little too fast (in a construction area) and ran into something. The man who was throwing punches and kicking was yelling that the driver had nearly killed him. I saw him knee the driver who was on the ground, and the driver apologize profusely and retreat into his car. The angry man went and opened the door and pulled the driver back out of the car and leveled him once more with a few punches and then the gathering crowd moved in and stopped him from swinging. Another young man who was apparently riding with the driver stepped in to protect his friend and the angry man slapped him in the face. However, this was a real slap. Ouch! I heard it from a few meters back. I wasn't about to get involved in the situation because I couldn't understand who'd done what and I don't know any words in Hindi except "Thank you" and "let's go." I didn't think either of those would be appropriate in the situation...

My friend stepped in after the slap and said to the guy, I know you're angry, but call the police, report the accident whatever, but don't aggress this young man. At that point tensions has cleared just a touch. We left the scene and apparently there was a little more yelling. What I really got out of the situation was that people are very much the same everywhere. In India however, men will take to violence much more quickly after an accident rather than huffing and puffing and displaying their chests as one would see in America. Teenagers are generally bad drivers. Fog makes them worse. People who feel like they got run over are angry. I think the last two times I've been run over the drivers must have felt fortunate. As I've mentioned before, I'm quite big (physically) in this country and I don't think small irresponsible drivers who know they're at fault want to tango with me especially when I'm the one expected to be throwing punches... Maybe next time I'll puff my chest in an American way and see what happens. Maybe next time I can do the Indian thing and appeal to the crowd of bystanders and passersby and have them kick the crap out of the driver. We'll see. Hopefully I won't have to deal with it again.