You know you’ve reached a certain level of prosperity when you start doing elaborate thinking on roads. It must be true for a country like ours too, for it to devote time to renaming a road from a much-hated-dead-person’s-name to a much-loved-dead-person’s-name.
Yes, Aurangzeb Road will now be called APJ Abdul Kalam Road, which makes a difference to absolutely no one. I’m gonna miss Aurangzeb though, despite his controversial actions. He was no Akbar, but he was important. It’s a bit like being Sreesanth in the World Cup winning team of 2011.
We can’t undo history, as anyone with limited knowledge of web browsers and unlimited love for porn will testify. I don’t endorse Aurangzeb or his actions, but they happened. We can’t wipe him off history as easily as we can wipe his name off a road signage. It’s like wanting to kill your ex after a painful break-up, but of course you can’t. So you take the more natural path of living with the scars they left you (not a “50 Shades of Grey” reference) and a few months later, telling your friends how you’ve “moved on and become a stronger person.” And whether you’re a rejected lover or a developing country, you don’t become stronger by ignoring the past, but by dealing with it and learning your lessons.
It’s funny to be even having this conversation because after all, and I can’t emphasise this enough, IT’S A ROAD! The only sentiment it’s supposed to arouse in me is “Oh look! No traffic! Now I can reach office before anyone else and jump on my boss’s couch!” Neither do our lives have any relation to the road we’re driving on. I mean, it has never happened that I’m on Aurangzeb Road, and suddenly I roll down the window and yell, “PAY JAZIYA OR DIE, YOU INFIDELS!” Never! Nor is it likely that I’ll now drive on APJ Abdul Kalam Road, and start drawing missile free body diagrams. I don’t want a road to teach me about life. If roads start preaching, what’ll Baba Ramdev do?
Which is why I doff my hat to Bengaluru, the only city that looks at roads for what they are: an important civic amenity. Why else would they call their roads “12th Main Road”, “80 feet road, and “100 feet road”? Sure, it’s an IT city obsessed with numbers, but look at how apt it is. The road’s strengths and weaknesses are contained in the name. It’s not even a name anymore, it’s a bio-data. If more roads were called “36 pothole road”, you’d know just which road to avoid.
All I’m saying is, it’s misleading when you attach useless symbolism to roads. Like when a road in Gurgaon is called, say, “Oakwood Grove”, you feel like you’re in New York. But the moment you step out of your car, a puff of dust reminds you that you’re actually in a village called Samalkha, where autos refuse to stop for anyone.
If someone told APJ Abdul Kalam we named a road after him, he’ll probably ignore it because he’s too busy writing a book called “Right Wings of Fire”. And Aurangzeb would be laughing in his grave. Because he knows he reigned supreme while he lived, and now, more than 300 years after his death, the best revenge we could extract is, “Dekha, we renamed your road! Nobody can mess with us Indians! Jai Hind!”
Look, we’re old-fashioned, middle class Indians. We don’t want too much from life, because after about two appraisals at work, we know we won’t get it. So we have very low, but solid expectations from our roads. We want them to work just well enough for us to never have to say “But it’s good on Indian roads” every time we buy a cheap car. If we don’t spot anyone peeing besides that road with a sheepish grin on his face, that’d be an added bonus.
And you don’t even need to name roads in Delhi. Because whatever they’re called, the roads always belong to our dads.
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