In a Race Against Time

In Bangalore, all roads lead to hell. Paved with potholes, garbage, sewage water, crevices and worse. It's as if we are all in a race against time, as if everything we do is do or die, and there's no second chance, no other alternative. Everything has to happen in the here and now. Call it living for the moment, but not in the philosophical, positive sense of the phrase popularized by new age gurus.

Take a drive in any of Bangalore's roads and you will see how most of us seem to live life on a razor's edge. We are living on the edge, whether we are going to the office, home, bus station, airport or the pub. Driving on the city's roads is like playing in a high-stakes T20 cricket match. The slog overs begin at the beginning, right when you take your vehicle out of your garage.

Ever seen anyone give way to someone in a hurry? What the heck, we don't give right of way even to an ambulance on a real emergency. OK. What about lane discipline? Never heard of it. We go where there is space. And many a time, even when there's isn't any. Look at the autowallahs. Or the two-wheelers. And increasingly, the small cars. As for the Big Daddy of all, the heavy duty BMTC buses, they simply own the roads, other vehicles be damned. Motto: Size does matter.

The city's roads are no doubt overburdened, but there are worse cities who have managed to bear the burden manfully. The problem with our city is not so much lack of visionary and long-term planning, or plain bad roads, but a complete lack of lane discipline, and stupid traffic regulations like the one-way rule in various areas. While some of them are justified, in a majority of these cases, they have ended up making the traffic more chaotic and unmanageable. The inspiration for this one-way rule is believed to be the Singapore model, but merely importing this model without replicating the basic infrastructure has turned out to the city's major fault-line.