Welcome to Kochi: The New Sodom !

In these times of Anna Hazare pulling a 'fast' one on the Union Government, I believe a lot of local and perhaps quite important issues are getting marginalized or trivialized. Well, if Anna has managed to obscure Team India's abject surrender in England, anything can happen. After all this happens only in India.

Again almost ad nauseum; I am talking about the roads or rather the lack of them in God's own Country that is Kerala. My own poor little Kochi is struggling to cope with multiple problems. The influx of Bangladeshis masquerading as people from West Bengal is the worst threat to this coastal town. We never know who is an Indian today. The migrant labor might be cheap today, but it might cost us dear in future. I shouldn't considered xenophobic or a Bal Thakre clone; that I am not. I have reasons to believe in what I have stated here. I just hope I am proved wrong.

The other problems is the burgeoning middle class on a rat race that can be called 'Car Wars'. Anyone owning a small car or just one car is a small fry here. Most middle class families own two or even three cars today. Everyone is on a car these days, I repeat everyone. So where do we park all these cars ? I believe we might have to push the backwaters backwards to form a reclaimed parking lot for the Kochi middle class.

Two-wheelers are the new 'Plague'. They are here, there and everywhere. I am scared to stand with my legs apart for a short period anywhere in Kochi. There are fat chances that some smart Alec might park his bike between my legs and leave before I realize. All those who are not on cars are on two-wheelers. The worst thing about these bikes is they cover 200km with one tea-spoon-full of petrol. They come in easy installments and every youth must have them.

These bikes take away young lives thanks to accidents. But they also kill insidiously. Most of our youth hardly walks except to go to the toilet. They step out of house, hop onto the bike and go to office or any place they want to. They park their mean-machines at the nearest possible spot and finish work and are back on bike and then back home. They practically live on bikes. Thus a big section of the youth hardly has any exercise and develop obesity, Hypertension, Diabetes and Heart Diseases at very young age. We might soon become the nation with largest number of bikes and even larger number of young heart patients.

All these and many other problems we face are not unique to Kochi. They are common for every developing place. Bad roads, infrastructural malformations, drinking water, electricity and so on. But what is unique to Kochi is there never was an honest attempt on part of the rulers to even make a cursory attempt to solve the eternal problems with the roads.

The rulers change. But the rules, the policies, the contractors, the workers and the roads never change. I don't remember a single road constructed by the Kochi Corporation lasting one monsoon. No soon the monsoon announces the arrival, the roads begin to break. By August, we have a few roads in a town filled with potholes. A sham of filling these potholes with gravel is conducted every three months till April. Then the potholes are filled with a lot of crushed stones, gravel and exactly 2mm layer of tar in the month of May. The Monsoon is a lot more sincere and arrives mostly in time by end May !

Today, Saturday 27 August 2011 we are in a piquant situation. The roads are completely ragged. The much talked about Thammanam - Pullepady road widening and total revamp of Kochi roads was never taken up. But the Metro Rail is being taken up in a big way. Demolition of the North Railway Over-bridge is taken with utmost zeal by the local government.

So what do we have ? For a 'Castle in the Air' that is Metro Rail, we have a town being devastated. The already congested traffic is going to be redirected through the doomed Thammanam - Pullepady road and many other such under-privileged roads. These roads are already in bad shape and bursting at the seams. The added traffic is going to totally demolish Kochi.

The Traffic Police don't help at all. In fact they make things worse. There are no right turns or 'U' turns in most places in the city. No 'U' turns for long stretches on the highway. At the most strategically placed Kathrikkadavu junction, you can't even go straight. We are sent into a quagmire through the under-bridge and then almost half a kilometer distant 'U' turn that is unmanned and becomes a flash point for outraged drivers to vent their fury on one another. What do these 'patently stupid' measures do ? More and more vehicles are on the roads for longer periods to cover same distance and that means the traffic turns further congested.

So what are we witnessing ? This might sound a tad crude simile, but this is unfortunately true. This is quite like sodomizing an anus already ravaged by piles, fistula and fissures. Our rulers are perpetrating sodomy on my beloved Kochi.

Henceforth the catch phrase for Kerala tourism can go thus, "Welcome to Kochi, the New Sodom"


Dr. Punned-it

Woh Saath Din: The Evolution of a Pothole !

Disclaimer: Woh Saath Din [Those 7 Days] was a hit Hindi movie of the 80s. That was a remake of a Tamil movie "Anda Ezhu Naatkal". This post has nothing to do with the movies except for the title.

No sooner than the Monsoon graced the backwater city of in Kerala, we are back to square none. The ill-fated Thammanam - Pullepady road was repaired in the second week of May. In fact, the road was in tatters while the IPL jamboree was going on in Kochi. In less than a month, the road is rushing back to it's own.

Flying through this road for just about two weeks, I went on a holiday and came back on June 1. Here is the progress of a 'Pothole'. This is just one of the hundreds and thousands of them erupting on this road every day. In fact, every moment. So here we go...

1 June 2011

This is how a small hole with a smaller satellite body appeared on June 1, the day I returned to Kochi after a holiday. The birth place is near the small bridge which has a twin-bridge constructed recently.

2 June 2011

This is how the twin potholes had progressed in just about 24 hours. That is some rapid progress.

3 June 2011

Just look at the degeneration around the twin potholes and appearance of a second satellite on the left hand side.

4 June 2011

This snap was taken from a side angle on 4 June. We can see the twin holes have merged into a larger Amoeba shape with the newer satellite enlarging rapidly.

5 June 2011

This is on 5 June 2011. The extended family is merging and expanding. It is a much bigger hole now, though still not deep enough to fell the two-wheeler who is more interested in what I was doing than in what is in front of him !

6 June 2011

Look at the extension of the Pothole family across the breadth of the road. This is such a rapid progress. This is now ready to act as a speed-breaker for all vehicles wading through the road at extreme speeds of 6.5 km per hour.

7 June 2011

The funny thing is the initial potholes to the left-hand side look small compared to the bigger and deeper one in the middle. Just one week of average Monsoon has exposed the quality of work our Contractors are providing us.

3 weeks from here, the whole road will be infested by nothing less than a million potholes punctuated by islands of remnants of the excess tar accidentally left behind by the workers.

A change of guard in the Kochi Corporation was welcomed by me and people like me with a sigh of relief. The present dispensation has proved that there is no reason for us to sigh any more.

The ruling parties will  change. The rulers will change. The ideologies will change. But the Contractors will not, the workers will not and the roads too will not change. The nexus will always prove to be in excess for the common man.

We the people of Kochi are doomed to live with these Potholes forever. So better learn to 'Live, Love and Laugh'. Nothing ever will improve in God's Own Country. NOTHING !



Dr. Pundit