the BIPASA problem

sometimes ... well just sometimes, during one of those long and frequent fits of wramblingz that I suffer from, I feel that the calendar is one of the most important things in our lives. You look at it from any angle, and very faithfully, it does what it is meant to do, which is ... well ... show the date. It never questions why you need to know the date, never asks you why have you have hung it in such a disgraceful corner of the house , or why you have neglected it and let dust accumulate on it. It just does its job without any care in this wide and wonderful world, and ever happy, it flashes the current date to all who would care to look its way.

Wondering why this unwarranted affinity for these ... er ... er ... rather-bland-sheath-of-printed-paper-piled-together-and-hung-on-a-wall? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, and ... thanks to Aila, the winds are even stronger in Bengal, as a result of which the, answer is blowing rather strongly here too.

For the past one week in general, and the last 2-3 days in particular, prevailing circumstances, in and around my residence has actually goaded me to make such proclamations, as the one above. Hang on, let me get down to the details.

All those who stay in Calcutta will know, and for all those who do not, here's a question: Guess what is more common in Calcutta, than rasogollas and hand-pulled rickshaws? The answer is roads-in-the-making. Bewildered? Don't be. Roads-in-the-making are weird things that have carved out an exclusive niche for themselves in the lifestyle of all Calcuttans ... that make life for the average Calcuttan feel like, if not hell, slightly worse than hell. They are in fact so very different from their mistaken counterparts, the roads, that it does allow one to make a detailed analysis of the two. However fear not, we won't, because that would take us on a completely unwanted journey of futile analysis, and defeat the purpose of this post. Just be happy with the knowledge that roads-in-the-making are .... essentially, roads in the making, which will remain so for eternity. They are meant to become roads in the future, but ... won't.

Another fascinating object of interest in this City Of Joy is lack-of-electricity. Its presence is in fact so very glaring in today's Calcutta that it has indeed made electricity vulnerable to extinction, renting the hearts of so many individual starting from Benjamin Franklin to myself. But what to do, this is the scenario in the city today, and we've got to accept that as life.

While the two aforementioned aspects of Calcutta have plagued the city ever since it existed, a third problem cropped up a couple of days back as a direct consequence of RITM (Roads-In-The-Making), in our neighbourhood. As road-workers slogged on for days and nights to increase the width of the already wide road in front of our house, hacking at footpaths, and felling trees mercilessly ... they, in a rather heightened form of misplaced exuberance, drove their tools straight into, and then right through the water pipes of the neighbourhood.

CRUNCH!!!

Oops, it didn't quite sound that loud, but there was a severe water-crunch for the forthcoming days. And I was left staring at the calendar on the wall, sweating in the absence of electricity, without water, and with a hellishly pot-holed and ripped apart road in front of my house, wondering whether this was actually the 21st century or not. The calendar stared back, and I seemed to hear it saying 'Yes indeed'.

yeaass .... Now you know why I was talking of calendars at the very beginning of my post, don't you. It took time for the gravity of the grim situation to actually sink in, and that was when bells started ringing in our minds. So there we were, stuck in the year 2009 without proper roads, without electricity, and last of all without the basic living requirement---water, in the very heart of the City Of Joy. Call that irony of the highest possible degree. That wasn't all. When we actually complained to the local councillor, he actually had the audacity to shoot back at us saying that the road work was not at all involved in the stoppage of water supply, and the water was but our problem and that we had to deal with it. It took quite a lot of heated discussion to actually make them send men to do stuff for repair. Till then we had to be happy with drawing up tube-well water and adding the z thing ... what do you call it ... yup zeoline, to it before drinking. Also we had to shift base to our other house in a place which still had not recieved the brunt of the shortages. It took two full days to get the wather thing up and running, after proper medication ... potassium permanganate (the water's all pink and girly now!!!), and stuff.

So that was the story of the BIPASA problem. Still wondering what that means? Simply, the BIjli, PAni, SAdak problem!!!!