Portrait of an infrastructural utility.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

It is true. The cables at the Signature Bridge do resemble the strings of a harp. They are almost waiting to be plucked! Who knows a strong breeze might do the needful, sounding a sudden pang in the polluted air.

Tall, stately and yet possessing such a minimalist body, the north Delhi infrastructural utility spans smoothly over the river Yamuna. Said to be double the height of Qutub Minar, it came up in 2018 as India’s first asymmetrical cable-stayed bridge. This afternoon, the edifice is looking as light as the fluffy clouds speckled across the sky. The bridge is actually weighed down with very many speeding cars and autos. Indeed, the floor is trembling gently to the traffic flow. (At least that’s what the feet feel on walking along the suspension.)

Besides performing its obligatory duties to the commuters, the bridge harbours a more leisurely society. Both sides are lined with ice-cream trolleys and khasta-kachori carts, catering to scores of romantic couples rebelliously lolling by the bridge’s many “No Stopping No Standing” signages. A loner stands out amid this crowd of lovers, gloomily gazing at the slant cables. The entire weight of the bridge’s traffic is in fact going up through these very lines of beauty, right to the topmost tip of the structure, perched high in the air.

Now a flock of black birds silently flies by the white cables—rising, dipping, rising again. The birds eventually descend towards a boat slowly crossing the Yamuna’s blackened water. In a jarring contrast to the modernist design of the bridge, the boat appears too primitive, an unpainted log of darkened wood.

Pockmarked with dry baldy patches, this same sluggish river grows more substantial as it trickles out to the other side of the bridge. This part of the Yamuna is far more scenic, overlooking the Tibetan refugee settlement of Majnu ka Tila. (Further away glistens the dome of the gurudwara that gives its name to the refugee settlement.)

On driving ahead to the other side of the bridge, it stops looking like a bridge, and starts resembling a pair of clasped palms—as if it were greeting the commuters with a namaste.

Lines of beauty

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