Thursday, February 14, 2008

Ban them all!

I was getting back from office today and it was 7:30PM. This is peak traffic time in the evenings and I was having enough trouble already with the unruly traffic. Add to this is my current tryst with ligament tear, which make the continuous use of the break/accelerator to give me enough pain to last me till I sleep.

As if this was not enough, some genius big shot (dunno if its a politician or movie star or whatever!) decides to have his entourage go right through the city. To make his/her life easy, traffic is halted and re-routed. Traffic police are doing their job, but there are now a bunch of well minded Samaritans who also wanna help! They helping is fine, but who gave them the right to hurl abuses at anybody who is just trying to get home and doesn't know the reason for the detours or the detour routes ? I didn't get any abuses as I just followed the car in front of me, who got a healthy dose of expletives in Kannada.

I demand that we stop this practice of helping these VIPs get past all the traffic mess! Let them feel the pain! Its their short sightedness which has resulted in this infrastructure chaos we are in today! Even after the last 3-4 years of non-stop abuses being hurled at the politicians for Bangalore's bad shape, they still don't do things fast enough to make a difference. For e.g. the international airport is almost ready and people will have to travel 2hrs in some cases to get to the airport for a 20 min fight to chennai! There is no concrete proof on the ground of things being improved in this regard.

Wanna be a good Samaritan ? Take a leaf off the book of the old man who stands at the Meeras school junction near Cambridge Road directing traffic and kids day in an day out without losing his cool and even in the worst of weather. The rest of the instant Samaritans are more pain in the ass than anything else!

2 comments:

Prem Bangole said...

I hear ya man.. Remember the discussion we had for traffic mess, there is everyone involved from shop keeper who dumps half his things on footpath making peds to walk on road and so on and so forth, on top of it VIPs think their time is valuable what abour ours? don't we need time to do what we need to do, someone gave a quirk remark about everybody having a vehicle in Bangalore is a problem no it is not if everybody wants to have where is the infrastructure change to help it?

Ajay said...

Yes... I agree. Everybody has the right to buy a car or a bike. The woeful infrastructure can dissuade people from buying, but telling someone like a Tata to not make the cars more affordable is ridiculous! The government and bureaucracy need to take stock of the situation... if you can't plan, at least react!