Potholes do not usually feature in stories of resurrection in our country. They are better known for dispatching motorists to orthopaedic wards – and occasionally to the next world.
Yet a news report from Uttar Pradesh suggests that our cratered highways may possess powers hitherto unrecognised by modern medicine.
The Bareilly-Haridwar highway, part of NH-74, has produced what could well be the first documented case of a pothole-assisted revival.
A jolt back to life
A 50-year-old woman, Vineeta Shukla, had been declared brain-dead by doctors in Bareilly. The ambulance carrying her home was already halfway into a funeral procession of sorts when fate, assisted by the Public Works Department, intervened.
Near Hafizganj, the ambulance struck one of the highway’s celebrated cavities. The jolt was not merely uncomfortable. It was transformative – medically transformative. The woman began breathing again.
Her husband, who had already alerted relatives to begin last rites, suddenly found himself cancelling them. Vineeta was rushed to another hospital in Pilibhit, where doctors treated her and eventually sent her home – alive, awake and talking.
Medical science may attribute the recovery to toxins, reflexes, neurological assessments and the Glasgow Coma Scale. But the rest of us cannot ignore the starring role played by a pothole.
The promise of pothole therapy
In a country where healthcare can be expensive and hospital beds scarce, this discovery opens new possibilities. Perhaps the National Highways Authority should consider a pilot project – therapeutic potholes strategically placed along critical routes. Ambulances could be instructed to drive over them at calibrated speeds. A new discipline might emerge – pothole therapy.
Sceptics will object that potholes have a less impressive record elsewhere. Every year they contribute to thousands of accidents. Two-wheelers skid into them. Cars break axles. Pedestrians stumble. Buses swerve. Riders collect fractured limbs with depressing regularity.
But that, surely, is an excessively negative way of looking at civic infrastructure.
Bones broken, lessons ignored
After all, these depressions come in many forms – potholes, trenches, ditches and sinkholes – each with its own personality. Some are modest enough to test a shock absorber. Others are large enough to swallow a tyre, a scooter or, on a particularly enterprising day, half a bus.
Indian roads, therefore, offer a buffet of experiences – broken ribs, fractured wrists, cracked skulls and the occasional fatality. It is the country’s most widely available public adventure sport.
The truly remarkable aspect, however, is the absence of responsibility. Roads are laid. Roads disintegrate. Accidents happen. Yet accountability remains as elusive as a smooth stretch of asphalt in the monsoon.
Tar, rain and corruption
Crores are spent on construction and maintenance every year. Layers of tar are ceremonially rolled out. Under those layers, corruption quietly performs its own engineering. The result is a road surface that appears sturdy on paper but melts at the first hint of rain or traffic.
At election time, politicians from the municipal ward to the national capital rediscover the issue with touching sincerity. They promise durable roads, scientific drainage and world-class infrastructure. The speeches are robust. The commitments firm. Then the last vote is counted.
Soon after, the potholes return – punctual, dependable and expanding with the enthusiasm of government schemes.
A miracle in the asphalt
Perhaps we have misunderstood them all along. Maybe they are not a sign of administrative neglect but an experimental public health initiative. If a pothole on NH-74 can revive the clinically lifeless, who knows what the ones in the rest of the country might accomplish?
For now, the civic authorities deserve a quiet word of thanks. Without intending to, they may have stumbled upon the first low-cost resuscitation device embedded in India’s highways.
If the discovery spreads, ambulance drivers may soon be advised to keep an eye out not for hospitals, but for the nearest pothole.
It is another matter that most people would still prefer a smooth road to a miracle.
