Lal Chowk is like an uncared child of a town planner, born to be torn into pieces, its beauty changed into deformity, none of his parents took care of him. The clock tower its mother, which stood standing, motionlessly watching its alleys being chocked day by day. Now its child in its final stage, forced to drink the cup of poison. Its mother was raped many times, flags were hoisted on her bosom claiming victory over her, but she just stood silently watching her child, watching her child being taken to the gallows.
Lal Chowk is being developed to make it Tourist-friendly but by the direction in which the work is heading it is sure they will end by making it people-unfriendly. But the matter of fact is that nothing in Kashmir has been people friendly, be it the flyover, which ends before it even think of going through that route, connects the Secretariat to the erstwhile Legislative Assembly or the decorative fountains which are placed in the middle of the streets of Srinagar, where roads exist in between the potholes.
A visible forty percent decrease in road width without any plan for diversion of traffic is the recipe for a messy situation where traffic jams would not be as sweet as fruit jams.
Any kid can tell when traffic density of a road increases the road should be widened so that more vehicles could be accommodated, but our able town planners thought otherwise.
Oscar Wilde© once famously said “Lal Chowk is being raped”
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