Civilized existence remains a dream in India

June 3, 2008

Two days with no water supply, eight hours with no power, five days with the phone line disconnected and a four feet drop into a gravel hill as we step outside our home - these are the realities we lived with last week. I feel ashamed to say I live in urban India and it’s funny how often I contradict myself. Just in the last post I boasted about the wonderful locality of Pune we live in and now a nightmare unfolds in our lives.

It all started Wednesday last when the PCMC (Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation) guys in a strive to make the area look Singapore were engaged in making and remaking the well-laid roads. I fail to understand why they spend so much money on concrete, gravel and man power in redoing nice stuff and breaking better things along the way. I mean is having a walking pavement such a bad thing. To satisfy the whims and fancies of a PCMC officer, the entire brigade was out there breaking the 4 feet wide walking pavement and small lining of plants that people have outside their bungalows. Apparently having plants along the pavements is encroaching into the corporation property and the pavements eat into the road space which is alreayd wide enough to engage the current traffic - these are service lanes for Pete’s sake. In their over-enthusiasm, they first damaged our driveway making it near impossible to take the car out. What followed next was even more scary. They ruptured the water line and we were left wondering when the following evening and the next morning there was no water and I’m standing in the bathroom with my toddler son with potty in his bum wondering how to clean him up. I scrambled for a cup of water from the bucket (damn! I always fill the bucket for emergency and just when I needed it it wasn’t there) and cleaned his bum before going down to inspect if there was something wrong with the motor. Then a quick glance at the previous day’s paper to see if there was an announcement about no water-supply. Nothing there either. About a good hour later on my usual morning walk, I notice there is water gushing out of the pipes in the neighboring building which confirmed my fear - our damn pipes were damaged.

This is not even Chennai so it was a funny sight of to the morning-walkers passing by - as I carried buckets and buckets of water from the adjoining building to stock supplies in the bathroom and kitchen. An hour later the corporation guys showed up and in their typical style blamed each other for the problem all the while empathizing with us. They promised to fix it by the end of day. To cut a long story short - the plumber not being able to detect where the leak was and lack of equipment to dig in as using heavy machinery would mean damaging the electrical lines beneath and blackout of the entire area (daunting idea) meant a delay of another 24 hours before the connection would be restored. Imagine the ingeniousness of a laying water pipes beneath the hi-tension electrical wires and fiber optic cables! Finally, when it was all done by Friday evening, the water was trickling when the supply started (water from corporation is twice a day - morning and evening). Another inspection and we detected the fitted pipes were loose that let most of the water out thereby lowering the pressure immensely. We put on the plumber cap ourselves and fixed it.

Two days later, I see the end of the road flooded with water. Water gushing in full force from the main water pipeline. It was the turn of the people down the road. They just don’t learn from experience, do they? This was not all. In the process, they cut BSNL phone lines sending me into the dark ages again (that should explain the absence of posts). If that wasn’t enough, the Thursday power cuts are on.

I’m an optimist and a believer in India - but days such as these make me revisit the decision and if it’s really worth it? Is it too much to ask for - water & electricity. Aren’t these among the essentials of today’s times?

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Comments

3 Responses to “Civilized existence remains a dream in India”

Bharath on June 4th, 2008 4:28 am

Hi,
As a first time visitor to your blog, the post on water,electricity outage was not the sort of welcome I expected - especially since I’m making my plans to move back to India from across the 7 seas.
For a moment, stepping into your shoes, I tried to imagine the situation. Honestly, I felt blank !
But, more than an optimist, I’m an opportunist. Not talking abt a Swades-type power generation here but I owe it to be the responsibility of our generation so that the future generations - when Lil’ General gets older - dont have to stock water.

Great blog - Keep up the amazing work.
A grand party : Reflections — Lakshmi Nagarajan’s weblog [India, Pune, Trading, Stay at home mom, Bangalore, Writing, Freelancing, REC, NIT] on June 16th, 2008 5:20 am

[…] two of living in the dark ages. Just when I thought the nightmare was over , another episode started worse than the previous one. The monsoon set in with a heavy downpour on […]
Lakshmi on June 16th, 2008 9:32 am

Bharath,

Thank you and sorry to disappoint you. The conditions described are not all year round. Strangely a lot of tier-two cities atleast down South fare way better than the most popular ones for IT such as Bangalore and Pune. Blame it on the surge in population - if the infrastructure growth is not at the same pace then this is what one could expect. The growth story is media fed but a lot of it is true too.

I’m sure you’ll have a lot of better things to look forward to at home. Welcome back!

- Lakshmi