You can find the Holy Grail, but what about Parking?

Not now, not ever.

There’s far too many problems with using a vehicle nowadays, like traffic, the depletion of the ozone layer because of exhaust fumes and the bullock dying because of exhaustion. But as if all that was not enough, we still haven’t touched upon the grave vehicular problem of Parking.

Parking is slowly emerging as the single biggest threat to happiness in recent times, slowly edging past nuclear warfare, terrorism and the vuvuzela. And for good reason too. You see the thing with parking is that it is very irritating, occasionally expensive and always unavailable.

Nowadays you have more chance of finding the holy grail(refer The Da Vinci Code for further instructions) than you do of finding a good spot to park your car in. The reason for this is that there is no parking available. It’s a case of simple mathematics. The amount of earth stays the same but the number of cars keeps increasing. We have now reached a point where all available parking is already taken and the no-parking zones are not helping the situation.

This has a direct impact on the traffic. You may or may not(if you drive with a blindfold on) have noticed that there is more traffic on the roads than there are anopheles mosquitoes in the city. This is simply because more and more cars(76 million) are just circling around a street waiting for a place to park.That’s why sometimes it takes more time to find parking for your car than it takes to get to your destination.

Now its time I busted an urban legend, Ladies and Gentleman... *Drumroll*....: There is no such thing as a Good Parking Spot. It exists as much as Tushhar Kapoor’s acting skills. A parking place by definition is a place which will adversely affect(read as ‘damage’) your car when no one(read as ‘you’) is looking, causing you either discomfort, pain or financial ruin. The only place where your car won’t get toasted by the cruel sun, get used as a public toilet for passing pigeons or get towed away, is the spot that you have to pay for. In fact they’ve got a name for it too: Pay and Park.

 If you’re lucky enough to avoid all of the above, there is no way that you’ll avoid the illiterate parkers. These are the people who are illiterate in proper parking habits and etiquette. The parking illiterates are the masters of double parking, parking so close to your car that you can’t open the doors, scratching your car while parking their own and parking their cars which are parked at mathematically impossible angles (365 degrees). And for those who believe in karma, how do you explain the fact that it’s never their car that gets towed away.

My only advice to all you vehicle owners out there is to sell those vehicles now, unless you want to spend the rest of your life searching for parking. I guarantee you that it will make you calmer, more peaceful and will increase your life span by at least 19 years. It is no coincidence that suicide rates have shot up ever since the parking problem escalated. It might even help the human race in taking the next step in our evolution. Sometimes I feel that it is the constant worrying about where to park that is occupying great minds and preventing them from coming  up with the next big idea. Namely that of how to solve the parking problem.