I know you’re probably really tired of traffic woes, but can I really help it?

Bangalore’s roads now resemble the moon’s surface – craters and all. Especially with the recent rain episode, whatever little we had in terms of roads has now become a figment of our imaginations. We will soon need moon buggies to get from one place to another. And we might even have to start from home the prior day to get to office on time, is what I am thinking.

My dad who was in town (and who I have earlier extolled Bangalore’s virtues to very profusely, I might add) pointed out to me the lack of pavements.

(Have you noticed that in many parts the pavements are so bad that you are forced to walk on the road, and that is really not a choice at all, because, you’d get the Nobel Prize for new discoveries if you actually find anything that resembles a road).

Getting back to my dad, he was talking about pavements and I said, “How can there be a pavement when there is hardly a road?!”

So here we are, threatening to become a world superpower, but we haven’t figured out how to make a road that can survive the rains.

Amazing. I would think that all the engineering brains in India (and the world) hasn’t been able to work out that equation. So anyway, here we are going over about 50 million pot holed roads. It is of course, a wonderful state to arrive in office. Shaken and stirred. They should soon have doctors at all destinations making sure all our bones are intact, when (and if) we ever arrive.

Case to point. There are 2 approaches to my house. One of these has been under construction for the last one year, I kid you not! One year. How it can take one year to dig up a road, put cables under it and patch it up again is beyond every stretch of my imagination.

The other approach was also dug up and hastily reopened. At one point of time, I thought we’d have to actually get swings or large catapults to get across the large drain if they had closed both the roads at the same time.

Once they were done with the extensive digging and whatever it is they do when they have nothing to do, they decided to be kind to us and put in some form of a road. In the process, they put some rough stones (with really sharp edges too) and patched it up with mud.

So what do we have now? A joke for a road and craters the size of the Sahara desert and many sharp edges to navigate through each time we drive through. It’s surprising they haven’t opened a puncture shop there yet.

Hey, I know that we need some excitement in our life, but getting jolted and shaken up everytime I cross that path, is something I had not bargained for. After all, I get enough excitement during the one hour journey to work on Hosur Road, one of Bangalore’s most notorious stretches now in terms of traffic now I would say.

If you’ve been on this stretch recently, I think you’d tend to agree that excitement is something you will not lack. Cars, four wheelers, huge (and I mean huge) trucks, cement mixers, two wheelers, tempos, autos, call centre vans (and I think you’d know why they deserve their own category) and the nightmare of all drivers : cyclists and cows. If there’s something you can’t find on this stretch, please inform us immediately.

Last week I read an encouraging news report of a group touring Bangalore to find out which roads have been affected. Isn’t that amazing news? So by next month, they should have a committee ready to discuss these roads. By early next year, they will have their plan in place. By April/May, they will set up a committee to discuss and review it again. Then they will reconvene in about 2-3 months time. By this time, there would be additional bad roads to be considered, so the process will have to be repeated.

Anyway, by this calculation I would estimate that at least by 2050 they will have decided whether they are going to be kind enough to us citizens and give us roads.

After all we only pay 30+ plus percent of what we earn to the government to give us a semblance of a road.

I’m not sure all our money is going (and I have a suspicion that I won’t like where it’s going either) but it obviously doesn’t seem to be enough to give us decent roads.

On the subject of potholes, you have to check out this link:
Bangalore Potholes