Delhi Beat: Traffic Snarls!

Published on Unboxed Writers on 3rd May 2011

A neighbour’s teenaged children leave home every evening for about an hour when it’s time for him to come home. Visits to friends, trips to the market, or to the sports complex, are all scheduled around this time to avoid Dad, who comes home spitting and snarling as a result of having battled Delhi’s office rush hour traffic on his 20 kilometre daily work commute, ever since the driver quit his job a month ago. His wife wishes she could follow suit! The situation is worse for multiple income families where almost everyone is fit to be tied by the time they make it home!

As traffic-related problems rise exponentially in the Capital, driver woes have surpassed maid servant laments as the prime topic of conversation among Delhiites (a raw nerve for the commuters as well as for the members of their households), even as ‘traffic-talk’ has become the standard drawing room conversation. The incidence of road rage is the highest in NCR Delhi among all Indian cities, including as it does, numerous instances of street brawls, broken limbs, and not too long ago, even a murder! Parking space is another nightmare that Delhi’s denizens face regularly, be it within their own colonies, or outside.

Small wonder, when Delhi NCR, apart from its own population of about 19 million, and a population density of more than 9000 persons per square kilometres, also houses an extensive expatriate population, and accommodates thousands of commuters from outlying areas who come to work in the city every day. Delhi has a car density of 85 cars per 1000 persons—roughly 10 times the national average, and 1992 kilometres of road per 100 square kilometres, as against the nation’s average of 74! And these figures don’t come anywhere near explaining the chaos that reigns on the Capital’s roads 24×7.


For one, they do not spell out the fact that most car-owning households have almost as many cars as members. The entry of all the automotive majors of the world into India post-liberalization, coupled with the fact that Delhi is near the top in the tally of per capita incomes and has arguably the highest incidence of bandwagon hopping, has spawned an upsurge in car-loans, and consequently, the number of cars. Nearly 3.5 lakh cars are added to the roads of the Capital every year!

Second, they cannot depict the fact that flyovers that have literally mushroomed all over the capital, have merely become fresh points of traffic congestion, not only because of the sheer volumes and numbers being added on a continuous basis, but also because during the peak rush hours, there are usually a couple of broken down trucks/ buses/ tempo carriers causing traffic snarls for miles and miles!

Further, the statistics do not capture the fact that since almost as much of NCR Delhi’s population lives in slums and ‘semi-rural’ settlements as in posh colonies, bungalows, mansions and apartment complexes, the traffic clogging its roads at all hours of the day and night has multifarious, heterogeneous elements, that turn the act of driving through it into a nightmare on wheels!

It is impossible to explain in terms of figures the proliferation of two-wheeler and three- wheeler passenger vehicles, and buses of all descriptions—DTC (both AC and non-AC) as well as private (school buses, tourist coaches, interstate buses and private stage carriages—yes, the rogue Blue Line buses, though officially phased out, still continue to ply nonchalantly, though in smaller numbers than before); not to mention the hoi polloi of cycle rickshaws, bicycles, RTVs, three-wheeler carriers, tempos, trucks, tractors, horse and bullock carts, occasional camels and elephants, construction cranes, cement mixers, dumpers, and tractors with wagons that populate the roads of Delhi. And they could be carrying anything—a load of potatoes or cabbages, a contingent of cars, livestock, garbage from colonies to the landfills, construction material, furniture, or even villagers en route to a political rally or a festive occasion!

All these diverse components of Delhi’s traffic ply blithely at their own varied, merry paces, regardless of frivolities such as traffic rules, red lights, lanes, overtaking norms, free left turns, and of others sharing the road with them! Enforcement of traffic rules seems to be an unheard-of concept (at least ever since Dr Kiran (Crane) Bedi was relieved of the charge of Delhi’s Traffic Police), and traffic cops have a field day, reeling in prime ‘catches’ for their ‘private collection’, especially around festival time. There have been observed instances of pedal-happy drivers brazenly jumping signals, sticking out their arms to pass a currency note to the traffic cop on duty with practised ease, without even bothering to slow down!

Plus, the state of the city’s infrastructure, be it roads or drainage, ensures that the first showers wash away major chunks of the best roads and flood what is left of them, leaving the increasingly congested traffic floundering on waterlogged rutted thoroughfares! It is not uncommon for a 10 kilometre commute to take as much as an hour in normal rush-hour traffic, and up to two hours on a rainy day!

The Metro is already overcrowded to the extent that guards have occasionally been observed stuffing in stray arms and legs sticking out of carriages, to enable the doors to close and the train to move! It is unlikely that the Metro, even when upgraded to its planned 200 km of track length as opposed to the present 100 km, would be enough for the commuter population of the city. The Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS), which might have introduced some sort of method into the madness that is Delhi’s traffic, failed spectacularly at the inception and may not be given another chance.

The pot holes on the roads would be almost funny, if only they, amongst other reasons, had not earned for Delhi, the doubtful distinction of the slowest traffic in the country, with an average speed of 15 kmph (Mumbai comes second at 18 kmph). It seems wiser to either stay at home or walk to destinations less than 2-3 kilometres away, even if it means tying moistened handkerchiefs around the nose and mouth to filter out the noxious traffic fumes. The traffic travails also seem to have revived some variant of the purdah system, as women forced to negotiate the roads on foot muffle themselves in dupattas, stoles or scarves to minimize the damage to their skin and hair.

