Whew! What happened? This Thursday (10th Sept.)
evening, going back from office, I was able to just zip through the roads in
the heart of South Delhi, to cover the 34 odd kms to my home in Gurgaon in just under an hour! Unprecedented!
Initially, I thought it was because I started a bit late. It was already 6.30 by the time I finished whatever it was that I was doing in office. Having resigned myself to the usual killing traffic which I was destined to encounter at that hour, I took my own time getting out. I even browsed through the company notice board while going out, something I hadn't done in months! I gently eased my car into the traffic from under the Modi Mill flyover and... whoa! what was this? An almost empty Kalkaji mandir flyover greeted me. Usually, I can see vehicles strung out jostling on that bridge, looking none less than the Queen's Necklace of Bombay.
So I thanked my stars at having found what I thought was a 'gap' in the traffic (from Noida, Faridabad,...) coming down the Modi Mill flyover, and reached the Nehru Place flyover in record time, all the time dreading the prospect of the usual jam at the next turn. The usually sparse traffic at N.P. bridge was no surprise,but... even near C.R. Park/Pamposh Enclave there was no traffice to speak of. Rounding the Greater Kailash flyover and on to the Chirag Delhi one, I felt blessed. This was the very spot, at the foot of the Chirag bridge, where a few meters of waterlogging the previous day and caused a traffic jam right back up to Nehru Place, causing me to cover the princely distance of 5 kms. from my office to Panchsheel in an hour.
Continuing past Panchsheel at the same pace, it all finally began to sink in. What could've happened (purely my reading) is that having burnt their fingers (and much else) the previous day in traffic, many (most?) Delhites on that route had chosen to make an 'early run' and cross much of the potentially 'dangerous' road space in good time. OR was it that the 3-hour long traffic jam on the same (and surrounding) roads of South Delhi the same morning had caused many to 'miss' their office (I know, for instance, that one of my friends heard about the jams from morning TV news and decided to give his office a miss - understandable, given that he hass to travel from Gurgoan to Noida every day, a distance of 45 kms.!)?
So that's the extent of road paranoia, if I may call it that, that pervades the heart of every Delhite (and NCR-ite!). We dread running into traffic, some of us take loooonnng detours just to avoid heavy traffic, we avoid going to places where we are not likely to find parking space (I've myself once long back gone from my home in GK-II to nearby Lajpat Nagar, taking 45 mins. to do that, then circled around the place a few time, not finding parking space, coming back home - and that was about 9 years back!), even changing our schedules (including birthday/anniversary celebrations!) to suit the traffic.
A large part of the reason for the traffic mess in which we find ourselves is all kinds of construction (Metro, flyovers, 'beautifications' - road medians dug up & the loose earth & to-be-installed light-poles dumped on the road alongside, a normal sight all over South Delhi) currently going on, some (e.g. the sewerage work from NH-8 all the way to Najafgarh) beautifully timed to coincide with the rains, thus ensuring that the dug up roads are not filled up and metalled again for months. That the bigger problem is the unsustainable rise in the city's vehicle population, some may say stoked by the vehicle financing boom over the last decade, is another story, fit for a different forum.
Next morning (i.e. Friday 11th, yeah, anniversary of the famour nine-eleven), I was rudely jolted out of my reverie by a (usual?) traffic jam near Kalkaji mandir, where it took me an hour and a quarter to cover the distance of the last 1 kilometre to my office (the same time it had taken me to cover the other 33!). Welcome to Delhi!
Initially, I thought it was because I started a bit late. It was already 6.30 by the time I finished whatever it was that I was doing in office. Having resigned myself to the usual killing traffic which I was destined to encounter at that hour, I took my own time getting out. I even browsed through the company notice board while going out, something I hadn't done in months! I gently eased my car into the traffic from under the Modi Mill flyover and... whoa! what was this? An almost empty Kalkaji mandir flyover greeted me. Usually, I can see vehicles strung out jostling on that bridge, looking none less than the Queen's Necklace of Bombay.
So I thanked my stars at having found what I thought was a 'gap' in the traffic (from Noida, Faridabad,...) coming down the Modi Mill flyover, and reached the Nehru Place flyover in record time, all the time dreading the prospect of the usual jam at the next turn. The usually sparse traffic at N.P. bridge was no surprise,but... even near C.R. Park/Pamposh Enclave there was no traffice to speak of. Rounding the Greater Kailash flyover and on to the Chirag Delhi one, I felt blessed. This was the very spot, at the foot of the Chirag bridge, where a few meters of waterlogging the previous day and caused a traffic jam right back up to Nehru Place, causing me to cover the princely distance of 5 kms. from my office to Panchsheel in an hour.
Continuing past Panchsheel at the same pace, it all finally began to sink in. What could've happened (purely my reading) is that having burnt their fingers (and much else) the previous day in traffic, many (most?) Delhites on that route had chosen to make an 'early run' and cross much of the potentially 'dangerous' road space in good time. OR was it that the 3-hour long traffic jam on the same (and surrounding) roads of South Delhi the same morning had caused many to 'miss' their office (I know, for instance, that one of my friends heard about the jams from morning TV news and decided to give his office a miss - understandable, given that he hass to travel from Gurgoan to Noida every day, a distance of 45 kms.!)?
So that's the extent of road paranoia, if I may call it that, that pervades the heart of every Delhite (and NCR-ite!). We dread running into traffic, some of us take loooonnng detours just to avoid heavy traffic, we avoid going to places where we are not likely to find parking space (I've myself once long back gone from my home in GK-II to nearby Lajpat Nagar, taking 45 mins. to do that, then circled around the place a few time, not finding parking space, coming back home - and that was about 9 years back!), even changing our schedules (including birthday/anniversary celebrations!) to suit the traffic.
A large part of the reason for the traffic mess in which we find ourselves is all kinds of construction (Metro, flyovers, 'beautifications' - road medians dug up & the loose earth & to-be-installed light-poles dumped on the road alongside, a normal sight all over South Delhi) currently going on, some (e.g. the sewerage work from NH-8 all the way to Najafgarh) beautifully timed to coincide with the rains, thus ensuring that the dug up roads are not filled up and metalled again for months. That the bigger problem is the unsustainable rise in the city's vehicle population, some may say stoked by the vehicle financing boom over the last decade, is another story, fit for a different forum.
Next morning (i.e. Friday 11th, yeah, anniversary of the famour nine-eleven), I was rudely jolted out of my reverie by a (usual?) traffic jam near Kalkaji mandir, where it took me an hour and a quarter to cover the distance of the last 1 kilometre to my office (the same time it had taken me to cover the other 33!). Welcome to Delhi!
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