Sastry on Today: The Car-nama of Our Times – Why More Cars Don’t Mean More Progress

🌿 From the Mantapa: Sastry on Today

Wit • Wisdom • Insight • Inspiration

🚗 Sastry on Today: The Car-nama of Our Times 🚗

In the old days, especially in our South Indian towns, households took pride in counting their cows.

A family with two or three cows was considered prosperous. The milk, the ghee, the curd — all symbols of abundance.

Fast forward a few decades, and the counting hasn’t stopped.

Only now, instead of cows, we count cars.

One for office, one for shopping, one for weekends, one perhaps gathering dust in the corner of the driveway — a monument to EMIs and aspirations.

Some families even joke that they have “more wheels than legs” at home.

The road, however, has remained the same — narrow, battered, permanently constipated with traffic.

We dream of speed but crawl like snails.

Every new car added to the family herd only makes the jam tighter, the honks louder, and the patience thinner.

The Great Illusion of Movement

Ironically, our vehicles have become symbols of freedom while chaining us to stress.

We buy cars to save time, but spend hours in traffic.

We boast of air purifiers in our living rooms, but forget that the exhaust pipes of our beloved machines undo all that in the open air.

We speak of wellness, but willingly sign up for high blood pressure every morning and evening on the ring roads and flyovers.

Sastry, sipping his inevitable filter coffee, chuckles:

“In this epic Kurukshetra of traffic, no one wins. Arjuna, Bhishma, Duryodhana — all are equal when honking like goats in a jam. The only chariot that truly moves is the one that carries wisdom, not horsepower.”

The Status Game

There is, of course, the prestige angle.

In some circles, two cars means middle class, three cars means successful, four cars means ‘arrived’.

Yet, stuck in a bottleneck, the luxury SUV and the humble hatchback are brothers in misery, moving nowhere.

The irony is delicious — the great equalizer is not democracy, but traffic.

Rediscovering the Forgotten Ways

Maybe the answer is not more lanes, more flyovers, or more parking lots.

Maybe the answer lies in walking, cycling, sharing rides, or even timing our lives differently.

Cities around the world are rediscovering that fewer cars often mean more life.

A stroll with a friend, a cycle ride with the breeze in your face, a bus journey with strangers who might become stories — these are movements that move more than the car ever can.

After all, progress is not measured by how many cars you own, but by how lightly you travel.

And as Sastry signs off, with that half-smile of his:

“The true vehicle of civilization is wisdom. All else is traffic.” 🌿