Last week, we decided to go out, and since there were quite a mumber of new malls in the town, we thought we'd visit one such mall.
Being a Saturday,we did expect a few traffic problems,parking problems and ofcourse a huge crowd at the mall.With the heavy rains, it has become a nightmarish experience to travel on the roads of Kolkata. And moreover with the tram lines being repaired and relaid in most places of the city,it has only added to the woes.
My husband had a wonderful time driving, trying dodge the water-filled potholes, trying hard to avoid the eccentricities of our favourite, reckless taxi drivers(who by the way consider they own the roads and all the other vehicles on the road, since they dont care if they brush against a few while they drive hysterically),and at the same time the tram lines which are in the middle of the roads,all this while its raining outside.
One might wonder why we chose such a day to go out,but the point is any day at any time this is the situaution in Kolkata,especially during monsoons(and yeah, we have rains here even in winters sometimes).
After about one hour on the road,for a 10km stretch, we were still about a few 100 yards from the mall and then there was this huge traffic jam completely halting all the vehicles. A few cars,including us were lined up for a U-turn,some had to take a right turn, some had to go straight and a few had to take a left turn. But the traffic constable chose to consider the traffic on the opposite side, completely ignoring this side bringing all the vehicles to a grinding halt for more than 40 minutes.
After all this chaos, we finally made it to the mall's parking lot and managed a spot faster than we expected. The moment we entered the mall,for a minute I felt I was in 'Kumbh mela' with people everywhere.The main motivation for us to go there was the huge book store we had heard about, but everything else was dampener.Every corner of the mall was occupied including the food court with each counter having serpentine queues and thats when we decided we should head back home where one can breathe and eat in peace.
What had to be a nice outing ,left us frustrated.