Roads- The New Rendezvous Point

By Pankaj Khandelwal:

Have you ever asked your friends or relatives to meet at XYZ road or have people asked you to meet up at some nearby crossing? Have you been visiting some street or lane and spending lots of time with your friends, just loitering around and doing nothing? Is there a street in your locality or city famous as adda junction?

If the answer to anyone of the question is yes, then this article is for you. It won’t be wrong to assume that each and every Indian, sometime in his or her life must have asked someone to meet up at a particular street or road. Whether one is going to a coffee shop or planning to see a movie with friends, streets have unofficially become the rendezvous point for such gathering. Even with numerous malls and coffee shops spurting in every nook and corner of any city, people’s love for the ‘24×7 under construction’ footpaths and ‘food digesting’ potholes has not visibly diminished. One can assume it to be apocalypse, if they see a street or crossing without people waiting for someone or a group hanging around discussing about why India lost the last match or how economy of India can be revived.

But what we forget is the basic reason for the existence of these roads or streets. Roads are built to facilitate the ‘movement’ of vehicular and human traffic. As we Indians have a common trait of not following the rationale, sight of people doing chit-chat on streets is not something you will see once in a blue moon. After the encroachment of the ever shrinking footpaths by the hawkers and vendors, little space that is left for the people to walk is taken by these people, thus causing trouble to other people. Because of the streets serving as muster station, the chances of polluting them with plastics, food leftovers etc are quite evident. Moreover unnecessary gathering at streets and lanes can create a law and order problem. We should stop using this public property as an assembly point. The alternatives can be meeting up at some coffee shop, malls, parks etc. This is the least we can do to keep the streets clean and healthy, though achieving the standards similar to the streets of any developed country is out of question.