I am old enough to not remember road dividers, and that thought amused and shocked me in equal measure when reports of raised barricades began making their way to newspapers last month. When did they become such an intrinsic part of this city, I wondered, and when did I stop noticing? When did we stop crossing streets at random, without a care for life, limb, or the world, and start jumping over dividers?

The barriers in question crept into our public discourse when angry people began accusing the BMC of making it harder for people to cross the streets. There were also accusations of them demolishing dividers that didn’t need replacing, which I dismissed because of the implicit hint of corruption. If there is one thing every resident of Bombay has always known, it is that the BMC is incapable of corruption. I knew that if those barriers were being demolished, they must have been removed for a good reason. Perhaps the shade of paint used on the older ones was wrong, and not in keeping with the aesthetic that influences the rest of our public infrastructure.