Rumblings Of A Rambler

Trust me, they all have conspired against me; the Bangalore municipal corporation, Bangalore water supply, and sewage board, PWD, the private network companies, traders, shop owners. Oh…I can go on! They are all hell-bent on making my life miserable by ensuring that I never walked freely and peacefully on the footpath which incidentally, belongs to us, the walkers!

The Bangalore municipal corporation (BMC) plays its part to perfection; the footpath stones are either broken with gaping holes or littered with all kinds of building material or the debris dug out of the drainage dumped unceremoniously! In fact, a cynical friend who is also a fellow walker once told me that BMC has a special wing whose job is to identify all good roads and then create a plan to dig them up! PWD, not to be left behind, wait for BMC to complete their work and once the footpath becomes normal, yes, you guessed it! They start digging!

Shop keepers play their part as well; boards kept by them along with their vehicles parked as haphazardly as possible to ensure that other than the path meant for going into their own shop, no other place is left for the poor people who prefer to use the god-given vehicle for commuting, their legs! People who spend lavishly in buying all fancied cars, poor fellows, don’t have any place to park them; so, the footpath becomes their official parking place and if anyone dares to walk on them, God save them.

It is almost criminal, nothing less, to walk on the footpaths in Bangalore. You are looked down upon and even sneered at by the persons who ride their bikes, scooters, and cars and consider the pedestrian as an unwanted hindrance in their path, literally! The shop keepers; be it grocery stores or two-wheeler repair shops or even large departmental stores, believe that it is their right to use the footpath for advertisement and place the large boards diagonally taking as much space as possible. Of course, they consider walkers as intruders to free trade.

I heave a sigh of relief, every time I reach home after walking on the treacherous footpath and thank heaven for sparing me from injuries. If this plight of a pedestrian seems a bit farfetched to anyone of you, please be good enough to take some time off in the evening or morning or afternoon and walk on footpath anywhere in the city,

I challenge you! If you are fortunate, you can walk, at the most for a maximum distance of about 100 meters at a stretch on the empty footpath before the exercise starts; you have to literally hop, skip and jump to find another 100 meters or so of a walkable stretch!

When I walk, some times in the morning hours to buy few things from the shops which are about a kilometer away on the main road, I see the plight of school children scampering from one side of the road to the other beating the traffic and struggling to reach their school; you see, we teach them very young how to keep away from the speeding vehicles!

The newly laid out streets – at taxpayers’ cost - in the heart of Bangalore is only for the consumption of the outsiders who might look at Bangalore as a model city. The harsh reality lies in the suburbs where the teaming millions, struggle for their survival.

I had dreamt of getting superpower to literally lift and throw the vehicles parked on the footpath and block the roads for hours, just to teach a lesson how difficult it is to navigate the treacherous roads. Alas, the criminal mentality is not inborn but acquired out of frustration of not being able to do anything to stop the menace.

I used my pen, as they say, it is mightier than the sword, by writing to all the newspapers about the plight of the pedestrians! Though it got published, I am sure, it would have been read by everyone except, powers that be! Should I stop walking? I questioned myself umpteen number of times.

Desperately searching for solutions, I even thought of speaking to my fellow walkers to come together and do something.

A wise old man who barely had few teeth left and a few grey strands of hair looked at me with pitiful eyes and spoke in a low voice.

“If this gives solace, I have been a walker all my life and now I am nearing eighty. I have the experience, believe me. Listen to this old fella, the best place to walk is never inside a city. Get out of this city and go to the countryside; at least, you wouldn’t have to worry about walking on the footpath. You see,” smiled the old guy, “in villages, we hardly have any roads, leave alone footpath!”

However, needless to say, I didn’t heed to his advice. So?

I paid the price! In fact, I had it coming! Who the hell told me to walk in a busy street while listening to music?

The bike rider came and hit me hard making me drop my bag; my mobile fell and broke; I fell down heavily and hurt my leg very badly.

The bike rider was not done with me! He had the choicest of the abuses to hurl towards me for not paying attention to the vehicle coming from behind me!

The place? Well, bang in front of Police Commissioner’s Office in Bangalore! My fault?

You see, I took it for granted that the footpath is meant for people who walk and the poor bike riders who can not manage the overwhelming vehicles plying on the road, are more qualified to use the footpath than me!

How stupid of me!