There was a road
There was a road. Right here.
I know there was a road, because I drove through it this morning. As I’ve driven through for a minimum of 5 days a week, every week week after week for 104 weeks in the last two years.
So you need to take this as fact. Beyond reasonable doubt. There was a road. I wouldn’t turn into one if it wasn’t there in the first place now, would I?
So there, we’ve established the baseline here. There was a road. And now there isn’t.
Sure, the city has bad traffic. You might think it’s just part of growing problems. Because the city grew up too fast, see? And it’s been raining pretty bad the past few days.
You’re probably thinking there’s a couple of pot holes, and the drivers have to beeline to the right extreme to carefully avoid the bottomless abyss. Fancy Mr. HighwayPants, you!
Not quite. There are vehicles. Everywhere. And there are no roads. I need you to take a moment to appreciate the gravity of the situation here.
Roads with no vehicles are the absolute bliss to the rider. You can zip, zoom and throttle as you imagine yourself hitting the racetrack at a glorius 80km/hr.
That would be my usual. Down the road (the one that isn’t), straight ahead, and a pivotal right at the traffic light by the lake. Of course, experience has taught me to exercise caution at this stretch. I’d have to watch out for Schrödinger’s Breaker, the unmarked magical speed breaker that definitely exists, but can only be known when you’ve already managed to break the underbelly of your chassis against it.
Then I’d zip ahead for a magical 3 centimeters before I hit the next topological shift — No roads and no vehicles. That’s off-road territory, sure. But there’s no people, so even if you do hit a strategically placed rock, you can wobble uncomfortably and continue on your way knowing that nobody is even watching.
My friend Badri once took me on a ride to a tiny little hillock a stone’s throw from the city. I guess my night-long whining at the lack of excitement on the ride really got to him, because the next morning he guided me along the leeward side of the boulder. So there I was, hung over and navigating a 300kg hunk of metal without the basic concept of ground clearance through pathways that mountain goats generally avoided for being too steep.
I saw Badri turn around a corner and disappear on his pogo stick disguised as a motorcycle. I next saw him three hours later, sipping a cup of tea as I knelt down to finally kiss the tarmac covered road as various bodily fluids crawled back out the input end of my esophagus.
But I’ve been practicing my off road skills since then though, thanks to the genius of a road worker who skipped an entire civil engineering text book and decided to fill the stretch with gravel. Polished extra sharp gravel, to make sure that if you do fall you don’t get a scrape — you get an amputation.
That, and the wrinkly thing right before I turn into my apartment that was supposed to be a speed check, but ended up as a bucket of tar that was hastily poured over and allowed to set in whatever angles it chose… The locals call it the “Grandma’s Wrinkled Cheek”.
But that’s still okay.
The worst case of traffic, you might think, is a road chock full of vehicles. Sure, that’s boring. That’s just your regular lane after lane of slow moving traffic. But vehicles without roads? What’s this blasphemy?!
Alright, I’ve been here for 45 minutes. Not moving. My wheels have fused with the ground beneath. I think about the unfortunate archeologist thousands of years from now who will unearth the the fossilized remains of a biped majestically cased in a metal box, wondering what this great sample of a long-forgotten species was upto. I want to tell him that in my last few moments I was just hoping the terrible RJ at the radio station would have a nervous breakdown and quit her job, and they end up playing some moderately acceptable music on the loop instead.
I’ve started to develop distinct bonds with my fellow road buddies.The Schumacher kid next to me seems upset. Any other day and he’d be navigating bumps, pot holes and other drivers with the gracefulness of a drunk octopus. But today, he’s been boxed in against his will. He still keeps his navigation skills sharp by avoiding the pan spit out from the Tata Indica up front.
There’s a racket from among the 18 generations of family members in the hatchback to my right. They’ve been shuffling tamarind rice and glute muscles between seats for the past twelve minutes. Though what do I know. It might just as well be Bisibele-bath…
The city administrators seem to have this strange convention of naming roads based on the width they wanted to build them at. Not how wide it is, or even how wide it could theoretically be. Just how wide they’d have liked it to be. There is no single part of this road that could have been 80 feet wide. At any place, at any point, in any timeline. It can just about accommodate one mid-sized car, one auto filled to slightly above-average capacity, and one motorcycle with 6 passengers side by side. Of course, you might be able to squeeze an airplane or two if they’d move the tea shops, hawkers and unused sewage pipes off the road. But why would you even consider doing that?
There seems to be a sudden jolt of movement. A motorist up front has decided to give up his earthly existence, and the cab behind has moved forward to occupy that two square inches of space he’s cleared out.
But every inch of movement is a moment of great jubilation to the masses on the road. We show our collective happiness by joyfully punching our horns. Because the other guy in front was considering just staying on the road forever — and we absolutely need to honk so he understands we come with a different end goal. It doesn’t seem to work, though.
There’s just a little stretch forward and then I’d get to freedom. I’d still be stuck in traffic, but that’ll probably be a different set of people. I’m really social like that.
I’ve turned into a road that’s totally 5 inches across. For a fair point of reference, my phone is 5.4 inches diagonally. I’m driving through a road that can’t hold my phone placed diagonally. It’s a shitty Motorola though so I silently squeeze through, holding my breath and tucking my tummy in so an auto might pass through the other side.
That’s right. There’s an other side. The 5 inch road has two-way traffic. One way of which is dug up and unusable. And the other is the local parking lot.
There is no road. There is two way traffic, 5 inches of total available space. And there is no road.
And there’s Rakesh’s lover. He is perpendicular to the road that isn’t. He might have been trying to turn his cab around. He might have confused himself with an earthworm. I don’t really know.
I just know that he’s currently in front of me, perpendicular to the road. And he loves Rakesh. Because the sticker on the back of his cab says “I love Rakesh”.
The lover wants me to move back so he can complete his well thought out manoeuvre. I roll back 15 paces from my initial position of 4 paces. My travelling distance at this point is 11 paces on the negative — not looking very good.
I’ve been here for three hours now. I’m eleven paces behind. Rakesh seems to have moved on, but I’ll probably be here for a while. Right here. Where a road was, once. Now, it’s just me.
If you loved this post, please get professional help. If you just about liked it, continue binging on my other stories:
You might also enjoy the series on my Four-year Transforms here:
