The nicest thing about Bangalore’s roads is that they are (were?) tree-lined. Every out-of-station visitor to our home has said this to us. My daughter’s seasonal observation when she was 3 years old (and when she could only see the treetops from our car window) was testimony to the fact. Come the violet flowers of the Jacaranda tree and she knew that we had reached the main road from our locality in ST Bed Layout, Koramangala; the Gulmohar tree with its beautiful red flowers signaled that we were right across the Barista on the 80 feet Road and the yellow flowers of the Tabebuia suggested we were just going to turn into school – measuring the distance through trees.

She is three years older now, and still knows when we are reaching home. The jerking car, the choking dust and traffic jams have become the indicators, rather than the flower-laden trees. The roads that lead to our house are just mud tracks with large holes holding them together. Heavy rains before Diwali had turned what is left of these tracks into a nightmare.

The slush ensured that one can’t walk to the main road; try driving through it and you could even be involuntarily turned in the opposite direction from where you wanted to go. We were glad when the sun shone and the slush hardened into mounds. At least now we could go up and down those.

ST Bed layout

Getting in and out of our locality has become so unbearable that we have innovative ways to get our chores done. Well, not that innovative. Just ask for everything to be home delivered!

I am willing to lend my voice with fellow sufferers and wake up the authorities. But, everywhere I look I see people with the same fatalistic ‘Wha-is-the-point-nothing-can-be-changed’ look. What is it about most of us that we just feel completely apathetic to these civic issues that make daily life so troublesome?

Now I am at the point of begging the authorities – don’t give us a tarred road – just give us a navigable mud track – even that would do. ⊕