Horn OK Please

We were talking about the current engagement and how sometimes bureaucracy is at its stupidest best. People sometimes go overboard following directives and processes which have ceased to make sense or they really don't know why the process is as it is. To elaborate the same, a colleague of mine shared an interesting anecdote which atleast I wasn't aware of. The inception of "Horn Ok Please" at the back of all Indian trucks.

The story goes like this. During the British era, vehicles used to run on petrol or kerosene. And most of the trucks during that time used to run on kerosene. All trucks were painted with OK where 'OK' stood for 'On kerosene'. As time went by and India became independent the processes were handed over to the RTO. In their process checklist to make sure the truck was allowed to ply on the road, the concept to paint 'OK' was continued but why it was 'OK' and not something else was never questioned and over time, one forgot what 'OK' stood for in the first place! Another check was to have 'Horn Please' painted as trucks didn't have good enough rear view mirrors and vehicles were to blow the horn to announce their existence behind the trucks! You add these two up and you get 'Horn Ok Please'. It was an eye-opener for me (not so much the Horn Please than the 'OK' bit of it, cause honestly I didn't know it had any significance.

And then you have the 'Bure Nazar wale tera mooh kala' etc. In USA, there are a few funny variations of that. On the left would be 'El Paso' and on the right would be 'El Cruncho'. Or the left would have 'Pass way' and the right would be 'Pass away'. Funny eh?