Delhi traffic is like a game of Tetris

Few days back I had installed Tetris on my Windows Mobile phone and have been hooked on it since.

For the uninitiated Tetris is a game in which a random sequence of tetrominoes - shapes composed of four square blocks each - fall down the playing field (a rectangular vertical shaft, called the "well" or "matrix"). The object of the game is to manipulate these tetrominoes, by moving each one sideways and rotating it by 90 degree units, with the aim of creating a horizontal line of blocks without gaps. When such a line is created, it disappears, and any block above the deleted line will fall. As the game progresses, the tetrominoes fall faster, and the game ends when the stack of tetrominoes reaches the top of the playing field and no new tetrominoes are able to enter.

Fast forward to today when I was standing at a traffic light in Ashok Vihar, Delhi...

There were two rows of four cars each in front of my car. One car next to me on the right. On the left there was a small gap and then another car. Obviously as any Delhite would know, the cars are so close to each other that the only way of getting out in case of a Godzilla or an alien attack is to break out of the front windshield (for others, this is because the gap between the adjacent cars is a few inches making it impossible to even open the doors). Anyways, so I was staring out of the windshield at the Delhi Metro passing overhead when suddenly a white Wagon R (a small boxy car from Maruti Suzuki) came and slowly fit into the gap just inches away from my car’s left door, inches away from the car in front of it and inches away from the door of the car on its left.

It was a perfect fit. A complete horizontal line! My Eureka moment! “Delhi traffic is like a game of Tetris”.

If someone could see this happening from the top it would seem like a tetromino (car, bike, rickshaw, bus, etc, etc..) fit into the playing field (rectangular though sometimes curved shaft made up of two roads and a red light stop line). As the red light lingers on more tetrominoes come and fit in. Very often when the red light does not work (like at peak hours or when it drizzles), these tetrominoes go on stacking up to the top of the playing field (the red light before it), thereby, rather than ending, starting a nightmare for commuters. The only difference being that instead of a human being playing the game the tetrominoes in the Delhi traffic game have intelligence of their own.