Beach Walk I

Beach Road is Vizag's answer to Mumbai's Marine Drive. This long strip of wide, immaculately maintained road along the beach is a magnet for families, couples, groups of young men, cricket players, cadets, walking clubs, joggers, roller-skaters, and the attendant chat and cheap-toy vendors, depending on the time of day.

I decide to go for a walk in the late evening, around 8pm. The sun has set a while ago, and the fairly good illumination is from the orange-coloured fog-lights lining the street. I am suprised that the road is maintained so well. Along both sides of the road is a row of abundant parking spaces, for cars on one side, motorcycles and scooters on the other. The footpath running along the beachward side is about 15 feet wide. The low wall separating the sand from the footpath has been turned into quality marble-topped seating; it runs all the way along the road for several kilometres. It's surprisingly crowded all the way up to 10, with lots of street vendors and "parlours" selling food, drinks, modest chat and shell handicrafts. I'm disappointed that I can't eat anything outside.

The amount of trash that piles up surprises me; there are no trash bins anywhere and people just drop wrappers everywhere along the footpath. I'm inclined to believe they tried an experiment with trash cans but found that people dropped their trash on the footpath anyway. Yet there isn't much accumulation of trash on the footpath; I will learn later that a small army of municipal sweepers descends on the road early each morning to remove all traces of last night's trash!

At this late evening hour the beach is frequented mostly by families and couples. Children play on the footpath, shooting fluorescent parachutes up into the air or arguing with their parents for another ice cream. Couples are shy, constrained by the norms of conservative Andhra society. Some of them sneak off to sit behind the moulded bases of the numerous lamp-posts on the sand. These non-functional light posts provide some shadow away from the glare of the street lights, a modicum of privacy. It is 10pm by the time I return home. The streets near my place are almost deserted, but Beach Road is still fairly crowded.