Column

Who doesn’t like a free ride? So I was one of those who contributed to the snarling traffic on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link last week. Of course, we’re proud that this 5.6 km long bridge is the first of its kind in India and cost Rs 1,634 crore and 20,00,000 bags of cement to build! But my problem is not the Sea Link. It’s the roads that link us to this engineering marvel! Beginning from the lane right outside my building, which after a week of intermittent rains, looks like it has been hit by an asteroid shower. The Sea Link might be a landmark but the rest of Mumbai’s roads are pockmarked.

While we’ve to pay a toll of Rs 50 to use the Sea Link, the rest of the roads in Mumbai also take a toll – physical and mental – on its tax-paying denizens, who commute every day praying they don’t end up in a hospital with a slipped disc or in a garage with a battered car. I don’t mind paying for using the Sea Link as long as the government is ready to pay me for using the rest of Mumbai’s roads. How about a tax exemption for those driving down SV Road, Linking Road or Andheri-Kurla Road during peak hours – braving signal failures, traffic jams and bad roads!

The Sea Link means different things to different people. For us, it’s a faster route from Bandra to Worli. For some self-appointed guardians of the city, it’s a faster route to political mileage. So in the coming months we’ll see a ridiculous battle over the name of the Sea Link. These are people who haven’t read Shakespeare, who’d asked: “What’s in a name? A Sea Link by any other name would still be a bridge between Bandra and Worli!”

Though it took us ten years to get this Sea Link, that’s still faster than the Liberhan Commission which submitted its report last week on the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition – 17 years later! In the distant future, Mumbai will have monorails and a metro! But will we get to see Mumbai turning into at least a shabby version of Shanghai before we actually punish one captured terrorist instead of letting him die of old age while still on trial?

Of course, we’re in no hurry! Ancient Egyptians lived an average of 35 years, yet constructed pyramids, each of which took at least 20 years!