The Road To Hell Is Paved With Potholes.

Mumbai is one of the rare cities in the world that doesn’t have roads because what it really has are potholes connected by asphalt. Yes, potholes are one of the gravest problems plaguing this great city of ours, the others being when will Sachin score his hundredth hundred and Tushar Kapoor.

Come the Monsoon, the roads of Mumbai seem to evaporate in large chunks leaving behind what looks like the lunar landscape. So big and deep are these potholes that it’s rumoured that the Titantic was actually found at the bottom of a pothole near S. V. Road. All of a sudden what was once a road becomes an obstacle course for vehicles. 

The root cause of this problem is the way the BMC goes about planning the construction of roads. The planning process is a long drawn one that involves many complex decisions, made to find out who the most inefficient contractor is, so that they can be hired and given the entire road development budget. The contractors then buy substandard raw materials such as salt and attempt to make roads with them. These roads eventually crumble and disappear because they weren’t made as well as the toll booths which seem to last forever and force people to pay up large sums of money for roads which are worse than a small mud track in a swamp.

There are an estimated 4,500 potholes in the city this year and the BMC has a different excuse for each one of them (“We are working on it.”, “That is not a pothole that is a manhole without a cover” and, “The residents of this road always wanted a swimming pool.”) 

When complaints are made to the BMC about potholes they usually do one of two things:   

A.   Send workers to repair it, who inevitably end up causing more inconvenience than the actual pothole.

B.    Do nothing.

94% of the time they go with option B.*

So harmful are they that too much driving in pothole-laden roads can lead to severe long term illnesses such as slip discs, sore buttocks and excessive abusing. And that’s just the damage you have to suffer. The damage to your car is much worse. Entire tires get chewed up, suspensions get worn down and the undercarriage of your car gets scooped out because of the incessant dragging through potholes. The only positive that has come out of this situation is that Mumbai drivers are now one of the most alert drivers in the world, they always keep their eyes peeled out and don’t drive too fast, just so that they aren’t taken unawares by a lurking pothole.

As if traffic and the lack of parking spaces weren’t big enough problems the BMC has now added potholes to the list of reason why it’s suicidal to be driving a car. Sometimes it really makes me wonder whether the BMC actually has some grand plan, such as saving the environment, behind its constant dissuasion of people driving on roads. We may never know. Excuse me now while I apply some Zandu Balm to my sore buttocks.

*100% of statistics in this article are made-up.