It was just another day at work with a slight difference that I had to step out to buy a few medicines at a local medicine shop just down the road – Wind Tunnel Road to be exact. This road cuts through a prime locality and is perpendicular to the old Airport Road and boasts of high real estate prices. The location is great as its near many Tech parks and great shopping malls, hospitals and hotels.
I took a 10 min break from work in the otherwise sleepy hours of mid afternoon and set off to finish the task.
The medicine shop was just 500 meters and it was the typical Bangalore weather of these days - with the monsoon clouds dancing in the sky without shedding any precious water. It had been quite long since I had ambled along that road and today, I could really notice its alarming condition. There was no footpath – the road was used as everything – footpath, parking zone, hawker’s stop and of course road! I jumped above the potholes to find firm land beneath my shoes – to realize that the car behind me was honking incessantly asking me to get off from his way – but to where?.
To say it was a two laned road would be injustice – it had one usable lane (with vehicles parked/open potholes/dug land on either side) which disappeared whenever a bus stopped for a pickup or a drop or when the huge tempos backed out on the road from their respective standing areas inside godowns (or whatever) that dot both sides of the road. As if this was not enough, there was a huge pile of all kinds of garbage forcing me to block my nostrils to reduce the stench hitting my system. Every now and then an autowallah would manage to stop and ask if the pedestrians needed a ride much to the disdain of the traffic behind.
Having picked up the medicines, I started my walk back to be greeted by strong-gusty winds making the air mobile with dust all around and now my eyes bore the brunt. People had started rushing to shelters (under the tree branches, thanks nature for providing us with that and thanks to mankind for sparing at least a few till now!) to avoid the impending rain. The journey back was swift as I raced to my office noticing how difficult it was to find just 100 meters of leveled land on this supposedly metalled road.
This ten minute sojourn was an eye-opener for me about the difficulties faced by pedestrians in Bangalore while we move around in our four wheelers on the non-existing Bangalore roads, footpaths surely look like a far-fetched possibility!!!
1 comment:
It is very true, pedestrians have a tough time on roads in big cities like Bangalore. Often they walk on the main road because the footpath is dirty or bumpy, which leads to 2-lane roads becoming 1.5 lanes :)
What could be done by the municipal corporation is to keep the footpaths clean along with good water drainage systems. I often wonder when will we see footpaths like the US or other developed countries...
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