The phrase Jam Tomorrow means ‘some pleasant event in thefuture, which is never likely to materialize’. This derives from LewisCarroll’s Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, 1871, in whichthe White Queen offers Alice ‘jam to-morrow’. The phrase caught on quickly andjam tomorrow became a synonym for a ‘pie in the sky’ promise of good things inthe future.
‘Jam tomorrow’ for people living in this part of the worldis jam free roads and hassle free journey. Possibly, traffic jams are here tostay and our tomorrow will continue to be jammed.
They say the universe is expanding. And that should helpwith the traffic. Our traffic is also mounting but roads are getting choked. Wehave cars but we don’t have expressways. “The car has become the carapace, theprotective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man”, wrote MarshalMcLuhan, father of Electronic Age, in his pioneering book Understanding Media.
So, being in a jam, shelled in your car, is not an ordinaryfeeling or experience. It is like being held up in a vast space, which mayprobably look like a blackhole. You feel blind, breathless and bushed. Like ahelpless and lifeless creature, you see no getaway. You are just stuck in anoisy pell-mell. A troublesome tailback. You are irritated, feel trapped butstill struggle to make ends meet, reach destinations and meet deadlines.Nevertheless, with all desperate efforts to get out, your car proves to be ‘aconvenient place to sit out traffic jams’. You traffic in nostalgia, youtraffic in thoughts, and you traffic in all that you observe around. The details of your journey become out of theordinary.
However, a pragmatic reflection can also develop when youare stuck in a traffic jam. Like German Scientist Sebastian Thru who said,”I’ve developed my passion for cars that drive themselves from being stuck intraffic for many, many, many hours of my life. I don’t know what it adds up to,but I feel like I’ve lost a year or two just in traffic. That’s big to me.That’s a lot of time, a lot of money that I just lose on the road”.
Going by the time we spend in traffic jams every day, itamounts to loss of many productive years of our life. The student travelling toexam centre. A patient referred to hospital. A school kid waiting to be inclass. A teacher rushing for students. And many more. All squander time inhonking anarchy, dusty ambience and frozen travel. We bump, we bother, webluster. All that leaves us in a flap.
Bottomline: There are all the reasons to visualize thisfracas. To saunter roads of soul and soil. To take detours you had neverimagined. To face these gridlocks. Every morning. Every evening. To and fro.Here and there. Damn them for all that they deliver to us. Anxiety. Anger. Andirretrievable time loss. Our precious automobile carapace becomes our torturecell. You want to get down and leave it behind. You want to move on and meanderin silence. But there is only murky noise and no road ahead. There is no spaceto inch. You only wish for unlocking the traffic jam in everybody’s head: Ourpoliticians, administrators, policy makers, engineers, pedestrians and ofcourse, drivers holding the steering. Or else, you know your tomorrow is goingto remain Jam Tomorrow. Virtually.