ChowkNews- Vidyavihar, mumbai

Today is Dahi handi ( the birth of lord krishna) , more specifically janamashtami.

krishna is the most popular of the hindu gods and there are many tales in hinduism revolving around him as the central charachter. the celebrations today are for the childhood pranks played by krishna on the villagers of gokul, ( cow village).

the  primary profession of the villagers was to rear cows and milk them.while the men folk were out in the fields the ladies used to churn the curd to make buttermilk and butter as a by product. krishna loved the butter and would go to great lengths to get his hands on the butter. apparently the pot containing the butter was kept tied to the ceiling and was hanging in mid air. krishna’s age was not much at the time and obviously he was short in height so he used to get his friends to give him a lift so that he could reach the pot of butter. they then shared the butter and enjoyed themselves, though in modern times this may be regarded as stealing at that time the children were all regarded as mischeivous and it was also a time of plenty thus no one minded the pranks of the children.

in fact it was due to these  pranks that he endeared himself to all the villagers of gokul. The fact is that we love our naughty children but not naughty adults….
any way krishna then gradually matured and uttered the holiest of the hindu  tenets, the bhagwad geeta.

if one reads the bhagwad geeta then one needs to look no further as it explains the philosophy of life in extremely simple terms. no matter which god you pray to , you will still find the relevance of the words that have been said by krishna.

the vaishnavas are a people in india who worship krishna and celebrate the joy of living with krishna in their hearts minds and homes 365 days in the year. there are many subdivisions and paths in hinduism  but they all lead to one supreme being.

the most popular song on janamashtami is

“Haathi  ghoda paalki .Jai kanaiya lalki ” this symbolises the advent of the lord in a convoy of elephants and palanquins and praise of the lord.

I ride by bike every day and the potholes on the roads have become almost like my best friends.. they meet me and shake my hand ( and me ) every day they are always in the same place and you can depend on them to reappear almost as soon as the bmc fills them up.

it not that i hate the bmc for not filling them up , but i do feel annoyed when i see the firte raasta durusti  vahan ( moving road repair services) fill up the potholes with loose gravel.

the pothole shakes of the gravel just like a mongrel who has just had a dip in a pond shakes of the water. The  loose gravel is even more dangerous to us bikers since it tends to make the bike slip, i have had more than a few close calls on the gravel. at least with the pothole you know that you are on firm ground inside it. the other day i saw an unbelievable exercise in road repair, some guys were digging the dirt from the fence where they have the mud for planting trees on the dividers and actually laying it on the road !!!

so much for infrastructure and common sense.

As i said earlier its always the  same bit of road that keeps getting the potholes as if they have a contract. cement roads that are lined with asphalt roads are even more dangerous when the border of the cement road is just a bit elevated from the asphalt road. i have taken nasty falls on such an arrangement more than once the latest being at the junction of mankhurd ghatkopar link road at the juction of eastern express. here they have used paver blocks ad the road looks like an ocean wave that abruptly ends at the concrete section a good 1 inch below the level of the concrete road. also the lighting on the road is pathetic, it seems that only those using the flyover need to see the road.

Another stretch of road that is competing for the worst stretch is a 50 meter path from eastern express highway  to garodia nagar its more like a garbage dump improvised to become a road. At first i thought it was an illegal road but the RTO has put a no entry on one side making it official.

i heard that automobile companies spend millions developing tracks to test their vehicles, i bet they would get more than they bargained for if they used mumbai’s roads for testing their vehicles.

on a constructive note i feel the bmc should have an sms number and a road number assigned to every stretch of road so that motorist could sms the road number to the central help line where they will be able to use the data to find out whats happening on the roads.