Pedder Road or Dr. Gopal Rao Deshmukh Marg is one of the main arterial roads of Mumbai. And if you don’t know it , Mumbai is the Financial Capital of India. That is why its streets are paved with gold .

Peddar Road has seen a lot of VIP movement right from the Pope in his Popemobile, the Queen of England, the daily trips from Mantralaya to God Alone Knows where by God Alone Knows Who, and Heads of State, zooming down with screaming Pilot cars including our present President’s latest visit that brought local traffic to a 2 1/2 hour halt.

Well, in a country of 1.3 billion souls,2 1/2 hours is nothing in a lifetime especially if your life is hanging by a thread and comes to an end within minutes because you have missed your scheduled life-saving surgery.

Pedder Road was once lined with elegant bungalows nestled in wooded compounds Today most of the bungalows have been replaced with a hodge-podge of buildings representing Mumbai’s architectural journey – right from Art Deco to modern kitsch. Also most of the time the road is lined up with bored policemen waiting for the VIP movement to pass.

So one would expect that the pavements of this Very Important Road would be well maintained and standable for the policemen of not walkable for the pedestrians who use this road.

But nay, pavements are NOT meant for pedestrians. Whoever thought of that is a total moron!

Mumbai Streets are paved with GOLD.

Come January and the roads are frantically prettified once again ensuring that the annual Municipal Road Maintenance budget is depleted and ready to receive replenishments on April 1st.

As a matter of fact, currently,a swanky new public toilet is being constructed on top of a side lane Murli Deora Marg leading off Pedder Road, for the convenience of numerous policemen patrolling the area. Long needed though it may be, ( the place is crawling with security men in all kinds of uniforms). It won’t be long before the Chowk on top is renamed Sandas Chowk in honour of the new toilet and possibly the Eau de Toilette that will soon waft upwards to the upper floors of buildings whose windows remain steadfastly closed keeping in the cool air-conditioned air..

Since most of these people who live in high places have swanky cars to take them even a foot away, there is obviously no need for pavements.

That is why the pavements are made specially to provide the hospitals nearby with enough patients who trip, fall or are killed outright on the road because there is no pavement to walk on .

Pavements to walk on are a hangover from our colonial past. And like everything that is British or foreign finds no place in new India which is writing its own history so too are Mumbai’s pavements.

Mumbai pavements are paved in gold.

You can spread out a mat and sell random stuff like underwear or kitchen knives as well as essentials like fruit and vegetables. A pavement shop requires very little investment apart from a petty sum to grease some palms. Besides this is known as doorstep shopping – step out and buy your stuff.

So when pavements are NOT meant for walking, it matters little whether they are paved with pavers or uneven covers of various utility channels running below the street. Not to mention that they are occupied by bus stops or milk booths or trees, or even beggars who own cell phones ( establishing their address proof thereby). And it gets even better when the pavements are a foot high or non-existent in parts.

And if you thought the pavements have it bad, just imagine what goes on under the flyover – the first flyover in Mumbai. It has an entire family living there, working industriously on stuff to sell or just watching serials on their smart-phones !

I just can’t wait for the rains when the water gushes down and camouflages the 1ft high distance between the pavement and the level of the road. That will be the true test of a die-hard Pedder Road Walker who can figure out where the pavement ends and the road begins.

In the meanwhile, I urge the government to make it mandatory to warn everybody

Walking is injurious to health. You are walking at your own risk.

Ciao