Rain, Rain, Horn OK Please

The reason we Bangaloreans get all excited when the city floods after a rain is that we need something to complain about other than the traffic, which gets terribly (yawn) borrrring after a while.  

“Do you know how long it took me to do the 5 km to Brigade Gateway?”

“Ok, if took you less than 2 hours, buy us the bisi bele bath and one by six coffee. Ask for extra kara boondi.”

…and so on.  After all, we are only human (even though it does seem otherwise if you listen to conversations on food as above).

In these last few days, the neighbourhood Whatsapp group – of which I am now a Distinguished Alumni, but still receive messages – has everyone’s personal account of the trauma they faced the last night, with video, photos, Income Tax Refund details and annual expenditure on dog food.  Needless to add, everyone is deeply touched by everyone else’s plight, before adding: “Suresh, this is nothing.  My basement……”

Everyone is of the view – and this is synchronous, unanimous, unambiguous and uninterruptedly emotional – that someone should do something.  Now, you should know that the city once had a municipal council.  This council had a bunch of elected folks and if you put their photos into a box and took eleven of them out, you would have a Wanted poster for the nearest cop station, no questions asked (those photos also raised serious doubts on the rest of our population – the Are They Homo Sapiens? Question – but I shall not digress).  The Municipal Council was dissolved (no, not in the rain, dumbo) and since then, We Have No One (well, Jesus saves, of course, but in a slightly larger context, if you see what I mean), the thought of which makes most Bangaloreans burst into tears which, you will agree, doesn’t do much for the flood situation.

The road in front of my home – calling it a road is a touching gesture on my part – was under a foot of water this morning and there were seven people standing in the water looking important (the people, not the water.  These details matter.)  Most of them were on their phones.  (Now, now.  Don’t take this literally.  They weren’t ON the phones, which would mean that the phones were IN the water, which, even the Unicorniest of Bangaloreans – the chap who runs Cred, for example – wouldn’t do).  I gathered by listening in – a most healthy and biologically nourishing activity with your morning tea - that all of them were telling others how bad it all was and, presumably, they were standing in the middle of the road, sixteen inches in the dirtiest water I have seen since my school’s sambar, to ensure accurate measurement.  

ps: just fyi - this need for accurate-measurement-with-adjusht-maadi is another Bangalorean auto immune disease that makes us sometimes seem not so human. 

It's been sunny all day today and everyone’s deeply disappointed and returned to complaining about traffic: apparently, someone on Outer Ring Road (now called Under Ring Road) has parked his boat in such a way that it is obstructing all boats and that one fishing vessel that has come up this morning from Mangalore.