This has not happened for the first time that I’ve got jam packed in Bangalore traffic in such a way that it looked as if the jam would never come to an end but somehow my yesterday’s drive back to home really left me wondering & shaken from inside. I felt this terrible desperation & helplessness after yesterday’s incident.
A reputed hospital comes on my way back home & so generally I find one or two ambulances running on the road. As any other road in Bangalore, even that particular road is jam packed during peak hours, sometimes so much that a stretch of 3.5 kms takes as much time as 30 mins to 45 mins to be covered. Infact occasionally I have spent even more time on that particular stretch. So, as usual even last night was nothing different when I was just stuck in the jam with so many screeching & screaming horns here & there. In all those sounds, there was one ambulance sound also roaring its alarm like anything, well but what can one do to help that ambulance as those who live in Bangalore know that there is hardly an inch for any vehicle to move here & there if you are stuck in jam. Suddenly my eyes went to that ambulance window & I saw a lady crying appallingly… somebody in that ambulance was critically injured & as per the auto driver next to me it was her husband who had got injured. Her loud voice & continuously running tears were just making it impossible for me to withdraw my eyes from her. That ambulance driver came out to instruct people to move here and there explaining the critical condition of the patient & even public was willing to move seeing the desperate condition of that female…she was just crying like anything & everybody was soooo pained to see that. But alas, no place for any vehicle to move back, front, right or left… we all were just stuck…even with all the intention to help, none of us were able to do anything…Oh god, what a moment that was…I felt like just jumping out of my vehicle & allowing that ambulance to go. But of course that would not have been of any help as what to do with the vehicle… In all this chaos & millimeter by millimeter progress of vehicles ahead, more than 25 mins were over, the hospital was hardly any distance from that place but still L…Then a bunch of guys suggested all of us to move back & there was a small service lane kind of thing in the back in which people started entering, so that atleast that ambulance can move back & maybe try some other route to reach any other hospital. But ohhh suddenly we heard the sudden loud wailing of this lady…she started banging her head on that ambulance window… oh god, what happened, has he died???????? I was just wondering & the taffic started moving, maybe one of the signals had become green… I tried asking my neighboring window, “what happened, is he ok”?, he replied, “looks like he is dead now”!!!!!!!!! And zoom that ambulance went ahead as the jam opened…
Well, I don’t know what happened to that lady’s husband, is he alive or he just died in that jam waiting to reach the hospital which was hardly 10-15 mins away from that area… I just kept on praying that may he be alive as that lady’s tear filled face was hounding my mind… and whole of my way back I was just wondering about the traffic jams & ‘n’ number of vehicles plying on the road… Well, traffic woes are the reality of any city these days but is there any solution to it in a city like Bangalore where the roads are so narrow with no space on sides to expand the roads even an inch??? The city has exploded completely with migratory population like us & the infrastructure was not at all geared up to bear an explosion like this… we all only crib about the traffic etc etc here, but when I see those narrow roads, those upcoming commercial spaces & the incidents like yesterday, I keep on wondering… if there is any solution to it???
