By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS
New Delhi/Gurgaon : On a chilly January evening, the 27.7 km multi-lane Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway inaugurated Wednesday gave the Delhi-Haryana border a rather exotic feel.
Bathed in the golden glow of the setting winter sun, the two states at their border – where the skyline of the capital melted into the silhouettes of glitzy malls, high-rises and new-age info-tech hubs of upmarket suburban Gurgaon – seemed poised to take a giant leap in time.
The network of nine flyovers looping the Access Controlled Delhi-Gurgaon section of National Highway 8 like strands in a necklace stood like a precursor to change.
For those present at the inauguration ceremony Wednesday evening, the expressway was a symbol of better, bigger and more globalised “greater Delhi” obliterating territorial boundaries.
“The capital is riding to the future astride its giant network of roads,” said Dominic Allers, a German software engineer who is in India to oversee an info-tech project in Gurgaon. The 34-year-old professional stopped his black Toyota Corolla out of curiosity near the Rao Tula Ram Marg-end of the expressway, the venue of the inauguration.
“I was on my way to Gurgaon through the Dhaula Kuan-Gurgaon At Grade Road (the one that runs below the expressway). But I decided to take a detour and try the expressway instead. This is amazing, it reminds me of the roads in back home in Berlin,” said the tall foreigner.
At that precise moment, the official mood of the ceremony gave away to sudden merriment. The reason: a gaggle of eunuchs from the nearby sprawl took over the gleaming tarmac. “Give us something, we bring luck,” shouted the prettiest among them in a blue sari, breaking into a dance bang in the middle of the expressway.
The lensmen swarmed around them and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) team, overseeing the ceremony, offered them sweets and soft drinks.
“In Indian mythology, hermaphrodites are known to bring luck because they represent the ‘ardhanariswar’ (half man-and-woman god). We hope their presence works well for the expressway,” smiled an NHAI officer, who watched them dance.He hoped that Delhi would get to see more such expressways in future to break the traffic gridlock.
“I often go abroad and the expressway is like a godsend. Never mind the toll,” said Sanjay Pandey, a Singapore-based exporter. He was at the function at the behest of a friend from the media.
“The officials say travellers entering the city from the Indira Gandhi International Airport don’t have to pay toll tax; but it hardly matters. The fact is there will be no red lights to stop me. I could have paid the toll both ways,” Pandey said.
His wife, who owns a shop in the DLF Complex in Gurgaon, is a daily commuter. She could not stop beaming. “Thank god, I can reach my shop in 25 minutes from our Vasant Vihar home. I drop my kids to school in Gurgaon and visit my in-laws there. Earlier, it used to take me an hour,” said Anju.
She, however, wondered why did it take the Delhi government and the NHAI nearly three years more than the July 2005 deadline to complete the project.
But Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was too busy offering cryptic bytes to the media to answer her query. Dikshit looked smug with a job “well-done”.
The Delhi government is going out of its way to make the capital a city of flyovers and bypass roads. According to government sources, there are nearly 23 flyovers, bypasses and arterial links in the pipeline in the run up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
“We are using state of the art technology to minimise pollution, manual activity and saving time in the process,” said an official.
Looks like, Delhi will soon go the US way. “It almost reminds me of the Orlando-Orange County Expressway in America,” said Monica Thapa, an NRI, who was approached by IANS near Dhaula Kuan, where she had stopped at a store to buy groceries for the week. Thapa commutes to Gurgaon everyday for work.