Of muddy roads and resident humour in Dehradun

Dehradun was once fondly called the “Queen of the Hills.” Now, it seems Her Majesty has taken a tumble, and landed face-first in a trench outside my gate.

If cities were judged on the sheer theatrical value of their road maintenance efforts, ours would’ve swept the Filmfare Awards by now. What we have in this town is not just infrastructure — it's a long-running, open-air tragicomedy starring the Public Works Department, the Municipal Corporation, and a rotating cast of baffled residents trying to exit their own homes without mud wrestling.

It all began, like most fairy tales, with hope. A humble colony, brimming with tax-paying optimism, requested a road. The municipal authorities — ever the paragons of precision — politely informed us our colony was “outside the limits.”

Undeterred and determined, the residents did what all citizens are encouraged to do—take initiative. We pooled our funds, and with typical Indian jugaad built our road. For three glorious years, we tasted the forbidden fruit of functional infrastructure. Cars glided. Ankles stayed unbroken. Hope flourished.

Then, like an unwanted plot twist, the State PWD arrived. Not to help, but to heroically destroy our perfectly good road to build ‘a road’ to our colony. It was civic logic at its finest: "If it ain’t broke, break it and build it worse."

To be fair, the new PWD road did shine for a while. But just as we were getting used to this luxury, fate struck again, disguised as the “Smart City” project.

One morning, a JCB descended upon us — its mission — to perform open-heart surgery on our road. Because no Smart City can be complete without a sewer line laid after a new road is built. And because planning is for amateurs.

And thus, the road was sacrificed once more — this time to the God of Sewage.

Today, six months into this delightful civic purgatory, our road is a post-apocalyptic tribute to everything that can go wrong. It has become a daily obstacle course where residents tiptoe through slush and pirouette over potholes, and are considering buying rafts to get to the market.

Because what we have now is not a road but a reflection of our governance model — cyclical, confusing, and covered in wet cement.

Still, we, the citizens, find beauty even in this madness. Who needs Switzerland when you can watch a cow skid majestically past a half-dug trench at sunrise? Who needs adventure when your daily commute includes the adrenaline rush of dodging a falling sandbag?

So here’s to our road — our nostalgic time machine, our muddy rite of passage. The colony may not have a functioning road, but we do have resilience, humour, and an impressive collection of ruined footwear. Progress may be slow, misguided, and permanently under construction — but at least it’s entertaining.

Col Tirath Singh Rawat(Retd), Dehradun