Everyone who has lived in Cochin for a while hates the state of the roads. It’s hard to ignore the huge pot holes that are as big a feature of the city & suburbs as much as anything else. Only problem is that the tourists aren’t coming here to see them potholes! And neither are us locals loving them either. The city is a laughing joke when it comes to infrastructure so why should the roads be any different?

I remember the area in Thrikkakara where my family and I lived for 19 years. It’s a quite residential suburban area and as such the roads are not that wide. The roads were always in a pathetic state and not helped in any way by the fact that the underground water pipes always break and caused leakage. Workers had to dig the sides of the road and fix the pipes on a regular basis – while the pipes get fixed the road ends up broken. Does the local governing body do anything to fix that? No! What they did was wait until just before the monsoon season and then tar the roads. We ended up with clean & fresh looking roads for a couple of weeks. Then the monsoon hits it and the roads get all messed up again because it was a half-assed job. we get huge potholes and puddles in the potholes. Every year that’s what happened – they’d fix the roads once again just before the rains start!

Similarly that’s what happens in other parts of the city – they tar the roads, make them looking all new and clean just for show. Then a few weeks later, they break open one side for some cable work, underground electric cable work or something else. Leave the roads all messed up and the rains come again. You’ll find stones on the side of the road, people getting holes in their shoes because of the bad conditions of the road and perhaps even a few sprained ankles, tires getting damaged and the undersides of cars getting scratched and damaged etc. All because our government is stupid. But does anybody do anything about it? Fuck no!