Hiccups on the road
K S S Pillai
Nowadays we prefer to travel by car even to distant places as travelling by bus, train, or aircraft increases the possibility of contracting Covid-19. The journey becomes a little entertaining as our family has members from three generations, with conflicting opinions on many issues. One elderly member uses a walker at home to move about and treats long journeys by the road as torture but accompanies us all the same as he doesn’t want to be the cause of cancelling our programmes.
Though a journey by road helps us to keep the coronavirus at arm’s length, it has its drawbacks. Tollbooths are one of them. In the past, when we paid the toll in cash, we had to incur enormous wastage of time and fuel.
There were other irritating factors like trans-genders and beggars demanding money, and vendors pestering with their wares like peanuts, cut fruits, and many other local produce. I was, therefore, elated when the government introduced fast tags at tollbooths, with the assurance that the movement of vehicles would be smooth. However, I find that the situation has not changed much, through the waiting period has come down a little.
Traffic police stopping the vehicle for checking documents like the driving licence, PUC certificate, registration papers, and the like has been another nuisance faced by travellers. If the cop doesn’t like your looks, he may even ask you to undergo a breath test for detecting alcohol consumption. The current pandemic has made it compulsory for the occupants to wear masks and keep distance between two.
Travelling is usually smooth on six-lane highways and expressways with several eateries and fuel stations on the way. But the problem starts when we enter sections where the widening of the road to four-lane or six-lane is going on. For long distances, it is a mix of good and bad roads, dusty at places, slow, crowded, and bone-shattering.
Answering calls of nature is another problem we, particularly women and the elderly, face. Children demand and usually get the vehicle halted on the roadside to relieve themselves, but the grown-ups have to wait either till a gas station or tollbooth with toilets is reached. Most of these toilets are not clean, either because the owners don’t care or because the users don’t even flush them after use.
Though there are separate toilets for the handicapped in some places, they are not always user-friendly. Sometimes steps are too high to climb, and where there is a ramp, they are too smooth for a walker-holding person to climb. Some of the fuel stations that have toilets keep them under lock and key, with the excuse that no water is available.
Reaching an unfamiliar destination usually causes hiccups, even when the vehicle has a built-in GPS (Global Positioning System). Recently, when we were hunting an address, the female voice from the device suddenly asked me to take a U-turn, though we were sure we were going in the right direction. After such repeated commands, we were so exasperated that we shut off the device.
One welcome takeaway of road travelling is when we feel the spell of nature settling over us while traversing certain areas. All the tedium of the travel disappears when we find vast agricultural fields with standing crops on both sides of the road. Sometimes we come across small villages with a cluster of huts, with people lying leisurely in small cots in the open and cows, buffaloes, and dogs roaming about or grazing.
There are sections with beautiful valleys, rivers, forests, mountains, and an array of tunnels. At night, a whole valley seems to be on fire with the light emitting from thousands of fireflies. One advantage of travelling in a car is that we can stop it any time we want and enjoy the enchanting surroundings as long as we wish.
(The author is a retired professor of English. Apart from Kashmir Vision, his articles and short stories have been published by various national and international publications)
