Road Map

The roads bear evidence of the city’s struggle in becoming the next world-class city
Each day on the road passes by like a fast flicking montage of an electronic music video. A zip on the tarmac and a small brick here,a patch of tar there,has a story unfolding. The roads are a perfect reflection of how the city is marching towards the Commonwealth Games. It all began with the break-it-all-down stage. On my daily drive past AIIMS,Dilli Haat, Prithviraj Road and a spin around India Gate,I have seen families of labourers with their children in tow breaking perfectly safe and sound pavements. Each cement block knocked down to rubble. After weeks of this,where the city looked like it had regurgitated mud,pebbles,rocks and even boulders off its insides right in the middle of the road,came the red-sand stone bricks to give the roads the classy ‘capital city’ look. But before these were laid out,tarring of the roads began right when the rubble still lay about. But not to be outdone with just this work,there must have been a bright spark behind the idea of bringing down the dividers in the middle of the road,right after the tarring has been completed. Did anyone ask for more rubble? Here you go. The new rims to these dividers,concrete blocks were loaded on the roads,a new set of family from a far off village set down to masoning these new sharp bricks in a line,risking life and limb in the process while cars and bikes whizzed past them. Barely was a stretch completed by evening,I saw a young man crossing hurriedly from Dilli Haat to the busy INA market,stepping on the rim of this freshly made divider,bringing down these neatly placed tiles in a domino effect. So if the government doesn’t get it wrong,we do.

In a few weeks,the dividers across the entire stretch were like looking at an old man’s smiling mouth,more than half the teeth missing from all the wrong places. A solution was found: an iron grill fence was propped up on the divider between INA and Dilli Haat. But no one can underestimate the human spirit that has been toughened enough to double park on busy roads,mow down any board that says ‘fresh paint on road,do not cross’ and that spits at will. The Commonwealth Games have given the city new flyovers,new roads and something to keep us entertained on our way to work every day: the scene of an event in the making. The roads have been witness,and wear the proud scars that a ‘mediocre’ city has collected as it crosses over to becoming a ‘world-class city’. So what if it is not using a zebra crossing?