Bangalore traffic: Rants from a frustrated commuter

Speed breakers are the trademark or signature dish of Namma Bengaluru. You will find humps of all mathematical and geological varieties in the city.

BHPian venkyhere recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Rants of a car commuter in Bangalore:

As a gentleman, you maintain distance from the rear of the vehicle ahead, not for paying obeisance to the motor vehicle act but to use him as a pothole-alert decoy. But the uber-cab / auto beside you thinks "who is this moron" and squeezes in front of you. And as you gently press your brakes to restore your vision of the tyres of your brand new decoy, BHAAAMM... your suspension just exploded with expletives that trace back through several generations of your lineage. You are filled with pity for your struts and strut mounts, but rage for the moron who did this to you. You pass on the lineage questioning expletives via brain telemetry to the guy who just did the equivalent of the middle-finger salute that Venkatesh Prasad gave Aamir Sohail.

Speaking of middle fingers, the road infrastructure of Bangalore is, in summary, BBMP showing the middle finger to you - yes, we will take the highest registration tax in the country, and give you a multi-course cuisine in return. What..what? , you may ask.

This:

• Pothole type A - torrential (strike that) 30 minutes of rain-induced multilayer-concentric-rings-birthday cake pothole: looks like the drone shot of an iron-ore mine.
• Pothole type B - sinkhole style base-erosion driven geological anomaly. Underneath the tar, the road contractor put biscuit wrappers instead of crushed stones. Poor chap must have been left with a meagre 1 trillion dollars, after picking up a contract worth 20 trillion, because the bribe-network payoffs ate away 19 of those, for a 5km road laying contract.
• Pothole type C - unfinished business. Cauvery water pipe laying, airtel fibre-optic cable laying, Natural gas pipe laying, I-like-digging-so-im-laying-some-leftover-PVC-pipes-from-the-next-hardware-store pipe laying; all artfully done. 4-5 layers of surface excavated, and 1 layer of mud added after the pipes are in. Job done - a giant portal to "paatal lok". If you notice carefully, the depression is not exactly longitudinal or transverse to the direction of travel of vehicles. If longitudinal, the size of the depression is widest, where the road is naturally narrowest. If transverse, it's always diagonal, to ensure each wheel feels an independent jolt, instead of having a partner wheel to share if it were anywhere close to being 'roughly straight across'. Genius craftsmanship, I say.
• Protrusion type A - manholes. The word 'hole' is a misnomer here because the size of the manhole cover is the size of the dish antennas at space observatories. And they are specifically designed such that there are sharp edges (yes, sharp edges on something that is shaped like a circle, go figure) on the 'concrete platform' on which the manhole cover sits. Yes, concrete is stronger than that used for home/apartment construction in Bangalore city (which, if you notice, cause buildings to collapse like a house of cards). No, no, manhole covers must be made from titanium grade concrete, and not from the variety used by building contractors.
• Protrusion type B - pizza toppings. Yes, even the biggest, costliest, all-in, cheese overloaded, heart attack ready pizza from the swankiest fake-Italian eatery in Bangalore, won't match up to the sheer density of toppings delivered by the 'patch work' contractor, on those roads which are 'repaired' after lots of public unrest and candle marches and paying obeisance at the lotus feet of the corporation ward member of that area. These pizza topping roads are equally feisty as the potholes, in extracting expletive-laden curses from your suspension.
• Protrusion type C - humps. The trademark, ISI mark, Agmark, the signature dish of Namma Bengaluru. Inverse dome, inverse semi-dome, inverse parabola, inverse trapezoidal ramp, grand canyon walls, Karakoram mountain range - you will find humps of all mathematical and geological varieties. Sometimes, it goes beyond math and geology, into the realm of a military level surgical strike: where, after your wheels have climbed over mount Kilimanjaro, they immediately land in the Mariana trench. The hump-followed-immediately-by-pothole jugalbandhi. The stuff of engineering genius, ensuring that even if you drive a monster truck, you suffer an underbody hit nevertheless.

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