Forget all those romantic Bollywood rain-drenched romantic scenes, in Bihar’s capital, people are singing a very different tune during the monsoons, as Deedar reports below:

When it rains, people complain. The monsoon season has been accused of creating problems in our daily life.

There has been lot of complaints like water logging, traffic jam, power cuts, important works delayed, and what not. There is an issue that cannot be missed: the roads get washed away. There are a number of places in the city of Patna where the citizens are struggling with bad roads.
The Digha Post Office road leading from the big Digha vegetable market known as Digha Chauhatta upsets the residents a great deal. The road is to the north of Digha Market, in an area called ‘Gandhi gali’. After the rains, the people living here have to face nightmarish conditions, to get to the main road. They have to walk through large tracts of mud or use a roundabout way which takes time.
It isn’t easy for the people who have four-wheelers either.

Here’s a family whose car got stuck in the ooze. Dirty water on all sides. They could not step out of the car. They could not get the vehicle out of the mud, no matter how many gears the driver tried They were a frustrated lot, imprisoned in the car itself, in the middle of the road.
The difficulties are for everyone equally. Some say, iIt is better to walk few more steps than to get your wheels stuck in the mud. The Post office road lacks concrete or cement, and is a patchwork of some bricks which the force of the water has washed away, leaving only mud.

Tapeshwar Prasad, a professor and assistant librarian at St. Xavier’s College is a resident of Gandhi Gali . He said “We have registered complaints, and I have written many letters to the Subdivision Public Grievances Prevention Officer about the condition of the road but nothing has been done. I also wrote him in January. It is said that Rs 58 lakhs have already been sanctioned for the metalling of the road. But nothing has been done yet.”
Vendors along the street also expressed their woes. The waterlogged, bad roads affected their business and caused their customers much discomfort. They said that the photographs of the bad condition should be published everywhere to attract the government’s attention.
This bad road has made  the Gandhi Gali people  sing the Monsoon Blues, but the Patna Municipal Corporation, is tone deaf, it seems!

  Dateline Bihar