PHOTO: PRABIR DAS

“His bright idea was to take the on-ramp from Bijoy Sarani, in the opposite direction mind you, go to Kuril [7 kilometres in the opposite direction], get off the expressway, get on again from the opposite side, and then drive seven kilometres back to get off a few hundred feet from his office! Obviously, we missed the dawat.”

ELEVATED CORRESPONDENT

A wife in the capital has become exasperated following the opening of the elevated expressway as her husband refuses to take any other road, even though the expressway doesn’t yet serve the areas where they live or work.

“Okay, we know Dhaka has a severe traffic problem,” Sanjida told this correspondent yesterday after getting off their car, following what she said was the 38th time in six days that her husband, Hasan, had veered onto the on-ramp of the expressway at the last second.

“And I know he, as someone who drives a car, has suffered in traffic all these years, but come on! It was fine the first day when the expressway opened, even cute how excited he was,” she said.

“But this is too much. I mean he comes home every day from work at least two hours late, because according to him, he took the expressway to make the journey ‘quicker’.”

Sanjida said they live in Mohammadpur, and her husband works in Farmgate.

“I somehow knew, once I heard that the expressway would have a landing in Farmgate, that we were in trouble. Just yesterday, I left work and met him at his office, and we were supposed to visit relatives in Dhanmondi. Pretty simple, right? Wrong.”

Sanjida narrated that instead of taking a left turn at the Farmgate bus stand, or the next on after that, Hasan went on to the Bijoy Sarani signal, answering her frantic protests with the words “You’ll see, it’ll be quicker”, and took a right.

“His bright idea was to take the on-ramp from Bijoy Sarani, in the opposite direction mind you, go to Kuril [7 kilometres in the opposite direction], get off the expressway, get on again from the opposite side, and then drive seven kilometres back to get off a few hundred feet from his office! Obviously, we missed the dawat.”

She claimed this was the route Hasan took every day from work, even though there was no need for him to do that to get to their home.

“The expressway is great, you can get from Farmgate to Mohakhali, Banani, Uttara really fast and you can come back the other way in a jiffy. But we’re not going there.

“So, when today we were going from Banani to Gulshan, and he just saw the on-ramp and took a sharp turn onto it, I just got off,” Sanjida said.

When asked for her husband’s number, she willingly gave it. “Yeah, you talk to him, because I won’t.”

Contacted, Hasan said, “Listen, it is up to me to know the ins and outs of the expressway. And the roads are so good, the traffic so light, and all the while you know there is that insane traffic below. Plus, whenever people discuss the expressway at work, which is like all the time, I have the best answers.

“And can you imagine? Airport to Farmgate in 10 minutes! I just know there is a hack to Dhaka traffic, and I will keep trying till I figure it out. Hold on, I have to pay the toll at Kawla now.”