The Great Construction Circus

Nothing just gets built in Mumbai Not without a weird journeyhellip In Mumbai happiness is so hard to find itrsquos like a cabbie that goes shortdistances As a city there are roughly two things we can get excited about and one of them just said hersquos played his last IPL The only other thing that thrills this city is the opening of a new transport link We now have the Eastern Freeway thatrsquoll get you from Fort to Ghatkopar in 25 minutes On an ordinary day you canrsquot get from Fort to Fort in 25 minutes This road is going to change lives people will get home early theyrsquore going to tuck their children into bed and eat dinner with their families and watch this fabled ldquoArnab Goswamirdquo theyrsquove heard so much about for the first time But these better lives will have to wait Because nobody important is free to inaugurate it But itrsquos just another part of the circus that is The LifeCycle of Every Infrastructure Project in Mumbai Ever Urban joys Mumbai always gets excited about the opening of new transport links Stage 1 Hope A report appears on the front page of a newspaper about a new project that will cut my commute by six hours each way The report has shiny graphics in which the distance between Vashi and Colaba is a 2 cm dotted red line This new project will build a twelvelane highway in the ocean with exitramps and ldquodecksrdquo and its piegravece de reacutesistance will be a ldquocablestayed bridgerdquo that leads to a tunnel that will go through the moon and end at Nariman Point Phase 1 began yesterday and will be completed two minutes from now by Kajol Oh and it only costs 60000000 lakh crore Stage 2 Bureaucratic bhfighting It emerges that whoever came up with the project didnrsquot actually run it past the environment ministry Or the people who live in the slums that have to be scorched ldquofor progressrdquo Or the World Bank Or any bank In fact he didnrsquot even run the idea past his mom His mother doesnrsquot even know who gave him the crayons to draw it The project will now take two days Oh and Kajolrsquos out Om Purirsquos in Stage 3 Floating of tenders If the term ldquotender floatingrdquo brings to your mind an image of Kabir Bedi and Sonu Walia in a pool in that song from Khoon Bhari Maang you are probably CEO of the company that won the bid to build our next infrastructural marvel You donrsquot know a damn thing about auctions but you know more than enough about the way this country works Yoursquove won itrsquos time to get to work Om Purirsquos history Sonu Waliarsquos in Because now I canrsquot get that song out of my head Stage 4 Construction Work begins You build a pillar someone else files a PIL Because you still havenrsquot told the slumfolk have you The project goes into cold storage for three years everyone associated with it leaves Your lead actress gets pregnant you have a falling out Somebody else steps in It flops anyway Stage 5 Delay This phase of the column is awaiting clearances from people who havenrsquot been sufficiently bribed yet and should be ready by 2017 Stage 6 Media attention Your project is in disarray A crane fell over and killed two people because what should have been your safety budget is now in somebodyrsquos Swiss bank account The media comes in and breaks news Your financial practices are probed and your links to people examined It emerges that you once played cricket in your building You are immediately arrested for links to Dawood Every journalist in the country goes home and bathes in a bucket of rum The project will not finish until the next continental drift Stage 7 Completion Your project is ready Except for the signals lanemarkings and the 200 metres that would connect your road to the rest of the city Stage 8 The naming One political group insists the name end in ldquoGandhirdquo A second insists it begin in ldquoRajivrdquo A third beats up cabbies because itrsquos Tuesday Stage 9 Delay Again No VIP is available to come open your masterpiece Hungover and crabby after their rum bath the media chews you up and spits you out again Stage 10 GRAND OPENING YOUR ROAD IS OPEN Citizens throng to it because thatrsquos how starved they are for new infrastructure Your dream comes true your road changes the city forever With the longest traffic jam in the history of its existence caused mostly by people stopping in the middle to take photos Stage 11 Failure Like a fat person in denial Mumbai tries on the road for size only to find that it doesnrsquot fit it never fit it wouldnrsquot have fit 15 years ago You are cast aside like the broken little piece of elastic that you are But the next day a report appears on the front page of a newspaper about a new project that will cut my commute by six hours each wayhellip Rohan Joshi is a writer and standup comedian who likes reading films and people who do not use the SMS lingo You can also contact him on facebookcomtherohanjoshiu00a0u00a0