Don't get me wrong, I love the rains... but, the chaos it creates on the roads of Calcutta is legen....wait for it...dary! ( for those who didn't get that- it's 'How I Met Your Mother' inspired!!) I don't complain coz I really do love the rains ☔ ⚡ ☁.. The humidity, the washed clothes which don't dry and have to be dried under the fan on a rope tied from window to window, the muddy shoes, the muck which comes in everytime someone comes home...et all...I'm a hopeless romantic you see!!! Except when it means I don't get a rickshaw to take my son to school. Which brings me to my experience everyday. Obviously affected me more today coz the roads were water logged.
In my son's school, in the first quarter of the term classes are held for a total of one month. School reopens for the new session after reports mid April, then closes for the Summer hols in less than three weeks and reopens again around mid June. So, in all practicality, to avoid paying bus fees for two extra months unnecessarily, we do not use the school bus service in the first quarter. We mothers gotta do what we have to do to keep within the budget, right?! 😉 Which means I go to drop him to school and my maid brings him back home when he gets off. This set up works well for us...
We normally take an auto and a cycle rickshaw to reach school, as the autos run on fixed routes, not in the by-lanes and school is quite a distance from the main road, walking is not an option, at least not an option till the state of the approach road to school improves!!!
Below lies the cause of my frustration every weekday morning:
There are several hutments in the area where the people do not have the luxury of a bathroom. So, they treat the pavements like one! The Government and the Municipal Corporation fully understand their woes and to be a very benevolent Government provide taps with running water supply for fixed hours for theses unfortunate people. These taps are on the pavements and the people wash their clothes and kitchen ware, brush their teeth, bathe and shampoo their hair in full public view! Not that it's an uncommon sight in the city. Infact we totally understand that water is a necessary commodity and the authorities in our city are super efficient in providing it to the squatters on all thouroughfares!
In addition to that there are a number of small time road side eateries on the pavement, blocking 3/4th of the way and littering the rest of the space one could risk thinking of walking on. They peel and chop vegetables, clean the rice and strain it, wash their pots and pans and throw their garbage right in front of their individual shops to avoid offending their neighbours. Boundaries have to be respected you see. No one wants an altercation when everybody is just trying to earn a living by running an honest business! These eateries cater to the rickshawals ( not pullers anymore coz the hand drawn ricks have been phased out in most areas of the city and cycle rickshaws have taken their place, Thank God!), the taxi drivers who park near the entrance to the lane( as they can't park on the main road) the drivers of the school buses ( these school buses are of another school in the parallel lane) that are parked on this lane and the huge population of construction workers who are working on a number of houses coming up on that stretch of road and in the lanes around.
The houses under construction around the area dump all their construction material on the pavement and literally half the road(I am not exaggerating). I don't think there is any law against that in our city. It seems to be the norm all over town to be treating the road as if you own it! So there goes the rest of the available footpath leaving behind patches which we could walk on if it wasn't so overgrown and full of garbage.
To top it all there is a massive mall cum Office complex coming up bang at the junction of the main road and the road to school meaning more constructin material, mammoth machinery and a half dug up road.
There are no roads leading off from school. A few narrow maze like lanes that won't even fit a rickshaw are on the other side so, the hordes of vehicles have to drop the kids off and turn around to come back the same way.
But, the school tries to keep everybody happy by having police presence on the road. The cops try to manoeuvre traffic and some enthusiastic volunteers help out to keep peace among the many cars dropping their children off. School buses, small cars, big cars, even SUVs, taxis, bikes, private autos, rickshaws, cycles, trucks with sand or bricks, vendors selling plants or vegetable with their carts catering to the houses down the road, Volvo buses which park on a ground beside school all jostling for space. Once I had counted 13 cement mixers which all needed to make a u turn on that road at exactly the same time as the children need to be in school. Hyper mothers, angry fathers, aggressive drivers, impatient maids, helpless grandparents, competing rickshawalas and cheeky pool car drivers. What a melee at 7.30 a.m. every morning!! Once you manage to leave all that behind you see the school building and hope that it's done for the day. But, hang on, it's not over. You're not at the school gate yet. You have to swim through all these grownups Who want to stand at the gate and check their child's bag for a last minute confirmation of all homework done, comb their hair, wipe the perspiration of their faces, make them drink water from water bottles which hang around their neck and which the kids will have with them inside school anyway, hug them, kiss them and bid them a tearful goodbye and wait waving till the kids can't be seen anymore. Some will even make the kids pee outside the school gate just in case all the loos in school have been trashed by Harry Potter while saving Hermione from the Troll!!!
If you've managed to push and shove through it all you're lucky coz there lies the doorway to the future, inside which, hopefully, my son will make the most of the years he spends, considering the battle his mother fights to take him there and mind you, on time!!!
P.S.- Did I mention a total lack of involvement from the children. Maybe the senior kids could be involved in managing traffic but then again it might offend the parents of these mini scholars. Who knows a future Einstien might fall short of being a genius if involved in doing anything other than STUDYING!!!
