Samikhsya Bureau
For whatever reason slowly the “Smart City” Bhubaneswar may turn out to be a city of bamboos. Bamboos, in fact, in many ways can be a cause of pain and inconvenience. Rallies or road-blocks or road shows or even road construction, bamboo has become an ubiquitous feature of the capital city Bhubaneswar.
Right from Master Canteen Square up to AG Square and on the right side from Rabindra Mandap right up ahead to the office of the Commissionerate of Police and beyond, the entire stretch remains sieged by bamboos crisscrossing the areas in different configurations. Neither such lacing by the bamboos produces any beauty nor really ensures any security. Rather one may meet a head on dash with the bamboos projecting almost half into the roads.
And the outcome is painful for people, either you are on a bike or four-wheeler, blockade is the only common remedy. Even, very shortly maybe, the name Assembly Road (from the assembly to Master Canteen) may go down to history as the road that remains blocked 365 days almost. That leaves the commuters to take to the meandering zig-zag diversions wherever one can discover a lee way and if it a busy hour then even God can not help one even to slither through any route and you remain practically bamboozled by the bamboos.
Perhaps, it would be wise to close that road permanently and declare it as ‘azad maidan’ or something like that where en number of bodies doing demonstrations for their cause round the year can continue their strikes.
Now, with the summer has its footfalls closer, imagine the blistering experience the people there and the commuters have to brave. What has further added to the woes is the most menacing traffic junction of the capital city i.e Khandagiri Square, a name that sends chill down any spine. One place that presents the monstrous tidal waves of traffic jams, unruliness and neglect despite the Khandagiri police station located bang on its nose.
No rule of traffic can rule here and the traffic personnel are anyone like many of us are mere onlookers, while a few of them (traffic cops) can be usually seen either lazily idling or a couple of them swooping on a helmet-less biker unmindful of the situation in the middle. No author can even describe in words what is Khandagiri Square’s dark underbelly.
Now the plight has already got a lease of few more years with the construction work of the flyover at Barmunda. It has to go on for a few years and a stage may come, like the one like Khandagiri ‘Mela’, when people may ride piggy back on human shoulders to cross the jam.
Whenever a VVIP comes, as they will now during the campaigns, there shall be bamboos from Barmunda ground right up to Tomando onwards to add to the commuters’ plight.
Once when this reporter sent a message to the top cop in Bhubaneswar drawing his attention to at least minimise the woes of people at Khandagiri Square, his reply was prompt: “Once the new flyover is complete we can manage things”!
