The term road, any stretch that connects two points, thanks to the various parameters reckoned to describe its profile in our times, has acquired many avatars over time, beginning with its primordial identity lane (a narrow road, often in villages, still to be seen in Mysuru city’s old residential parts). A public way, with buildings on both sides, threatening to spill into the walkway, falls into the class of roads called street. A road with trees and buildings on its either sides is described by the term avenue. A wide street in a city with trees or greenery on both sides, often with a median in the middle, is a boulevard. A winding road that has its route shaped by natural features such as a lake or hillock is called a driveway.
Mysuru region has stretches of all the aforementioned avatars of roads while the credit for creating avenues and boulevards in city that have endured for more than hundred years goes to the erstwhile kings and their chief administrators. Squares too have a long history in Mysuru while plazas are of recent origin. The dismal upkeep of virtually all types of stretches in Mysuru, mentioned above, leaving much to be desired, is hogging column-space of readers’ views in this daily with the administration looking the other way.
