Bane Street

Like Gangtok,Pune also had plans to turn MG Road into a traffic-free walking plaza not too long ago. Unlike the eastern city however,our beautification brainwave in 2006 quietly drifted to the island of lost ideas. Digging through the past coverage of the failed initiative reveals that ‘security concerns’ and ‘shopkeepers’ objections’ were behind the demise of M G Road’s promising future. Why any rational shopkeeper would object to a pedestrian paradise before his store,one can’t imagine.

Showing the door to that continuous stream of vehicles would lower their customers’ short-term mortality rates at the very least. The way cars bully their way unstoppably down that road,one would think it were made of some special testosterone and nitrous oxide infused gravel. It is a fact commonly acknowledged that one loses the desire to cross MG Road after two-and-a-half minutes of dutiful left-right-left. Think of the invisible blows to business inflicted by one wavering resolve (to shop across the street) after another.

Then you have the vague security concerns. Honestly,if a town separated from China by but a handful of navigable mountain passes can encourage one to mingle and stroll casually in the open,it’s hard to see why Pune is being priggish. Okay,we don’t have the Indo-Tibetan Border Police watching our backs,but surely we can make do.

Most of us would be content to see our beloved Parsi and Irani bakeries freed of adhesive exhaust fumes and to window-shop hither and thither without missing a step. We could sit on clean benches among bright potted flowers and gaze at wandering tourists while a chai-wala does the rounds and the public address system offers up some Led Zeppelin. We could,over time,become part of the furniture and have commemorative plaques stuck on our foreheads. “Mr. X idles here every Saturday with three cream rolls and a grocery list”. Yes,this actually happens in Gangtok (except for the last two bits) And yes,it is very much a part of India.

There’s something very socially cohesive about a well-managed public promenade. It’s one of the rare places,apart from parks,where an absence of traffic negotiation opens up the time and interest to look around at folks of all sorts doing their own thing. Sitting down to dinner after a day of sightseeing,I overheard some other visitors from Pune — deduced by the fact that they spoke Marathi and that nobody knows of an MG Road in Mumbai — enviously comparing Gangtok’s promenade to the hectic thoroughfare we call Main Street. The contrasting images moved back with me across the breadth of the country.

Dear Lord,give us back our weekend walking plaza so that legions of tired friends and spouses may no longer collapse behind Dorabjee’s pastry counter when brought here by determined shoppers. No more letting them eat cake,why indeed,when the road itself shall provide incorporeal loaves and fishes for all.

While one can’t deny that retreating into a coffee shop has an I’m-so-dead-I-must-eat appeal of its own,perhaps it’s time we try our hand at the free pleasure of melting into a bench and commenting on other people as they walk by. Kidding. Only on the floating atoms of their conversations.

I know some individuals who’d make a career of it. It would be a grand bazaar of quips and wisecracks for the city’s Smart Alecs.

(The author is a chess grandmaster and former national champion).