I feel helpless every evening. Read on if you are interested to know why.
Every evening, after leaving office, after an honest day's work, my only wish, like any good husband and father, is to reach home as soon as I can, and be with my family. And my immediate aim after alighting from the office bus is to catch my beloved 5:59 p.m. Titwala local train. Well, I am able to catch it on some lucky days and on most of the days I am unable and feel helpless. The reason behind my helplessness are the numerous hawkers who now occupy almost all the available space in the CST subway, which I must pass in order to catch my beloved local train. Take today, it was 5:55 p.m. when the office bus reached, I alighted the steps to the subway and found, as usual, there were just numerous people and some of them were curiously standing in the middle and on the sides of the subway and if you are regular user of the subway, then you know these are the illegal hawkers, occupying precious spaces meant for ordinary walkers like me. These hawkers hamper the smooth movement of commuters. Sigh, as on most of the days, I reached the platform half a minute late and saw my beloved train leaving the platform. Exasperation, wrath and indignation were the emotions which filled my mind, which is subsequently filled in by the feeling of helplessness. And the next train to my destination is in 20 minutes. More feeling of helplessness.
The subway was constructed with a twin aim : to smooth the traffic on the busy CST junction and to enable faster and efficient conveyance of thousands of commuters who must use it to catch train of their destination. While the traffic on the road above subway seems to be smooth, people like me just feel helplessness as it take more and more time every day to cross the subway. Will the higher authorities, Municipal corporation of Mumbai city and the Central Railway take the steps to remove the unauthorized hawkers and enable people like me to catch our favourite trains. Hope they will do. But hope has no relation to reason. Feeling helpless again.
1 comment:
haven't encountered this myself on the subway. but your comments apply equally well to the cluttered roads in the city where cars straddle lanes. lanes are painted to streamline traffic, as everywhere else, and not as worthless decoration of the road. wonder when RTO will introduce a road test worth its name, so that one does not miss appointments due to irresponsible driving by the ignoramus.
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