 More than a year ago, in February 2008, they barricaded Indiranagar 100 ft road for Namma Metro work. Most of the time is consumed in erecting the pillars of the elevated railway. So the first action they took is to claim most of the 100 feet road, leaving two narrow lanes on both sides. Not before long, the single narrow lane gave up, and it became really painful to travel through it. I didn't have much choice myself as my workplace is right there, so I chose to document the pillar erection process itself. In early March, we saw heavy cranes coming in, and they started working on making foundation of the pillars. The places were already carefully marked on the road. |
 Next came the drilling machines, which proceeded to make 4 deep holes at four corners of a square. The noise was exceeding our tolerance level by several decibels. But the machine was an engineering beauty. Armed with a spiral drill, it would be able to cut through almost any earth material, and the spiral automatically carries the debris up. This exercise went on for a few days, till they finished four neat holes, and moved on about 100 ft (or more) to build the next pillar. When they were doing this, because of debris clearing, too many heavy trucks will move around, which broke whatever left on the road. |
 The holes were pretty deeper than we thought. They were dug close to 35 feet deep. (How did I know? Well on completion, they threw a metal line inside each with a little weight attached to the end. And then they lifted it and laid straight to measure it using a tape. Obviously I couldn't read the tape, but I counted number of steps a guy needed to walk from one end to the other. He needed ~25 steps.) Once the holes were ready, they poured concrete to create 4 underground pillars. And finally covered the top with mud and leveled them with the road. Now unless you looked carefully, you can't find the positions of the pillars. So, April 2008, we had the foundation of the pillar done. |
 Fastforward SIX months. After complete quietness of half an year, they exposed the heads of the pillars once again. They chopped the heads a little bit to make all heads at the same level, and roughened the surfaces a lot for further concrete to hold. Then dug a square shaped ditch around them. |
 The ditch happened to be the place of a table top, built on the top of four pillar buried in ground. The ditch is drained out, and a huge cube shaped mesh is built there. The top ends of the four pillars went inside the cube. Some days later, they filled up the mesh by concrete, and the base of the pillar was complete as soon as it was dry. The whole thing they have made till now is still completely underground, and top of the 'table', which is a flat platform of say 10 feet x 10 feet, is at the same level of the road. |
 Move your time machine again by six months, and we reach mid-March of 2009. Again the place became active; and we can see just like OpenGL wireframe rendering, a metro pillar have raised its head. It is nothing but circularly arranged thick vertical steel rods, held together by steel rings and tie-ups. Once the vertical cage is up, they covered it by metal semi-circular panels, kept in place by square frames and huge sized nut and bolts. Finally a big mixer machine came in and poured in liquid concrete in the cylinder. |
 And finally, in April it was time to build the top platform of the pillar on which the metro pathway will rest. If you look carefully, there is a pipe to drain water through the pillar which opens up at the ground level. Another matter of concern was the safety of the workers, you can see people working at the top of the 40 feet high pillar with a helmet that wouldn't stand a drop of 5 feet, and they are too poorly harnessed themselves to arrest a fall. It is a wonder that we don't hear about major accidents during such big construction activities with so little care about workers' safety. |
 At last, 3rd week of April, we are almost done. What is to be done now is to spray water regularly for curing, so that air cracks do not appear. They cover it by jute wrappers to retain moisture. This is it. In last week of April, our office has shifted to Koramangala. So no more updates :-) |