18 Jan 2020  |   05:12am IST

Honking nightmare haunts Margao's streets

A small part of Margao undergoes a nightmare of honking, at fixed times, almost every day. This is an absolute contrast to Goa’s legendary courtesies where sights of slow-moving traffic or chock-a-bloc snarls are not necessarily accompanied by the sounds of persistent honking. The source of the honking has been narrowed to the streets on which there are schools. Honking reaches a crescendo early morning and during lunch time when the schools break for the day

 

 

Come 7:20am, Sharmila Desai is rudely awoken by an unusual

‘alarm’ – insistent honking. The graphic designer, who works late hours, describes her almost daily ordeal: “By 7:30am, it reaches an almost ear-splitting crescendo and

then, half an hour later, it all subsides. But by then I’m wide awake.” The honking resumes to a similar intensity between 1 and 2 in the afternoon.

The Martinho Menezes Road that traverses a part of Margao’s Comba—where Desai resides—hosts the almost daily drama of students being dropped and picked up from Loyola High School and Fatima Convent High School. The road’s gentle slope ends at the V N Sarmalkar Marg along which is the Shree Damodar Higher Secondary School of Science and its English Vidyalaya High School.

The road also runs alongside 10 residential-cum-commercial buildings that house banks, eateries, salons, etc, while the Margao offices of BSNL and LIC are here as well.

While all three institutes have over a thousand students each and members of the PTAs of Loyola High School and Fatima High School have been made traffic wardens in gratitude for their lauded efforts to streamline the traffic outside the schools, the honking persists.

“It has nothing to do with the road or the amount of traffic it sees at specific times,” says a senior traffic police official wishing not to be named. “It has to do with people, including parents who come to pick up their children from the schools, parking haphazardly and lacking civic sense. Those who honk simply want to honk. They have no

patience.”

Ironically, when it comes to using the horn, “It appears that we Goans often prefer not to,” says Melanie D’Souza, a Mapusa-born, Mumbai-based, homemaker.

Pointing out the campaigns against noise pollution in the metro, she says, “You actually see commercial vehicles in Mumbai carrying the message ‘Horn Not Okay Please’,” says the 44-year-old. “In comparison, whenever I’m in Goa, I find it so peaceful that even in traffic pile-ups in Mapusa, people don’t honk as much.”

Real estate agent Vinod Dalani, a frequent visitor to the state from Pune, says he has learnt to use his horn less after travelling around Goa.

“The first time I was stuck in a traffic jam on the Verem-Betim road, I realised that the only persons honking were vehicles like mine that had out-of-state registration plates. The more I travelled around Goa, the more I noticed that most people actually patiently wait for the traffic to clear rather than blow their horns. I was shocked and

inspired,” says the 40-year-old.

Businessman and Belgaum-resident Yogesh Naik, who also travels regularly to Goa, agrees. “I come from a town where the horn is often used more than the brake. So it’s actually a lesson in civic sense when you’re driving in Goa,” says the 53-year-old.

Porvorim-resident Shekar Naik, who has had work stints in America and Australia, says for him and his friends in Goa it’s a matter of pride not to blow the horn while driving/riding.

“In many countries people actually don’t use the horn. Of course the roads there are better and traffic rules are implemented strictly. And here you can really get mad when a rider or driver cuts lanes or drives recklessly. But we try,” says the 38-year-old software engineer.

Coming back to the 4-metre-wide road in Comba, Alex Rodrigues, a traffic warden for Fatima Convent High School, says honking is simply a sign of impatience. “Every day we have to put up with a few people who are restless,” says

the 48-year-old, whose two children study at Loyola’s and Fatima’s.

Apart from vehicles that are already parked on the road, several parents turn up—some even in sedans and SUVs—around 1pm to pick up their children. “They don’t necessarily park badly, after all they realise that other parents are also there for the same reason, but I’ve seen that often those who honk are just impatient or just want clear passage,” says the Aquem-resident.

“We educate the parents of our students to use public transport or to come early to pick up their wards. (Haphazard) parking should absolutely not be allowed,” says R K Desai, Principal, Shree Damodar HSS of Science. He adds that the institute is also considering roping in parents to become traffic wardens.

Back on the road, it’s nearing 1pm and the honking has resumed.

“See, one has to realise that cities are becoming more and more crowded and traffic has also increased. Sure there are plans to shift schools out of crowded cities, but that will happen when it has to. In the meanwhile, you as a driver or rider have to realise that you can either keep your cool or blow your horn. The choice of how inconsiderate you are is yours,” says the police official as a matter of fact.