Rough ride alarm for pandal-hoppers

KOLKATA: The alluring campaigns to draw you into the city''s finest festive season should be accompanied by a statutory warning: ‘Pandal hopping may be injurious to health''. The human spine isn''t designed to take the kind of battering that will come with pandal hopping on Kolkata''s rutted roads. As the city''s civic service-providing agencies rack their brains to please a judiciary that is seeing red at the state of the roads, ToI tries to gauge your possible discomfort-factor by undertaking a pre-Puja tour of some of the major draws.
What we saw would make even the most diehard Puja enthusiast pause before taking the plunge.The roads to most of the big-draw pandals are in a mess that is unlikely to be sorted out before Puja. The Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority,Kolkata Municipal Corporation and public works department may be "working at it" but their collective efforts leaves a lot to be desired. Here is a ready reckoner of what to expect.
Mohammad Ali Park KMC''s efforts to repair the stretch of Central Avenue leading to this huge draw are visible. But even more evident is its failure. The tar and stone-chips, which the city''s road-repairing agencies believe are the right materials to apply on the surface, are being washed away by the late-season rain. And the tram-tracks on MG Road will rattle your spine, if nothing else does.
Bagbazar A stretch, a few dozen feet in diameter, where Central Avenue meets Madanmohantala Street gives you a sign of things to come. The potholed Bagbazar Street, however, is the real thing. There are clusters of stone-chips at the approach to the pandal to fill up potholes but they do not show the promise to stand up to the rain.
College Square With the tracks on College Street especially bad this year because of the rain and recent repairs (near the Bowbazar crossing), nothing else should have been necessary to spoil your trip to this puja. But the stretch of Surya Sen Street and then MG Road, by which you leave, will make you forget the sights of a thousand lights being reflected in the square''s swimming pool.
Bosepukur Time was when you hit EM Bypass and left your bad-road worries behind. Not any more; the stretch of EMB-RB Avenue Connector leading up to Bosepukur pandal will leave you craving for Chowringhee. A pipeline — showing the mirage of more water — has been laid and, by way of repair, the dug-up earth has been dumped back.
Mudiali Half of SP Mukherjee Road is unusable. The same cause (pipelaying work) and the same makegood job (earth dumped back) combine to render the thoughtful addition — of a roller flattening the earth — of no use.