Thursday, July 11, 2013

Deep Potholes, Deeper Thought.........

(Bumping along, tilting, splashing mud, and rattling your bones, you often go into a rhythmic stupor as you travel on the Mumbai roads in the monsoon. If you are in a bus, you even pick up "break" dancing.  A sudden smooth patch, and sometimes those grey cells start whirring.....)

In a near perfect world, you think out of the box

In a perfectly imperfect world, with crumbling and fudged edges, you need to think out of the hole.

Like in Mumbai.  In the monsoons.

Reliable sources indicate that a high power municipal committee has been appointed to decide on the actual definition of "road"  in the 21st century. 

While several political leaders appear on the committee, it is reported that there is a suggestion that some heritage conservationists also be included, so that they may offer their expertise of concreteless, tarless roads, bumpy roads  that were traversed by great personages, sometimes in bullock carts  and horse carriages, in the history of the nation.

While the current computerized PMS, (or Pothole Management System) has enriched several folks with taxpayer financed fancy laptops,  the interface between  the system and the actual road surface  has malfunctioned.  While several 'contract' virus actions are suspected to be the cause, a high power technical committee has been constituted  to look into this.

Some city fathers have suggested naming of roads after powerful political types, as a solution, and naturally their own party leaders are the names of choice.  This would work well, as no one would dare tweet and say , "Desh ka Neta so-and-so is terrible and full of potholes" or "Avoid Padmabhushan so and so for a few days...".

The high power Municipal committee, hearafter referred to as HPMC, and completely unrelated to the Himachal Pradesh Market Committee,  has finally completed its deliberations,  and its recommendations are to be presented to the MCGM,MMRDA, and any likely Mumbai acronymed agencies who may be deemed to be interested.

Drastic changes in the environment require a drastic change in how we view things.

As per the committee, "road" will henceforth NOT refer to miles of smooth tarred or concreted surfaces.  By executive decree, "road" will be the name given to a collection of creative potholes connected by a few strips of concrete or tar here and there. 

In one felling swoop, the brilliant committee has solved the problem of roads, potholes, repairs and naming of all or one or more of the aforementioned.

From now on there will be no potholes. Nothing to repair in those pesky tarred strips braving it out smoothly , monsoon after monsoon. The entire PMS system is now obsolete, because there are no potholes to manage, and you cannot convert it to a  Tarred-strip Management System (TMS), as too much constant layering will insert a speed breaking perturbation into the whole system.

Bye-Bye Motors and Hanuman Motors dealers are rubbing their hands in glee envisioning a run on their shockabsorbers and suspensions, which were earlier reduced to being sold as buy-1-get-1-free .  Papollo Tyres have announced the plan to hire 200 new people as they forsee a great market .

A government spokesman, when  asked about this, mentioned that the government would now be following this Mumbai model all across the country.  A special agency called the   National Pothole Authority of India would be created by decree or ordinance, and its aim would be to create potholes all over the country, by using innovative and cheap road mixtures.When asked about how poor pedestrians, cyclists and other two wheeler types  would manage,  a senior minister of the government is supposed to have said that this entire project would  be  a game changer.

Stupid me.  I should have known.

Games and potholes.  And Fixing..... ?

What Fixing ?





 


2 comments:

  1. Potholes full of humour (though most of it is true) is just what I wanted to freshen up my afternoon. Thank you :)

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  2. Great post. I was laughing lol. But really it's a horrible situation in Mumbai.

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