The Blah Blahs and the Yada Yadas

I’m not really a travel fanatic. I’ve had to travel a lot of places due to my work, yes; and I cant say I haven’t enjoyed some of those trips… But I feel more at home when… well, when I’m at home. But the point is… I HAVE traveled a bit, and it is with that air of authority with which I am declaring this – Cochin has the WORST roads of any city of India.

The roads were never the big attraction in Cochin… No tourist has ever said, “Wow. Leave the backwaters alone. Take a dig at this road!!”. But then again, I have to say there is enough evidence that someone has indeed been digging right in the middle of the road.

If last year, someone had told me that the roads were going to get worse, I’d have mocked him. “Get out of here”, I would have said, followed by some smart alec salutation, like ‘looney’, ‘idiot’, or ‘dumbass’… On retrospect, I’m glad this did not happen, cos by now, this someone would have come back to do the infamous “I told you so” dance, throwing in more choicy salutations to highlight the event.

It was definitely a challenging job… but my government did it!!! They’re not ones to back down from a challenge, oh, no… Not MY state… The roads are indeed worse. It is now a series of high plains and low plains… Pits deep enough to host a circus… I saw a Maruti esteem stuck in the middle of MG road, its front tire hopelessly wedged in a pothole. For all the non Cochinites who might have trouble visualizing such a pothole, imagine driving a monster truck through the Grand Canyon…

I feel sorry for the amusement parks, though. They’re probably losing business. Who’s gonna pay 25 bucks for a roller coaster ride when you can have the same thrill for a 2 rupee bus ride? The buses of my fair city are not concerned with roads. They go upwards of 90 kms per hour within city limits, road or no roads… As a result, the passengers keep bouncing up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down… you get the picture…

And my own home sweet home seems to be embedded right in the center of the whole mess. On the bright side, it’s now easier for me to give directions to my home … “Hey, it’s easy. Follow the ‘path of the bad roads‘. Keep taking the worst possible road that you find in front of you, and eventually, you’ll end up at my place.” Ya, most roads may lead to Rome, if the saying is right… but all the bad roads leads to MY home…

But call me optimistic… I can see good sides to almost anything. If these potholes go any deeper, we may hit water soon. Hundreds of wells all across the roadway, quenching the thirst of thousands… until eventually they catch something awful from all the polluted water.

But call me optimistic again… eventually… not soon, but eventually, one of the wells might hit oil and not water… and we could be self sufficient in all our petroleum needs… and rise to glory and prosperity… until of course, America hears about it in the CNN and nukes our country as part of their “War against terror”…

What do you know… I’m not that optimistic after all..