Monday, July 15, 2013

Travel and Tortures

Well, Mrs. Vivek it is, from here on!
 I finally managed to find a Mr.Divya who patiently listens to whatever I blabber.

Post marriage, I have become one among the many thousand victims of everyday public travel in Chennai.
I travel by shared auto till Pallavaram station, a train from there till Guindy, a shared auto till Madya Kailash and again a shared auto till Taramani where I work.Few of the everyday travels are enjoyable, most of them are nail biting experiences and some of them even go to an extent where I feel like biting the auto drivers, instead of my nail!

1.Train, Train go away
One good thing about the Guindy train service is that the trains are frequent, so you dont have to worry much if you miss a train. The trains are way too crowded in the mornings, so I get myself a first class pass and manage with a lesser crowd.

2.Jam outside, Jam inside
As beautiful as it is, the city also hosts many narrow roads. Every person who goes to work in the morning, has to honk his way through miles of traffic.Everyday, I witness hundreds of vehicles, all trapped in a traffic jam. The sad part is, I witness all these sitting in a shared auto, that is jammed with too many people.
The auto drivers do not start the vehicle till their auto is overflowing with men and women.One good thing is, I am now able to sit in anybody's chair/sofa/car seat by using up as little space as possible :)

3.Shake me baby autos
Yes, you read the heading right. That is the name I have given to shared autos that follow only one rule on earth - gravitation. The drivers dont pay heed to any of the traffic rules, and they drive at unimaginable speeds. The auto then lands on a pit or a speed breaker, it hangs in the air for a few microseconds, and before you know it, it is back on the road, again at high speed. All this happens while an elderly lady passenger is having her breakfast/ when a school kid is tying up his shoe lace.The lady misses a day's meal and the boy is sure to have hurt some part of his body.

It is probably high time that the services of buses and trains in Chennai were increased. If people can rely on public transport, the number of cars and bikes will reduce gradually. That in turn, will reduce all that traffic and pollution. All we need is more buses, more trains and less crowd per bus/train.



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