As Golden Gate bridge in the US turns 79, a look at India’s coolest bridges
From Pamban bridge that featured in 'Chennai Express' to the historical Purana Pull of Hyderabad, a look at bridges closer home
In the early hours of 27th May 1937, 18,000 people gathered on either side of what would become one of San Francisco’s most iconic landmarks, the Golden Gate Bridge. More than 1,200 metres long, engineer Joseph Strauss’s controversial project was then the longest suspension bridge in the world. The bridge spans the Golden Gate Strait, after which it is named.
The bridge— which nearly 2 billion vehicles have crossed since American president Franklin Roosevelt declared the bridge open for vehicular traffic— is not actually golden, but a vivid shade of International Orange.
Good architecture has always managed to capture popular imagination, and so too has the Golden Gate Bridge. Vikram Seth’s debut and Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel, for instance, was titled ‘The Golden Gate’. Written entirely in (iambic tetrameter) sonnets, it traces the lives and loves of a group of young people in the Silicon Valley of the 1980s.
A look at some of India’s own fabulous bridges:
1. Cherrapunji, Meghalaya: Umshiang Double-Decker Root Bridge
2. Rishikesh, Uttarakhand: Ram Jhoola & Lakshman Jhoola
If you’ve ever been to Uttarakhand, you’ve at least heard of, if not walked across the Ram Jhoola (230m) and the Lakshman Jhoola (140m). The two are similarly designed swinging suspension iron bridges. Constructed in 1939, the Lakshman Jhoola is believed to memorialize the holy prince Lakshman’s journey across Ganga, while the Ram Jhoola, constructed more recently in 1986, connects several important temples in the area.
3. Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu: The Pamban Bridge
This bridge also has made a space for itself in popular culture lately, having been featured in the 2013 Shah Rukh Khan starrer Chennai Express. The bridge has survived more than a century in a cyclone-prone area, amidst corrosive sea waters. In 1964, after a major cyclone hit the Pamban Bridge it was ‘Metro Man’ E Sreedharan who was put in charge of bringing the bridge back to form.
4. Hyderabad, Telangana: Purana Pull
This is Hyderabad’s first bridge, also known as the ‘Pyar-ana pull’, as Prince Muhammad Quli Qutub Shah’s father constructed this bridge to help the prince cross over safely to meet Bhagmati the woman he was in love with Built during the reign of the Qutub Shahi Dynasty in 1578 over river Musi, the bridge is now defunct but it was the only one to survive the Great Musi Flood of 1908. Coincidence or the mark of true love? You decide.
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