On the Road in Rajasthan: Vehicular-Caused Bone, Joint Damage in India

On the roads, it was not unusual to see five or six people standing bunched together, precariously perched on the bumper of a truck going 60 miles per hour; inside the truck, 20 people would be crowded on seats or standing. A tuc tuc may be reasonable for three people, but I saw six or eight squeezed into such a vehicle in a situation that resembled the famous circus attraction in which a stream of clowns emerges from a small car.

The roads are one of the paradoxes that make India so intriguing to a Westerner, the juxtaposition of beauty and squalor startling, but ordinary. The main roads can be good quality, but connecting to these roads are narrow, unpaved streets with piles everywhere—bricks, stones, tires, plastic debris—in a scene that looks like the aftermath of an earthquake or bomb blast.

As always in India, a sight arrests the eye. I remember seeing a peacock with iridescent blue feathers strut down the road, passing a mangy brown dog that was searching for a scrap of food amidst a pile of garbage.

Along the main road of the towns, open shops and stalls sell clothing, food—including brightly colored foil packages of chips and other snack foods—auto parts and electronic gear, among a cornucopia of other goods.

Blue City and Mehrangarh Fort on the hill at sunset in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.
Pikoso.kz/shutterstock.com

Children in school uniforms—boys in blue shirts and khaki pants, girls in salweer kameez with a blue tunic—walk together smiling, locked in animated conversation, strolling home after the rigors of school where the government provides milk and other nourishment to help even the poorest villager gain a toehold on the way up the economic ladder.

Past the villages, the road travels on the side of large farms. The vistas in rural India are riveting. In fields, women with saris the color of bougainvillea crouch to the ground to cut the wheat, looking in the distance like flowers that have miraculously bloomed amidst the green fields, carried by seeds tossed in a swirling wind. Along the road, women walk with stately grace, balancing on their heads metal cans—probably filled with milk—that glint like silver in the sun.

Even a short trip on the main roads is a harrowing experience: Motorized vehicles—buses, trucks, motorbikes—shoot down the road, constantly switching lanes to pass someone or something slower, blasting horns to signal the jump to the next lane even though a bus or a lorry is just up ahead raging along with the speed and ferocity of a locomotive.