The hot sun has given way for skies patched with dark
clouds, waiting to bid a tearful goodbye to the extremely excruciating summer.
Roads that once bore mirages of water are now filled with pools of muddy water.
The once hot and dry wind sweeping over the city now bears the amazingly
freshening scent of wet mud. But the condition of motorists in the city is
still not seeing the light of day. Anyone driving a two-wheeler in the city is
aware of all the hazards that we have to face.
It’s not uncommon for roads leading to the governor’s house or some
other “never heard of before” MLA to be well laid, and arterial roads like the
ones leading from Raj Bhavan to Pheonix Market City being embroidered with
potholes. Oh, not to forget the relief caused by news roads being incompletely
laid on old ones, causing that slide in the road which I am pretty sure has
given many motorists tickets to heaven through a trip to the road beneath the
buses. Pass by construction sites and
you will find sand and stones piled right on the road, with those L and T
cement rollers acting as speed checks. Roads are already bottlenecked most of
the time, notwithstanding these kind of unnecessary piss offs.
Oh that’s not it. A harmless college girl was
driving back home on her new Scooty pep. It was a reasonably empty road and she
was keeping up with the speed limit. All was going well, she was enjoying her
ride when a BLIND, yes you can call him that, driver of an Audi Q7 made a mad
turn past her, no horn no indicator, nothing! The girl couldn’t do much but
zoom away thanking the gods for sparing her life that day. It’s not just these big shots who drive like
they own the roads. Bus drivers are guilty of the very same. When one is
stuck
in a traffic jam, these guys honk their huge engines out, as if they have
struck a deal with ENTs guaranteeing them 200% increased patient flow! Ugh -__-
.
Now with so much to complain about, one would automatically
wonder, what is the government doing? Well there are million rules, million
people appointed to see if these are being followed. But yes the truth is that
half the people do not care. At around 10 or 11 am in the morning, if you pass
by Adyar Signal, near Ambika Appalam Depot, you will see a policeman sitting
happily in that little stand for him, playing God with the signal controls not
bothering to come on to the road and actually get to directing traffic. And
just about 10m from him, there will be a white police bike, with about three
traffic policemen, stopping every random motorist, and getting out his lunch
money, irrespective of whether they have flouted rules or not. Usually the ones
with license and permits end up paying fines for the stupidest of reasons and
the ones without anything find hundred ways to escape. About a few months ago,
when I was still in school, there was a restriction on how many kids a van
could carry. While some drivers followed the regulations giving up revenue of
about 4-5k, while others paid about 1k to the policemen and kept their share of
the pie safe. The dirty state of roads
is another terrible piss off. On a usual busy Monday morning, one will find
sand and dust flying all over the place, making it terrible for any bike rider
and even a driver protected by the frontiers of their vehicles is disillusioned
for a minute. But the same road during Jayalalitha’s visit will be extremely
spick and span. The kind off double standards that exist here!
There’s a lot of damage that we ourselves do to our
lifelines of transport. Finished a bottle of water or a bag of chips? Oh let’s
just throw it out, anyway there are people to clean! That seems to be the
attitude today. :\ Being someone who
loves to drive, these man made menaces, the non-living garbage and the
unfortunately living maniacs that threaten our existence on roads successfully
reduce the joyous pleasure of driving into a humdrum, extremely risky fight for
survival.
There are so many kids out there who, on turning 18, want to
lay their hands on their own bike handles and glide through the roads, the wind
breezing through their hair. It’s a freedom,
a joy that everyone must definitely experience. Parents also don’t seem
to mind the picture of their kids driving. But there are some for who letting
their kids on the roads is like suicide. Honestly if my own aunt reads this she
will probably recreate my accident scene and getting super hysterical. But it’s
not their fault. Roads today are like open death traps that invite you to lay
your lives down to validate their supremacy. Authorities have the will to sort
out, but no will to put it in action.
I guess we can call ourselves developed only if our roads
become safe again, and that would be when parents and relatives voluntarily
take u
s forward for our two wheeler licenses! But yes, that’s a case of
building castles in the air. Oh well!
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