Sailing in my paper boat

Mysore, 12.09.2010

We had just set out this evening in the car to do some shopping when the skies opened up and how. The vipers danced at top speed and the defoggers worked away with a marked urgency but it did precious little to improve the visibility on the road. The rain beat mercilessly on the windshield. Within minutes, gushes of water had sunk the asphalt by atleast half a foot.
Traffic was sparse with people cowering under trees and awnings seeking refuge from the whimsical wrath of the monsoon. A few valiant two wheelers still egged on, soaked to the skin but unwilling to surrender as yet.
The traffic lights looked rather bewildered and stranded, yet went about their duty.

Most shops on Dhanvantri road were in deep slumber, seemingly having taken the day off. A stray one here and there was half awake, reluctantly so, with the pouring showers outside only urging them further to call it a day.
The rain still pelting violently, it made no sense to get out of the car. So abandoning shopping, we drove on carefully. A Kannada song blaring on 93.5 was eventually drowned by the heavy drumming of raindrops outside. I turned left on Sayyaji road and drove on.
Water seemed to have conquered the land, forming rivulets, raging and streaming everywhere on the streets. Little waves leapt at the wheels of the car as if to devour them and fell aside in clapping splashes, sometimes getting squelched into fountains under the ruthless burlesque of buses and bigger vehicles.

I gawked for a moment as I crossed the Medical college circle. A few vehicles ahead appeared still, incapacitated of movement. I wondered if I should turn back but couldn't readily choose the option as a bus was tailing too close. Fortunately the traffic came alive again and dispersed itself very gradually.

I treaded cautiously hoping not to be accosted by hostile potholes or dismembered twigs and branches tumbling from above without notice. The needle on the speedometer almost smooched the 0 and flirted with the 10 for quite sometime before it could considerably sweep up the clock again.

A full twenty minutes later, the skies had relented. The clouds seemed content with the heavy venting and had retracted. Trees shook themselves dry, roofs emptied the water they held onto the hapless ground below and life slowly crawled back onto the streets.

Thankfully our drive home was void of adventures but I really wonder if the city is geared up enough to deal with unannounced onslaughts of monsoon. With two major roads, the one near railway station and a portion of KRS road (just after the erstwhile Gokul theatre) dug up interminably for engineering purposes that I fail to fathom, traffic has been inevitably diverted into the inroads of residential areas.
As a consequence of this continual and strained passage, nearly all other roads have been mangled with potholes, some the size of craters. Added to that, the random digging work to relay water pipes or whatever obscure reason, it has become extremely difficult to find a good stretch of road to drive on.
Even deeper within the city once where traffic used to manage itself flowing freely and smooth as butter,  signals and manned junctions have sprouted at incredulous places causing repeated deceleration. Exasperating!
In a quest for God and parking space on DD Urs road, you can safely put your money on the former.
The once tranquil KD road and its neighbourhood, more reknowned for roadside chaat in handcarts is now burgeoning with eateries, drawing teeming crowds and constricting the adjacent avenues with parked vehicles. Times surely are a changing!

Dussera is the one season where all administrative focus shifts to Mysore, roads are redone, the city is straightened out and made to wear a festive look. But this time, I wonder if we'll make the grade or the deadline. Too many unfinished projects, too many roads in a state of despair and God knows how many other apologetic statements of infrastructure one has yet to come across.

A lot of Mysoreans like me love this city for what it has been. The quiet green city with a regal charm, not far away from Bangalore. Our hometown. Our weekend retreat. Our home.
It is time to wake up. To give the place its due. To retain and to maintain it. It has had its share of urbanness. The pubs, the coffee joints, the bowling alleys and bustling restaurants. Let's not revamp it beyond recognition.

Let the Mysoreness be.