The Indicator Lecture

Karthik’s car had been indicating left for long enough to suggest a political position. He had completed the turn several streets earlier and forgotten to cancel the signal. The soft ticking had disappeared into his general awareness of being alive on a weekday.

He was driving home along Bannerghatta Road, concentrating on the traffic and the increasingly urgent question of what remained in his refrigerator. The answer involved two tomatoes and a container he was not ready to reopen.

At a red light, a scooter rider stopped alongside him and gestured politely towards the window. Karthik lowered it slightly.

“Your indicator,” the rider said.

Karthik looked, realised, and switched it off. “Sorry. Thanks.”

The rider did not immediately leave the conversation.

“Since that earlier junction.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I thought you were turning.”

“I did turn.”

“Yes. But then I thought you were turning again.”

The light remained red. Karthik began to suspect that the indicator had entered a more complicated relationship than he knew.

The rider introduced himself as Manoj. He was trying to reach a nearby road and had briefly assumed Karthik knew a useful way through the neighbourhood. The prolonged signal had looked like confidence. Manoj had continued on the same public route, expecting a turn that never materialised.

“Why did you think I knew?” Karthik asked.

“You looked local.”

Karthik considered the faded apartment parking sticker on his windscreen. It had finally achieved something beyond resisting removal.

“I live here,” he admitted. “But I’m going home.”

“Exactly. Home people know inside roads.”

“Home people also get lost.”

A small silence followed. It contained two men reassessing the amount of competence they had assigned each other without evidence.

Manoj nodded towards the road ahead. “So no shortcut?”

“Not one I can recommend.”

The signal changed. They ended the conversation and moved when safe, neither attempting to continue a window-side conference in motion. Karthik watched the road, properly cancelled the next indicator after turning, and felt the unusual pressure of knowing his dashboard had recently misled another adult.

At a shop with suitable parking, he stopped to buy dinner ingredients. Manoj happened to arrive a few minutes later, having checked his own directions while parked. They recognised each other beside the vegetables.

“Reached your road?” Karthik asked.

“Yes. I should have checked first.”

“I should have cancelled first.”

This division of responsibility seemed fair. Neither tried to make the other carry the whole story.

The shopkeeper, overhearing only the last exchange, asked whether they had cancelled an order. They explained. He listened while weighing onions, then said his brother once followed the wrong wedding car for several kilometres.

Karthik and Manoj looked at each other. Their incident immediately felt more manageable.

“What happened?” Manoj asked.

“He reached another wedding. Ate lunch. Came back.”

The story could not be independently verified, but it improved the vegetable purchase considerably.

Before parting, Manoj pointed out that he had also delayed checking his own directions because Karthik appeared so certain. Karthik admitted that a flashing light was an embarrassingly cheap way to acquire authority. They agreed to trust clearer information next time, then both carefully checked the shop doorway before walking outside. Independently this time.

At home, Karthik told his wife about the indicator. She laughed, then asked whether he had bought what she requested.

He looked inside the bag. Tomatoes. Onions. A lemon purchased without clear authority.

“Coriander?” she asked.

He had forgotten.

His wife shook her head. “Someone followed you for directions?”

Karthik placed the vegetables on the counter.

“For a while,” he said. “I was apparently giving a very strong signal.”

Read when you’re a passenger or safely off the road. Never while driving.