Sadgati: Safe Passage on Roads
A Three-Part Series on Road Safety, Responsibility, and the Journey Home
Last Sunday, I asked my daughter to drive from Mangalore to Udupi. Within minutes, she asked a question that haunts every honest driver: “How much of my safety depends on me, and how much on everyone else?”
That question became this series.
Sadgati means two things in Sanskrit: safe passage home, and liberation after death. Every time we take the wheel, we’re choosing between these meanings. Will this journey end with arrival? Or with the passage we never intended?
The answer depends partly on you. Partly on strangers. Partly on systems we’ve built or failed to build.
Read the Series Here:
The Uncertainty We Drive Through
Shashikiran UmakanthThis is Part 1 of Sadgati: Safe Passage on Shared Roads, a three-part reflection on road safety. In our culture, the word ‘Sadgati’ generally means the salvation attained after death or reaching the feet of the Almighty. However, looking at the condition of traffic on our roads today, if someone…
Note: This series is written from personal clinical experience and observation. It’s not a substitute for formal driver training or comprehensive traffic safety guidelines. Its purpose is to encourage deeper thinking about road safety as both personal responsibility and collective project.
Dr. Shashikiran Umakanth (MBBS, MD, FRCP Edin.) is the Professor & Head of Internal Medicine at Dr. TMA Pai Hospital, Udupi, under the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE). While he has contributed to nearly 100 scientific publications in the academic world, he writes on MEDiscuss out of a passion to simplify complex medical science for public awareness.
