Honking mad

There are strange and hilarious signs on highways, roadsides and gas stations telling people not to honk.

This confused me at first: As any good, naive Canadian knows, horns are useful for telling other people they're about to turn you into roadkill. You need them.

Well. A few days and several thousand lost cochlea hairs later, I'm of a somewhat different mindset.

Here, horns are used to solely to express frustration--to scream GET OUT OF THE WAY at the several dozen cars in a traffic jam 100 metres long. If honked horns in traffic-clogged areas the world over can be translated into vented emotions, Indian car horns are like punctuation-free, expletive-ridden run-on sentences. People in auto-rickshaws, passenger vehicles and pimped-out transport trucks lean on their horns for minutes on end, as though deafening everyone nearby would somehow get them to their destination sooner.

It's mildly hellish.

But: Horns that bleep Bollywood tracks? Genius.