I remember, as kids, being so conscious of what our parents did that we constantly pestered everyone at home to follow rules and regulations everywhere. That's what we were taught in school and were encourged to make our parents walk the line.😄
In my son's school, in the first quarter of the term classes are held for a total of one month. School reopens for the new session after reports mid April, then closes for the Summer hols in less than three weeks and reopens again around mid June. So, in all practicality, to avoid paying bus fees for two extra months unnecessarily, we do not use the school bus service in the first quarter. We mothers gotta do what we have to do to keep within the budget, right?! 😉 Which means I go to drop him to school and my maid brings him back home when he gets off. This set up works well for us...
We normally take an auto and a cycle rickshaw to reach school, as the autos run on fixed routes, not in the by-lanes and school is quite a distance from the main road, walking is not an option, at least not an option till the state of the approach road to school improves!!!
Below lies the cause of my frustration every weekday morning:
There are several hutments in the area where the people do not have the luxury of a bathroom. So, they treat the pavements like one! The Government and the Municipal Corporation fully understand their woes and to be a very benevolent Government provide taps with running water supply for fixed hours for theses unfortunate people. These taps are on the pavements and the people wash their clothes and kitchen ware, brush their teeth, bathe and shampoo their hair in full public view! Not that it's an uncommon sight in the city. Infact we totally understand that water is a necessary commodity and the authorities in our city are super efficient in providing it to the squatters on all thouroughfares!
In addition to that there are a number of small time road side eateries on the pavement, blocking 3/4th of the way and littering the rest of the space one could risk thinking of walking on. They peel and chop vegetables, clean the rice and strain it, wash their pots and pans and throw their garbage right in front of their individual shops to avoid offending their neighbours. Boundaries have to be respected you see. No one wants an altercation when everybody is just trying to earn a living by running an honest business! These eateries cater to the rickshawals ( not pullers anymore coz the hand drawn ricks have been phased out in most areas of the city and cycle rickshaws have taken their place, Thank God!), the taxi drivers who park near the entrance to the lane( as they can't park on the main road) the drivers of the school buses ( these school buses are of another school in the parallel lane) that are parked on this lane and the huge population of construction workers who are working on a number of houses coming up on that stretch of road and in the lanes around.
The houses under construction around the area dump all their construction material on the pavement and literally half the road(I am not exaggerating). I don't think there is any law against that in our city. It seems to be the norm all over town to be treating the road as if you own it! So there goes the rest of the available footpath leaving behind patches which we could walk on if it wasn't so overgrown and full of garbage.
To top it all there is a massive mall cum Office complex coming up bang at the junction of the main road and the road to school meaning more constructin material, mammoth machinery and a half dug up road.
There are no roads leading off from school. A few narrow maze like lanes that won't even fit a rickshaw are on the other side so, the hordes of vehicles have to drop the kids off and turn around to come back the same way.
But, the school tries to keep everybody happy by having police presence on the road. The cops try to manoeuvre traffic and some enthusiastic volunteers help out to keep peace among the many cars dropping their children off. School buses, small cars, big cars, even SUVs, taxis, bikes, private autos, rickshaws, cycles, trucks with sand or bricks, vendors selling plants or vegetable with their carts catering to the houses down the road, Volvo buses which park on a ground beside school all jostling for space. Once I had counted 13 cement mixers which all needed to make a u turn on that road at exactly the same time as the children need to be in school. Hyper mothers, angry fathers, aggressive drivers, impatient maids, helpless grandparents, competing rickshawalas and cheeky pool car drivers. What a melee at 7.30 a.m. every morning!! Once you manage to leave all that behind you see the school building and hope that it's done for the day. But, hang on, it's not over. You're not at the school gate yet. You have to swim through all these grownups Who want to stand at the gate and check their child's bag for a last minute confirmation of all homework done, comb their hair, wipe the perspiration of their faces, make them drink water from water bottles which hang around their neck and which the kids will have with them inside school anyway, hug them, kiss them and bid them a tearful goodbye and wait waving till the kids can't be seen anymore. Some will even make the kids pee outside the school gate just in case all the loos in school have been trashed by Harry Potter while saving Hermione from the Troll!!!
If you've managed to push and shove through it all you're lucky coz there lies the doorway to the future, inside which, hopefully, my son will make the most of the years he spends, considering the battle his mother fights to take him there and mind you, on time!!!
P.S.- Did I mention a total lack of involvement from the children. Maybe the senior kids could be involved in managing traffic but then again it might offend the parents of these mini scholars. Who knows a future Einstien might fall short of being a genius if involved in doing anything other than STUDYING!!!
I remember, as kids, being so conscious of what our parents did that we constantly pestered everyone at home to follow rules and regulations everywhere. That's what we were taught in school and were encourged to make our parents walk the line.😄
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