A sync with the Pause

This is the story of the legendary traffic jam of Meethapur-Badarpur road. A jam that can stop million lives at once, and takes just a few seconds to build up. With only two small bridges over the Twin-Agra canals for the movement inside and out of this largely and densely populated area (~4 Mil) any small blockage in running traffic always (not to dismiss as almost, it actually is always) creates the same scenic view of sea of people and vehicles everyday (Yes! Every damn day!). People are stuck for hours and hours… and hours; now without complaints, for they have lived their lives the same way for many years. It has been the same road, same people, same jam and same frustration mixed with occasional laughs when some sarcasm flows in from somewhere and crowd cheers it. They compare it with the Kumbh and the chatter becomes louder as such discussion starts from one corner of the mass that is stuck in amongst vehicles and between the boundaries of the canal bridge.

As the jam builds up and crowd starts to look for possible things they can set their foot on and move ahead, hawkers those have encroached the footpath start to hold their places like fortress. In this tussle a few fruits, vegetables and other things they sell become martyrs every day.

Nevertheless, we don’t complain, we don’t whine or blame or cry. We just wait, struggle and move on. We have developed a perfect sync with this situation of ours and if someday someone decides to do something about it and the jam won’t be there who knows we may even feel emptiness and miss it too much!

Words & Photographs
©sanjeevkumarpandey