Flyover feveru is backu.

2009 is when it's all going to happen. The BBMP, having partially completed the world's biggest roller coaster for everyday use on Sankey Road, has now decided to go super high tech. They're going to build a skyway on stilts from Minsk square all the way to Hebbal. They're also throwing in landscaping, a traveling circus, thirteen temple elephants and a high speed train that will reach you to the airport before you can say Hunsemavur Nanjundaswamy S.K.

This is just part of the grandiose master plan. People from Electronics City will now link up to the airport via a series of three skyways. At the end of the journey, they will have the option of purchasing pictures of their terror struck faces taken just as their cars begin to hurtle down the steepest ramp of the skyway.

People from Whitefield and Indiranagar need not worry either. A skyway will fly them over the old airport, past Domlur and into a large hole in the ground located near Johnson market. Illuminated signs bearing the inscription: "We suffered for 40 years, it's your turn now, gaaaahahaha", sponsored by the Yelahanka residents association, will be installed in the hole to make the descent more bearable.

A special corps of 83 traffic policemen specially selected on the basis of paunch size will be stationed throughout the length of the skyway to frantically motion the traffic along. Special parachutes will be provided to them to quickly exit the skyway in the event of a traffic jam.

National petroleum reserves are expected to hit zero 6 months after the inauguration of the airport. Bicycling on the skyways will therefore be actively encouraged. To provide further encouragement, speakers will be installed at regular intervals throughout the skyway, playing the song "Aye Gangu, ee biku kalisi kodu nangu*" on endless loop.

In anticipation of frequent power failures rendering the high speed train useless, passengers will be provided with a cone of kadle puri** each and marched to the airport in single file. Senior citizens however, will be suspended from the tracks and provided with a set of hand pedals to winch themselves slowly but safely to the airport. The IPL cheerleading squad will be recruited to recite "Dum lagake, aisa" to a pair of bullocks that will be airlifted onto the tracks to pull the train to safety.

It's all going to happen. By 2009.
So far, we've got this:

BBMP, we love you ma, ok? oaaaaakay.

*Dear Mr Gangadharaiah, would you be so kind as to educate me on the workings of this charming two-wheeled transportation device?

** Karnataka equivalent of bhel

Acknowledgements: Picture of the BDA Junction magic box received with thanks from the kind offices of Camera Karan.

28 day fever (Or five day fever, part fouru with pichars moru)

Read Parts 1, 2 and 3 here.

Day 28. I parked near the construction mela like I do almost every day and peered over the edge. In a heartening show of solidarity, college students were pitching in to complete what trained, paid masons were struggling to do. They had even set up a helpdesk to explain the convoluted traffic plan to the public. Some pro-active Bangaloreans at last! Such a relief from the usual jaded, moaning lot!

Manipuri artists were creating sun-patterned frescoes along the walls. Painters were giving a final coat to the concrete. The errant bulldozer was smoothening out slopes in a calm, lobotomized manner. The wronged crane was nowhere to be seen. A group of 60-something gentlemen were standing atop the underpass, fingers pointing in every direction, giving a hapless supervisor a piece of their collective intellect:

"Allappa, hing craas aag katsi yen sukha bantu?" (But young man, like this crooked you build means what comfort has come?)
"Ishtu chikka bridge mel yenaiya madthiya? Shuttle-badminton aadthiyenu?" (On such a small bridge what lord you will do? Shuttle badminton playinga?)
"Haiyyo, yen katsthaaro, bidthaaro. Thale iddru upyogsalla saar ivru. Eega idara mel bussu, gissu, maNNu masi, ella band sikakond bitre devre gathi ."(Haiyyo, what they will build, what they will leave. Head is there also means they will not use sar. Now bus, giss and several similar sundry objects will come and get stuck on top of this means god is only recourse.)
"This is vy country has gaan for daags sar. Aal these peepal musht be lined up and shaat I tell you. "

"Sir ond nimisha, bande" (Sir, one minute coming), said the long suffering supervisor, and vanished into the underpass with the old biddies harumphing after him.

