Roll of the Road

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What follows is an unofficial story:

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Being the first IIT and located at an off-beat place called the Hijli Jail away from city civilization, IIT KGP had the distinction of a state-highway running right through its Campus. Perhaps, this highway and the parallel railway track were necessary for building the Giant when the Nation was in its Infancy:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/09/sefasa.html

In the beginning I suppose the highway was arterial and much loved and adored by everyone there: it is the only and cheap connection to the world outside, like the KGP Railway Station (Longest Platform in the World), Gole Bazaar (you had to go there for your engagement ring), South Institute (for a decent hairdo) and the BNR (Railway) Hospital (HNB got his heart-attack treated there in 1967).

Pushbikes were the only mode of independent transport till even 1980 (most Professors and HoDs of the older generation used them; my own Ph D Guide SDM reveled in riding his; but he was from a rural background in East Bengal and learned it in his childhood; but city-slicks like HNB never learned to bike and had to depend on rickshaw-pullers or their own legs).

The Campus grew on either side of the highway and in due time, tea-stalls (vending nicotine and more profitable sticks on the side), eateries, rickshaw stands, itinerant barber shops, cycle repair shops and such grew up around the two bus-stops on the Campus Highway. and there was this Petrol Pump (the Original Harry's):

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/04/thackers-and-harrys.html

And then Tikka shifted there; with Kabuliwalas standing by:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/10/tipheraray.html

But growth has its own problems.

Bachelors got married and begot kids as byproducts. And they grew up and wanted schools. The Central School came up right beside the Highway. And it became very popular and spread its wings, displacing the Old Telephone Exchange (there were few telephones, but a Gigantic Exchange; microminiaturization was 4 decades away).

That meant children crossing the highway now bustling with speeding overcrowded buses with revelers and travelers climbing atop their roofs*, trucks and double-bullock-carts (my son's push-bike fell underneath one of them; he being the Ultimate Survivor like his father abandoned his bike and jumped into the ditch beside while he was in Class VII; his bike got as skewed as Ashtavakra, the Rishi with eight bends in his body).

*http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/04/top-of-world.html

And perhaps for reasons of security and proximity to the Main Building all the Ladies' Hostels came up beside the Highway. And this was invitation to the KGP-City Awaras and Ramaiya Vastavaiyas to shift their revelries into the heart of the IIT Campus in their favorite Hondas (bikes and then cars) trying to tease Hi-Tech Eves.

So the highway which once was a much-loved artery grew malignancies all along it. And by then many had their own vehicles and didn't depend on the Highway Buses as desperately as they did earlier.

There was then a terrific outcry to close the highway for buses, trucks and outside private vehicles. And the DM was requested to lay a by-pass road skirting the sprawling Campus.

But thereby hangs the tale of any Beaten Track: it refuses to be shut up; whether it is the Highway of the Roads & Buildings Department or the Minds & Customs Department.

And the highway was perhaps the contentious symbol of Competing Power: Who Owns It?

Amusing incidents were galore when a kid is killed by a merciless Truck, a Bump is raised overnight by IIT, only to be flattened the very next day by the State Authorities (their permission is required to raise a regulation bump on any highway however menacing; but not taken):

This reminds me of the tale of the new daughter-in-law who refuses to give alms to the itinerant beggar standing in front of their house and chases him away. The mother-in-law is scandalized by this Usurpation of Power and asks the beggar to return. And when he does return she shouts: "Who is she to order you to go away? I alone have that Power: Get lost now prompto!"

Ultimately, after 4 long and turbulent highway-decades, a compromise formula was perhaps reached between the State of West Bengal and IIT KGP to share the expenses of building and maintaining a ring-road around the Campus and closing the age-old Highway to Public.

Stickers (washable in the first monsoon shower) were duly issued to Genuine Campus Residents to be stuck on their 2- and 4-wheelers enabling the IIT Security to screen out the Outsider Vehicles and deny them the age-old access they enjoyed on the old highway. Obviously tempers flared up. And the self-same stickers were a give-away when the vehicles proudly bearing them betrayed their origin when they traveled outside the alienated Campus.

Everyone felt one can take a horse to water but can one make it drink? In Physics it is called: Inertia.

However, within a year we found that the New Ring Road became very popular, with new Hotels and Motels and Eateries and Barber Shops and Cycle and Scooter Repair Shops coming up in a big way ringing it all along. Entrepreneurship & Private Enterprise. And the Original Harry's Petrol Pump in the heart of the Campus got shifted and was doing roaring business in its new avatar by the new Ring Road: In Physics it is called Momentum.

The greatest and oldest surviving city called Benaras (Varanasi) lives on the bank of the holiest of Rivers: Ganges (Ganga). The city owes its picturesque existence to a majestic Bend in the Course of this Holy River. I was told a charming story: Ganga the eventual consort of Shiv (residing in Kashi, the Benaras) couldn't resist the temptation of washing his Holy Feet, like my mother and father, and so took that Bend).

The nightmare of every ancient resident of Varanasi (and even loving me too) is what would happen to this city if by a Quirk of Nature or Greed of Mankind, Mother Ganges decides to change her course and abandons this beautiful city:

Unthinkable!!!



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