Delhi is crying out for better road infrastructure, a much larger Metro network and stringently enforced traffic rules. The vocabularies of those who drive regularly on the roads of the Capital are generally among the most colourful in the world, and it is not hard to see why!

Delhi Beat: A mouthful of memories

Published on Unboxed Writers on 18th April 2011

“Every time I come to Delhi, I find it completely changed”, wails a childhood friend who has lived away from the city of her birth ever since she got married. Indeed, she has reason to lament. Her annual, long visits to the capital are enlivened by manic shopping excursions to all the main markets of the city. However, by her next visit most of the old shops are gone without a trace, so she first has to acquaint herself with the new market configuration before she can start her shopping frenzy. Well, Delhi is like that!

However, what is worse, according to her, is the disappearance of good eating places—and I couldn’t agree more! An eating place that is conveniently located and easy on the pocket, and that gives you delicious, hygienic food when you are out battling shopkeepers and fellow-shoppers in the unending quest to buy the maximum stuff with minimum possible outlay, is a treasure—and then, to find it gone one fine day, replaced by the offices of an insurance company or the ATM of a bank, is provoking, to put it mildly.

So, this time when she was here, shopping in Kamla Nagar market and bewailing the demise of the Coffee House on Bungalow Road near Delhi University (it vanished a number of years ago, but she has never ceased to lament its loss), I took her to one of our favourite old-time haunts that is still around and doing brisk business—chhole bhature at Chache di Hatti! The eatery serving possibly the world’s most delicious chhole bhature—the popular street food from North India that originated in Rawalpindi—has been around for more than 40 years, looking exactly the same as it used to in our college days—and probably the same as when it started. It has stood the test of time—neither growing, nor giving way under the onslaught of change and still attracting foodies in droves.

I remember my own initiation into Delhi University, and among the other pearls of wisdom from mom, the low-down on ‘good’ and ‘safe’ eating places accessible from North Campus whenever there were a couple of free classes—among others, LMB (Lakshmi Mishthan Bhandar) for golgappe, and Chache di Hatti for chhole bhature. Making new friends in college, I realized that those whose parents/ aunts/ uncles/ elder siblings had studied at DU had also come primed with this knowledge. Our five years at DU were enriched with frequent visits to the joint, with standing instructions to get the goodies packed for the folks back home. And this time around too, when we went, I had instructions to get it packed for the folks back home (both my parents’ and my in-laws)!

A tiny shop at the corner of the first right turn as you go from Bungalow Road to the Kamla Nagar roundabout, you can’t miss the mile-long queues that snake around the corner, spilling out onto the main road. The ladies’ queue extends from the shop counter deep into the gully in the other direction. The shop is open from 11 am to 3 pm every day (except Mondays) serving top quality food at rock bottom prices, and does record business despite limited timings.

As we await our turn in the queue, I take stock of the joint, mentally comparing it with the way it was 20 years ago, and find little difference, except that I’m 20 years older. The customers are a little more orderly, thanks to the two queues that are now strictly enforced. The tiny, eight by four shop is the same, except for the marble tiles on the wall, and the professionally painted price list. No expansion of space or branches, no new seating arrangement or fancy ambience, no marketing (not even a hoarding on the main road—just a modest pointer to inform the fans where to turn in from the main street)—not even longer hours, in spite of the fact that literally hundreds have to go away disappointed if they are delayed by traffic hold-ups or long shopping lists.

The aficionados thronging the shop are the same eclectic mix of old-timers from near and far, current university students and people from all classes living in the locality. The ‘Chacha’ at the counter, taking your orders, passing them on to underlings, and handing you your stuff (be it a plate of freshly prepared chhole bhature, a packed order, or simply packets of his famous chhole masala) is the same, albeit older—a large gentleman right out of a black-and-white movie featuring respectable immigrants from partitioned Punjab—an island of calm and self-possession amidst the chaos of more customers than anyone can handle.

And the masala! With real generosity of spirit Chacha chooses to let his loyal customers have his special, secret chhole masala, which he prepares himself, for a very reasonable price. Indeed, his chhole masala even figures prominently on the ‘must buy’ list of old Chacha fans, living in far-flung areas of the country and the world, whenever they pass through Delhi!

Soon our steaming, aromatic plates are handed to us. We balance them on our palms and manage to find a place to stand at the single round plastic table that is provided in the gully to accommodate those who wish to eat on the spot. The first bite tells us that the magic is still alive. We polish off the last melt-in-the-mouth morsel with voluptuous sighs of repletion and wish the exigencies of growing years and weakening digestion did not deter us from going back for a second plateful.

I have a question for Chacha, but he is fully occupied with his customers. So, I wait for him to wind up for the day. As he is closing, I ask: “Uncle, why have you never ever enlarged your establishment?” He smiles in understanding, reading all the things I have been unable to articulate—why in this era of commercialization, when it supposedly makes good business sense to milk every minute advantage and ‘leverage’ it via marketing techniques and fancy add-ons to play in the big leagues, are you content to remain in this little shop, attending to the shop counter yourself and never exploring the many avenues that could open up for you?

His answer is typical of the man himself and his product: simple, humble, grounded in reality and with true worth in every syllable: “God has given me enough for my family’s needs, and there is no limit to desires”!