I studied the student helpdesk's thermocol plan (slightly soggy after a cloudburst), and noticed that my dancing fountain idea to entertain gridlocked commuters on the U-turn atop the underpass, was not included. I advised the student body to undertake installation activites immediately. Grim studently silence ensued. Nevertheless, I managed to get a fair idea of what the traffic plan is going to be, and this, I think is it (fountain optional):

But sob!!! All the action will be be over in a couple of days and I will miss it sorely! What on earth will I do now, without squint eyed supervisors, mad machinery and genteel crowds to blog about? Sniff!

I will therefore leave you with an ode composed in memory of the birth of the Cauvery Junction Magic Box Underpass, before I go away and cry myself to sleep:

Under passu
You will help to crassu
The road without laassu.

Of your ingenious planu
I am a fanu
And so is my clanu.

So my magic baaxu,
Pull up your saacksu
Because you provide irrefutable proof that Benglur raacksu.

Fifteen day fever (or five day fever - part mooru, with picharsu)

The initial furore over the underpass has died down. The underpass now draws regulars, who visit it every day and check on its progress. The BMP commissioner, anxious to save his name and ancestral familial reputation, has camped permanently on the construction site and swears to leave only after it is complete.

A small representation of the genteel crowds of Malleswaram and Sadashivnagar greeted him yesterday to provide genteel words of encouragement. The commissioner smiled, pinched babies' cheeks where available and said: "With the support of people like you, I am not worried." The small representation returned home happy and reassured.

The delinquent bulldozer has been pressed back into service and now chomps up clods of earth in a quiet, compliant manner. The crane has accepted the bulldozer's apology for any harrassment caused and all is well in underpassland.

Except, with two days to go for the extended completion deadline, the magic box underpass looks like this.

But hey, whats the hurry. We don't have an elevated rail to catch, do we.

Five day fever.. continued

"They're doing it! They're really doing it!! Come NOW!!"
A ruptured tympanum prevented me from partaking of the rest of C's excitement on the phone. So without further ado, the Old Mutter and I headed off in the dead of night, to where all the action was.

Cauvery Circle: the site of the first ever instant underpass in India.

Yes, really. They're using Malaysian technology to assemble pre-cast blocks together quickly to create an underpass overnight.

The construction site was like a village fair. Nobody had seen anything like this before. The genteel crowds of Malleswaram and Sadashivnagar were peering cautiously over the debris, as bulldozers gouged out the underpass under their very eyes. It was actually happening.

"Cool huh?" I screamed across the void at C, whose entire extended family had turned up to watch the construction.

"Super cool boss!" the extended family shouted back in chorus, and ran away screaming, as a bulldozer suddenly came to life and chased them down the road.

"Ha ha", the Old Mutter and I laughed from our side. Our mirth was short lived, as we suddenly found ourself knee-deep in mud from a truck that had decided to unload where we stood.

"Hoon mathe"(then what), said a surly policeman watching the entire scene with the glazed look of one that has eaten mudde-saaru for dinner. "Theppakke maneyal bidkond Mukta nodak badlu, il band tarle madidre innen aguthe.Yaae HOG-ri aakade. Idhen nim thathan swoththaa?" (Serves you right for coming here and mucking around instead of watching Oprah. Aay GO that side I say. This is your grandfather's ancestral property or what.)

Suitably apologetic, we extricated ourselves and retreated to a corner. I rang C on his cell to find out if he was ok. "Yes!!!", he hollered into my surviving ear. The bulldozer had apparently lost interest in his family, after they had all clambered onto a large rain tree. It waved its claw creepily at them and went off in another direction, he said. The view from the tree was great, but cousin #12 needed to pee, he said.

I was okay too, I said. The Old Mutter was a little miffed about her mithai pink and fluorescent green polyester duppatta getting muddied, but would survive, I said.

