They say that the corporate life of a techie is a bumpy ride. Deadlines, client expectations, performance appraisals, office politics, backstabbing and the likes make it a very difficult proposition altogether. Education institutions of our day have been following a practice of giving training to the students to help them prepare for this difficult ride of corporate life. By following such a salutary practice, Infopark Kochi seems to have embarked on a similar mission – of preparing employee mentally to face the bumpy corporate ride. For that they have meticulously prepared approach roads to Infopark that give the employees of Infopark, the Infoparkians, a bumpy ride, quite literally, during their daily commute to their offices.
If you are relatively new to Infopark and its immediate neighbourhood, you could only watch with envy the skill with which Infoparkians ride and drive their vehicles through the Infopark approach roads besmirched with potholes of all sizes and variants. The deftness with which they negotiate those potholes, though often jumping into them, but emerging out unscathed, is some sight to behold. An Infoparkian’s commute to Infopark is no less perilous than a soldier’s patrolling the frontiers of our nation, both facing similar threat to life, though with dissimilar probability of occurrence. Those who have laughed at the foolishness of driving tests in Kerala – through ‘8’ shaped track for two wheelers and ‘H’ shaped track for four wheelers – are now marvelling at the long-sightedness of those wise men while they travel through these Infopark approach roads. If not for that well practised pyrotechnics how we would have traversed these bumpy roads?
The Kakkanad-Edachira road to Infopark is so much in shambles that if you tell a person that once there had been a well-laid road there, he/she would find it almost impossible to believe that. The road has been deteriorating for so many months now that it is a grave crime that the authorities haven’t done anything to restore the road. To make matters worse, recently two deep pits have been dug out on that road, with concrete slabs on top of them, thereby raising their height by at least by 5-6 inches above the residual road. These two pits have made sure that vehicles are unable to pass from both sides simultaneously, thereby causing terrible traffic blocks. For what purpose those pits are dug, God only knows.
By the stroke of luck, if somehow you reach The Carnival building (formerly Leela building) after that arduous journey through the Kakkanad-Edachira road, a new challenge awaits you. The Infopark-Brahmapuram road has been awaiting beautification and the laying of 4 lane road for quite some time. The process of tarring the road was started some two months back, but the work is not complete till now, resulting in lot of dust particles floating around in the air. Infoparkians who have the misfortune of walking on that road are in grave danger of contacting lung diseases. To add up to the chaos in that road, you have illegal car parking on both sides of the road. As there are no enough space for car parking in the Carnival building, employees working in that building are forced to park their vehicles on the road. The whole affair shows the terrible absence of proper planning.
After getting so much troubled by commuting through such terrible road if you decide to change your track to office and make use of the Express Way to reach Infopark, you will be faced with a more serious threat. If at Kakkanad-Edachira there is only some probability of getting killed, journey through Express Way has in reality taken some lives in the recent past. It was only a few days back that two lives were lost in an accident at Express Way. Accidents have become so much of a routine affair that the district administration has taken special attention to find solutions for this menace, after many complaints from the citizens.
All in all, daily commuting to Infopark has become a matter of life and death for Infoparkians. It is a shame that the Thrikkakara municipality, under which the Infopark comes, is not taking adequate care in making life any easy for them. Professional tax deducted from the salaries of these Infopark employees accrue to the coffers of Thrikkakara municipality and still they are unwilling to spend money to build good roads, to do maintenance works and to create better traffic system. Employees at Infopark are not organised and hence district administration and municipality tend to disregard their grievances. However if things continue in this fashion Inoparkians would be forced to organise themselves and agitate against the authorities. We have seen how the workers of Munnar organised without the banner of any political party and succeeded in gaining their rights. Infoparkians could well follow suit.
Picture Courtesy: Deccan Chronicle
