deepakchowdhary

In this booming economy, where we have suddenly seen a surge in the numbers of cars and vehicles on road I guess we have completely forgotten to give them a conducive infrastructure.

Ludhiana is a place which is hub of industries like hosiery, spare parts, job wok and manufacturing equipments. You can find Vardhman Spinning mills, Hero cycles, Nihar oils , Bonn bread factories and umpteen number of hosiery workshops. It is one of the biggest car resell market in north India. So in a nut shell money and affluence is the way of life in Ludhiana and Punjab Government is very proud of this city, which I am sure is a huge revenue earner for the state. Ludhiana has car showrooms at every 5 kms and you would find all the latest cars and SUVs on road. A city where there are 7 malls with state of the art shopping complexes and multi theatres are coming up. Though it still hasn’t got the status of metro Ludhiana has everything what a metro is supposed to have. Good houses, buzz among the city dwellers, latest display of wealth and yes power (bureaucratic). It has KFC and McDonalds which lately has become the havens of young couples. It comes pretty high on some survey done of household expenditure pattern, which is shown to me every time I shrug from giving the desired growth by the higher ups stating, “common Deepak you are in a high potential and growing market..!”

How I tackle these situations is something I would elaborate some other time. This blog is to bring forth one issue through an incidence which happened in the morning with me; the insouciance nature of Police and despicable state of roads.

This morning before I started my journey (I should say journey because it was full of adventure and experience and yes it took time..) somehow I felt that I have been living in this city for an year now and I haven’t actually taken a note that how many Kms is my office (precisely) from my home. So I set the indicator to zero and took out my car. I put on the music which is first thing after starting my car. Then comes the seat belt and then a small token of asking God to be with me. (Yes music first…). My office is just a 15 minutes drive from my home so I took my usual route to workplace. Cranberries didn’t even started saying,”Zombie Zombie…” when I got the first shock.. Ludhiana Police was standing on the way and instructed me that the route is blocked due to security reason so take some different way. My car was diverted towards a route where the whole city was converging. Being an industrial town you have laborers on cycles, auto (medieval times) crawling slower than cycles, mobikes swirling to glory, trucks and canters with overloaded stuff (who seem to somehow always tilt towards me when I am there) and Mercedes Benz. All fighting for the same space on something like a black strip of tar coal. Roads are full of blisters and I think they are strategically placed so that I can’t avoid them.

As soon I reached there like everyone there I went deaf, horns are out of fashion in Ludhiana and its not because something better has come its just that there utility was lost long before. After driving or managing through that battlefield I came to a diversion where one road lead to Jallandhar and one toward Delhi GT road (on which my office is situated). You guess it correctly, smart elegant and impressive cops were standing there “aapke seva mein” and I was asked to take that Jallandhar road as CM and other Politicians were about to cross near my office. I lost my cool and came out of the car and asked them that I have to go to Delhi, how can I take Jallandhar road. Not having a satisfactory answer he called up his senior and I am sure it was not because of my smart question but the jam behind me that made his senior came running. He tried to threaten, coax, cajole and reason me out but I was adamant that I am ready to wait here but would not take Jallandhar route.

So finally he budged and allowed me to take the correct way. So I reached office after 75 minutes and yes whole CD got replayed and Cranberries was at top of its voice saying,” Zombie Zombie….”….

“If you aren’t heard it means you weren’t good enough”