Both of us stopped in mid paragraph however, when we noticed something very strange indeed.
The underpass seemed to be in the wrong place! Wasn't it supposed to cut across the main road, instead of plunging in and out of the side road??!!

"Oh No!!" we both screamed, scaring an accountant's family off a Tabebuia. "Stop this madness instantly!" we shouted, waving frantically at the man in charge: a hirsute, pot-bellied gent, clad rather fetchingly in a tattered blue lungi.

"I shall do no such thing", said the lungiman calmly.

"But the underpass is supposed to Pass Under the intersection, remember?" we gasped.

"There are water pipes are under the intersection. Your father will move them or what?"

"Bu...but how will it work then?" we blubbered.

"Wait a minute for five minute", he said, and pulled out a crumpled envelope from a region I'd rather not remember. "In this master plan document", he explained, "you will see how this underpass system will work." On the back of the crumpled envelope, next to a hastily scribbled mobile number and a grocery list, was indeed the master plan.

To avoid the waterpipes on the main road, the underpass would start and end on the side road.
Traffic from the side road towards the main road would now flow under the underpass, but re-emerge on the side road, crossing the intersection above ground.

"But how on earth is that going to help?" we asked.

"Ah", said Lungiman. And drew a little squiggle on the master plan.

All the traffic from the main road would be made to swerve into the side road, take a U-Turn above the underpass and swerve back into the main road.

The lungiman said he arrived at this gem of a design (surpassing even that of the Richmond Circle flyover), after reading a Tinkle comic containing a story of Mullah Nasruddin. In the story, the wise Mullah went searching for his lost ring under a streetlamp where the light was brighter, even though he had lost it elsewhere.

Sheer Genius.

BMP, we love you. No, really.

Epilogue: A day after this post was written, the ornery bulldozer ploughed into a water pipe that the BWSSB (Bangalore Water and Sewage Supply Board) claimed no knowledge of. The burst water pipe is going to be converted into a musical dancing fountain which will spray "Car car yel nodu car" at the gridlocked traffic in the U-turn. The bulldozer, suspended from duties after trying to eve-tease the crane-lift, is currently undergoing anger management and repression therapy at NIMHANS (National Institute for Mad Hatters, Axe-murderers, Non-cooperative-bulldozers and Stuff).

The BMP commissioner says sorry and has urged the genteel crowds of Malleswaram and Sadashivnagar to kindly adjust and oblige.

Five Day Fever

Bangalore will now have the world's first roller-coaster for everyday use. The Bengalooru Mahanagara Palike (BMP) is constructing a series of 5 hump-backed flyovers on Sankey Road, all in a span of 5 days. Ingenious Malaysian technology is being used, where interlocking concrete blocks will be assembled lego-style, to create a flyover system overnight. At the end of the 5 day period, Sankey Road will look like this:

The deadline for completion has come and gone though, and I don't see no humps on that road. Not even a speedbump. Since my faith in the BMP is strong and unshakeable, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the flyover was built well in time, but instantly ceased to exist due to one of the following reasons:

(1)The flyover system came to life, logged on to shaadi dot com in search of a life partner, and moved to Scotland.

(2) The Police commissioner felt that the flyovers would cause giddiness, and that anything involving light headedness beyond 11pm was illegal and had to be dismantled.

(3) A passing family of giants needed braces for their dentally challenged children.

(4) Smallsquirrel, self, and other respected Bangaloreans decided that the flyovers were actually donut halves and ate them for breakfast.

(5) The concrete lego blocks were smuggled off to suburban Bombay, where they now house a family of 8 each.

(6) Flyovers No.2 & 3 next to Opus sprouted legs and ran for cover on Karaoke night, and so the entire project had to be cancelled.
In light of the extenuating circumstances above, it is only fair that we forgive poor BMP for its inability to produce the said flyover system in the stipulated time.

We must therefore not lose hope in their ambitious 30km tunnel highway from Minsk square to Devanahalli, and can rest assured that it will indeed be complete by next year, as promised.

BMP, We love you. No, really.