Our roads, our cows, and us.

The grandeur of the sight is compelling. An under-construction flyover – some three kilometres in length”overlooking a sea of human beings, cars, motorbikes, buses, mini trucks, scooters, cycle rickshaws, bicycles, carts, animals – all bravely navigating the crests and troughs of what can be termed as a ‘road’ if only one wants to be politically correct. Some would perhaps want to go a step further and call it a spatially and logistically challenged stretch.

Be that as it may, there is something approaching poignancy to the sight – people and animals bearing their plight with a fortitude that can only be achieved through baptism by the holy fire (the fire here is strictly metaphorical, in case one missed the point). The poignancy is made all the more touching because there is a dash of the incredulous and the ridiculous to that moment in time.

Such, and suchlike, were the thoughts that preyed on the mind as the vehicle I was travelling in traversed the very same stretch – on the Badarpur road in Delhi, to be precise. How I ever landed myself amid that sea, I could not fathom. Thoughts of repercussions from a possible record of bad karma in an earlier life disturbed my already shrinking mind. Were the others who had already crossed this stretch, are crossing at the same time as I am, or are doomed to cross sooner or later, thinking the same thoughts?

The questions were many. The answers, as is often the case in this somewhat unfair world, were outnumbered.

One prominent question that I must share: Why are we collectively resigned to our fate? Why don’t we channelize the rage that we all must have felt at some point in time, into affirmative action? Why don’t we ask questions and demand explanations?

Is it because we are a resigned lot that we get the treatment that we get? Or, is it that we do not have persistent questions? Our questions and concerns have become seasonal – they change with the issue in focus. The moment passes, and so does the spotlight, and with that, the fervour. Our memories are full and life is short and the pursuits are many many. We have learnt to move on quickly.

Perhaps, this is instinctive – this ‘moving on’. Human beings anywhere cannot be all that different from one another, at the instinct level. The layers above that level are brought on by any permutation of factors, be they cultural, regional, economical, religious, or mindset.

Roads and flyovers are built elsewhere, too. A flyover will always overlook a road. Period. The question I ask is: Do they become dysfunctional together, at the same time? Do the powers that be become so unthinking/ruthless/unmerciful/vain that they no longer know the difference between a human being and, say, a cow?

The human being, to the extent that he or she can, always prefers a vehicle for transportation. The cow, on the other hand, is totally and fiercely independent. The cow does not care if the road that the cow walks on is paved or unpaved, smooth or bumpy, logical or mystifying.

But we do. I do.