Another thing we talked about in our journey were the bypasses. We took bypasses to many cities on our way including Chittorgarh, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Bharuch, Bombay and others.
I told Yutika that bypasses must feel an unjust and unfair thing to the city and city wouldn’t be very happy with them. I felt sad especially bypassing Chittor as I wanted to see the victory pillar that I grew up seeing in my general knowledge and history books. We had bypassed the city (and the pillar) even before we knew it. She had a point that it is efficient, as we don’t have to get stuck in the traffic. I agreed to that part as I prefer taking Meerut and Muzaffarnagar bypasses when I travel home.
However if cities didn’t have much traffic then one wouldn’t have to make the bypasses and then make others take the bypasses. One could then go through the city instead of bypassing it.
In past 14 years, I have travelled between Delhi and Rishikesh hundreds of times by road. Once the bypass came up around 7 kilometers before Rishikesh, people started taking it to arrive at the extreme north west end bypassing the whole of Rishikesh town (which the Lonely Planet describes as crowded unattractive downtown area). And I always got very sad every time the vehicle I was in, either the roadways bus or a car I was traveling in, took the bypass. My sadness stemmed from the fact that I grew up going to a school in the cantonment area of Raiwala town which was 12 kms away from home and everyday I passed in and out of the then not-so-crowded and not too unattractive a town. The road and the city on its sides were part of almost 10 years of my life. So whenever I traveled towards Rishikesh, I used to close my eyes when my vehicle went past my school. I played the game of identifying the point I was crossing based on the turns or the sounds and my judgment. I was justified in feeling sad, as I couldn’t play this game anymore, for more than 50% of my journey between my school and home. But I can imagine others being happy due to the time-savings and this is how it is.
Perhaps those who consider a city’s core as crowded and unattractive might feel the same of an old human heart too. Thus I wonder if the timing of a human heart bypass has any similarities with the bypassing of a city’s heart and if the bypass is a life-saving operation in both cases at a particular age in each one’s life. It however might be harsh on the cities as they are born with a blessing of wishful death, which they themselves can never ask for and will never be allowed to wish for.