Singapore of the Stone Ages

The Man from Madras Musings lives in a cul-de-sac off an arterial road. This may be a fact well known to most regulars and they, MMM can see, have begun to mutter, “O God, not another story about the Chief Minister driving down this stretch each morning, noon, afternoon and evening,” but MMM hastens to assure them all that this is not the burden of the tale. In any case CMs whizzing down that arterial road is now a matter of the past. The present one takes another route altogether.

MMM had just set out on an errand when on reaching the mouth of his street, he was surprised to find the traffic on the arterial road had come to a complete halt. A posse of policemen was trying to establish some semblance of order in that chaos but to no avail. Inching forward, MMM could see that buses were being diverted on to the opposite side of the road. This was only increasing the chaos. Clearly nobody had thought of putting up signboards far in ­advance of the actual blockade telling motorists that there was a huge blockade ahead. ­Traffic was flowing in, from all ­directions. Everything therefore had ground to a halt.

Watching from the air-conditioned comfort of his car, MMM could see the poor policemen being abused by practically every driver and passerby. The upholders of the law were trying to do their best in what was clearly a very bad situation. It did not help that there was no coordination among the police themselves and each was flailing his or her hands in opposite directions and giving random instructions to traffic. As it happens in most Indian cities, traffic still managed to inch forward. After all, we have never heard of a gridlock lasting days, not yet anyway.

It was only after 15 or 20 minutes that MMM could see the actual reason for the block. This was a giant machine of some kind, at least three storeys high and perched on top of a multi-axle vehicle which had been positioned right in the middle of the road. The chaos being such, MMM did not lower his window to ask any of the policemen there as to what that machine was doing. But it is his guess that it had something to do with the metro rail work that has been ongoing a few blocks away for quite some time now.

It was quite clear that there had been no coordination of any kind between CMRL and the police, and right in the middle of a busy morning the former had thought it fit to bring this giant machine and place it on the road. The latter therefore had to contend with it and get on with the traffic. MMM sympathized hugely with the police and at the same time he felt that the administration could have done a lot better in a situation like this. After all, CMRL work is not something that has come about suddenly on the city. All it required was prior intimation to the police that there was likelihood of traffic disruption with a large machine arriving at a certain time on a particular day. It is also surprising that TN Police did not think of taking advantage of social media to inform the public of a blockage at a busy intersection.

For a city that is forever claiming that it will soon be Singapore, we appear to lack the very basics. Had there been prior involvement of the police, newspaper reports should have carried information about potential blocks, social media alerts should have been given, and radio messages could have been made use of. It is also surprising that TN Police do not seem to ever use electronic signboards well ahead of a blockage to inform road users that they would need to use alternative routes. These are all basic operating procedures, and it is high time that our city, its administration and the lawgivers start pondering over how to implement them.

All in a jiffy

Madras week is just a few weeks away and as is usual, the Man from Madras Musings is noticing a sharp uptick in the number of emails, phone calls and personal meetings where he is asked if he could come and please address a gathering on some aspect of the city. MMM wonders as to why these events must happen only in a particular week in August and cannot be spread over an entire year! That way it would take the pressure off a few people who are repeatedly invited to speak on the city.

There are, however, deserving causes and MMM always likes to oblige these people. And thus it was that when he got a message a couple of days ago asking if he could come and address a charitable organization which was having a worldwide convention in the city, he was more than willing. The person in charge asked for a telephonic chat and when the time came, MMM found that he was more in the capacity of a listener because the caller went on and on and on about the greatness of the organization that they were representing. Initially very impressed, MMM later began to allow his attention to wander, restricting himself to a few assuring noises every time the speaker paused to take breath. The conversation eventually meandered around to the topic that MMM was supposed to speak on and he realized that what was being required was practically a comprehensive survey of our city including the nature of its people, it’s industrial resources, its practices and its unique aspects.

MMM was quite happy that such a detailed topic was being listed out. He finally asked the caller as to how long he had to speak at the event.

“Oh around five minutes,” came the reply.

The speaker then went on to tell MMM that these days attention spans are very low and anything more than five minutes would be difficult. MMM then asked as to whether any of the content that had been asked for earlier could be cut out to which the caller said no, that would not be advisable at which point MMM suggested to the caller that what they wanted was an Instagram reel and they could take their custom elsewhere.

– MMM