"Who goes there?"

I had visited Tawang by road sometime back. For those of you who slept through geography, it is in Arunachal Pradesh, formerly known as North Eastern Frontier Agency. It was an apt name that, with particular stress on the 'frontier' part. To indulge in a clique, the beauty that was spread all around was of the rugged kind. As befits a region that is as far east as you can get in this country. Serpentine roads, taking forever to take you anywhere, were common. As were aching joints and shaky insides. But what made the never ending car rides bearable was the panoramic vistas spread out all over the place. However, I was preoccupied with something else. I was busy looking at number plates!

When a vehicle overtook us, I would feel compelled to look at its number plate, when one passed us I would again feel the same obligatory need. Not to look at who might be inside that vehicle, or even bother about what vehicle was it, but just to look at the number plate and register the number there! Try as I might, I could not help but look! This is a character flaw that I have carried around with me for a long time now and I felt that I was doomed to a life of peering at muddy plates! Only after a point I realized I was not alone. The other male in the car, my friend next to me, confessed at one point to being driven by the same undeniable need. While the women in the car did what you are supposed to do on a drive, which is look at the scenery, the men looked at number plates. The reasons could be as arcane as the predicament itself. But I think it comes down to a basic need, maybe more in men than in women, to identify and categorize.

We feel this need to neatly slot whoever we meet in life, strangers more than acquaintances, into categories and profiles. Somehow we feel more comfortable in having done this, as if we now know that person better and are therefore more confident of dealing with him. This process of profiling/slotting starts with something as basic as the name, which at least in this country, would give you an idea of ethnicity and origin. It may then go on to profession etc, thereby giving us some tangible lodestones with which to wrap the image of the person with in our minds. The fear of the unknown, and the evils inherent therein, is possibly what drives us to transfer people into the realm of concrete generalization so that we feel a little more secure. Looking at the number plates of the vehicles gives us an idea of where the vehicles are from, and therefore by extension, gives us an idea, albeit theoretical and vague, of where the occupants of the vehicle are from. We feel comfortable at some unfathomable level with having this knowledge. What we miss in the process, the sights and the sounds of the road, is of course something else altogether!