Your neighbourhood speed breaker could kill you

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Editor's note: “If you have five minutes, I want to show you something.” Vivek Velankar walks me out of his house and into his neighbourhood. It’s 11 a.m. on a weekday but the streets of Patwardhan Baug are empty. The bungalows and apartments are quietly blushing with autumn colours. Somewhere, a dog is barking lazily. All this is a welcome relief in a city like Pune, where cafes are taking over chai-kattas (hang-out spots), and the old wadas (bungalows) are counting their days before glass-front towers come up in their place. A high-speed bus corridor is being tried out in some places; there’s a metro line coming up as well. The persistence of such neighbourhoods is largely due to the efforts of traditionalists like Velankar. To them, development doesn’t mean more steel and concrete. They like their Pune calm and leafy. We stop at a four-way traffic junction. Velankar points to a street on our right. “This was in 2002,” he says. “We woke up one day to find a speed breaker had come up on this street overnight. There was no …