For want of a bridge, many tread on rocks

BAGH:

Near the Bagh bypass in Bagh city, the famous Dhulli Road comes across a storm water nullah. The ankle-deep water from the nullah flows over the road from the north and drips down a gentle slope on the other side.  Every day, hundreds of students and residents cross the nullah on their way to school or work and back.

Only there’s no bridge.

From primary school children to senior citizens, the pedestrians jump across the rocks that form a natural, albeit imperfect, walkway across the water. Like a one-way street used for two-way traffic, people can only cross in one direction at a time.

The nullah crossing, not more than 30-feet wide, has been like this “forever,” locals said. “Kashmir is the only place where water flows over the bridge,” Raja Arshad, a security guard who works near the Dhulli Road, joked.

Arshad is right in a sense. Not far from the nullah, water from the famous Paddar Nullah also crosses over a road. The people don’t seem too worried about the arrangement perhaps because they have gotten used to it and take it for granted, but it is difficult to understand why no one in the city government has ever thought of building a small bridge over the nullah to facilitate the pedestrians.

“I’ve broken my hands writing about issues like these,” a senior journalist, Pervezul Hassan Tahir said. “But the authorities don’t care about them.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2012.