I had written earlier about how festivals make life of the ordinary citizens living in the place a mess. There is something similar, or perhaps even more disturbing thing going on in Thrissur for years now. A part of the festival celebrations make the lives of Thrissurians a mess for almost 3 weeks an year.
Swaraj Round in Thrissur is a circular road in the center of the city and it is the busiest road in Thrissur. During Thrissur Pooram, the two participating temples would erect three huge, multi-storied panthals in this road. All three panthals are built at the center of the road, thus making the traffic blocks as long as 3-4 kilometers. It would take so much time and fuel to get you where you want to be inside the city. Not only that, even though the Thrissur corporation had left pre-defined holes for panthals in the refurbished Swaraj Round road, the panthal makers dug the road to create new holes on their own this year.
The panthal work would begin almost 2 weeks before the Pooram day and it would take 3-4 days after Thrissur pooram to remove it. This means that those who go to the city for these three weeks are really screwed. Not to mention about the plight of those who live inside the city limits. Many suggestions had been made earlier to move panthals in the large space that the Thekkinkaadu ground has or at the least to move it a little to the road side. But nothing has been done about it since this is something that involves religion and it’s customs.
This panthal mess has been going on in several parts of Kerala when there is a church or temple festival. In my parish, we used to have panthals in the road for the annual festival and there had been two accidents. Once, the panthal slanted in the heavy rains and in another year, a truck hit one side of the panthal. Since then, the panthal was moved to a corner of the church ground.
I hadn’t really bothered about this traffic until I learned driving and last week I faced the music twice when I had to pass through the city to go some place. It is high time the authorities do something about this and the public let them do it (though the authorities and police have many suggestions, they hesitate to implement it because there is much religious and community sentiments).