Hole in one

I bounced to work this morning, as I do six days every week. But over the past few months there has been a discernible difference in the bounce factor – the reason for its existence, more relevantly. I am not bouncing because I am happy and eager to get to work. It is not an attitude thing. It is literal. I am tossed around the back seat of my little car, my driver in the front alternatively apologising and cursing as our wheels dipped low on one side and then swung up on the other. There are patches of straight, when we breathe easy, soothe our bruised bottoms against soft upholstery and press down the occasional bubble of biliousness that the bumps bring on. It is the story all over Mumbai city, even more so outside it, we read. The main lead: the pothole.

A recent news report tells us that the Mumbai High Court had mandated that all potholes on the city’s roads be filled by August 30 by the authorities in charge. But it is not as easy as all that. Many of the craters are dug out by a combination of factors, from the gouging rain pounding down on the geriatric, over-travelled surface to the roughly finished and excessively overloaded retreads on trucks driven by maniacs, to the traverse of cow-carts and handcarts, auto-rickshaws, speeding state buses and bicycles, pedestrians and private cars alike. These holes are roughly patched with gravel mixed with old oil from tired automobile engines, my driver tells an astonished me, which obviously does not last through even the briefest burst of strong monsoon downpour. What needs to be done, he says with native knowledge, is for a proper tar surface to be created, by people who know how, and allowed to set for the requisite time. Which is never possible, not in this city, especially since roads stretch north-south across the long island.

So how does one avoid a pothole? Dodge? In the rush hour that seems to be a permanent feature of the metropolis’ roads, that is impossible to do without endangering life and limb of car and passenger alike. Hold your breath and slide in and out v-e-r-y slowly to minimise impact and its consequent damage? Nope, not at the speed the traffic flow demands. Go gung-ho for the crater and hope for the best? Well…that seems to be the only way to go, only lay in the supplies of painkiller and ice-packs to alleviate the ouches. Actually, a judicious combination of the three could do the trick, especially if you are not too old or too stiff and don’t mind a dent or two in your car and your cranium. Meanwhile, I have to admit that you do get used to being tossed like a salad of shaken like a slush after the first few trips, and almost miss it when you are driving on a smooth patch.

The other day someone was complaining about the potholing expedition she went on during a shopping trip to the western suburbs. “I went up and down and in and out and it was so bad that by the end of it I had a severe headache and the mugs that I had bought were shattered!” she wailed. My strongest grouch has been at my poor driver, who never fails to go into a prolonged bout of the giggles when I demand to know why he wanted to make a milkshake of me even before I was properly awake in the mornings. By evening, my mind has switched off any voice that could protest, since any grey cell has been bumped around to the point of exhaustion and nothing registers any more. I sleep, perchance to dream of a ride without waves of the concrete kind!