Hoardings, buses and an election

Despite my strong views against political hoardings and their disturbing diarrhoeal display, I saw one a month ago that left me smiling. Finally, the authorities seemed to have woken up to my neighbourhood and were connecting it with feeder bus route to Jogeshwari station. Of course, all this had happened, the poster proclaimed, in rather large font size, “thanks to the untiring efforts of the Shiv Sena” and went on to credit local MLA Ravindra Waikar and corporator Sumangal Koltharkar, who were together hogging more space on the flex hoarding than all the matter put together. Both of them seemed happier than me as they smiled down beatifically.

And sure enough on March 1, after a rather high-decibel cracker-cacophony-coconut routine, the bus route was launched. Since that photo-op, I haven’t met a single person who has taken the once-in-20-minutes bus. Yes, I haven’t surveyed all the 3,000 plus flats in the colony but it’s a bit weird that even the istriwallah and security guards still rely on the autorickshaw drivers who’ve elevated the sadism of refusing to ply to an art.

I asked an auto driver what he thought of the competition and he just shrugged and said with disdain, “This is only the beginning. Let elections get closer and we’ll see more of this tamasha.” As he spoke I drifted into a flashback about a spot on the east of the station four months ago. At two in the afternoon, in the blistering heat, songstress Usha Mangeshkar was belting out Mungda from six-foot-high speakers outside a puja pandal so loudly that one is sure Lord Satyanarayan himself must’ve fled from the noisy puja organised by the Autorickshaw Chalak Malak Sena’s local chapter!

An hour later, while returning from the bank, I saw a vermillion-marked leader in all-white addressing the crowd. Pointing to a BEST bus driver honking to clear the autorickhaw drivers gathered bang on the road, “Let them honk all they want. I assure you the buses will never be allowed to ply. This is our rozi-roti and we will not let BEST snatch it away.” His audience greeted this with loud cheers and lusty whistling.

So what had changed? Why is the Sena making these announcements at the fag end of the five-years it has enjoyed power? Is this being everything-to-everybody an indication of the desperation gripping the deflated saffron outfit as it stares at what could possibly be its toughest election, after uninterruptedly ruling the BMC for over decade and half?

The Sena party supremo in a marathon interview in Saamna said that he reads about civic complaints from readers in newspapers and immediately issues orders to his office bearers to see that these are addressed.

Balasaheb, can you ensure we don’t get only invisible buses to ply in our colony? Jai Maharashtra.