In the geography class when teacher used to tell, “India is a developing country,” for a moment I was confused, what a developing country I asked. She fumbled with her saree and explained comething that was nowhere close to the answer very confidently.
Still however, I never understood the meaning of the sentence and that was the B.W era, AKA BEFORE WIKIPEDIA in fact it was Before Internet era, so there was no one other than school textbook who could give me this information. I remember walking sadly home, that why my country is still developing country when it dawned on me. It occurred to me when I was walking home one day from school and I fell in a ditch dig on the road. I could have sworn that the ditch did not exist 15 minutes before, no one believed me.
However it dawned me inside the ditch that, India is a developing country because someone somewhere is always developing something. It was uncanny.
The street outside my house was dug open 17 times in 4 months, yes I kept count. It was never the same person, 1st it was the electricity department, then it was the telephone department, then it was someone else who had no idea why he was digging it. After some days I figured it out. There was a hidden treasure buried somewhere nearby and so when at the night the workers left for the day, I entered the trench to check out if my guess was correct, but apart from layers and layers of mud found none.
There are some places which are dug up in your routes. During my college days, I used to travel via local bus. On the way there was always a young energetic man who I guess always loved running after the bus to catch it. He had no name, at least I never asked him. But he was always there to board the bus at BARC stop. That day also he was running after the bus hoping to catch it or may be doing a race with it. As he drew closer to the gate of the bus, something suddenly happened before my eyes. Well there was some construction work going on the read and he couldn’t control his running, wham, crash and BANG. The man fell into the bug ditch that was dug on the road. So his routine was shaken by the incident, so were his nerves.
India is a developing country, if you observe the political manifesto of the local member of parliament. They are always filled with construction work. They also more construction work if you promise to vote them, indicating that they are DEVELOPING THIS COUNTRY (:D).
Bridges are being constructed everywhere and the time taken to build a bridge is same as the time taken for election ( but we will have this topic some other day). Constructions are now part and parcel of Indian life. One fine winter morning you are rushing office thinking of all good things you are going to explain in meeting, when a big board on the road tells you to take a ‘DETOUR’. A ride of 5 minutes becomes one of 15 minutes.
The new wave of smart phones has taken the chair of weapons of mass distraction on the street. In a group of 3 people walking, I of them is on call, the other one playing with the phone and the third one is simply wondering why he is with the two. One advantage of these trenches are people now pay attention on street rather in the phone.
Said my friend, the iPhone addict, “It was horrible man… too horrible of an experience. While walking towards your house I was too busy tweeting when I fell into the dug trench outside your gate. For a moment I thought… for a moment I thought…”
Poor guy, I said to myself, I had named the trench Krrish 2 years back, now this was Krrish part 4 (yes, I name trenches, we all got bored sometimes, don’t we? ) the poor guy was traumatized by the incident.
“Horrible horrible experience…, ”he said , “ For a moment I thought, my iPhone will shatter into pieces.”
He said hugging the iPhone tightly, “ If only they make an app about warning people of the dug up trenches.”
“They did it LONG BACK dude, it’s called EYES and it is installed in YOUR HEAD. What were you tweeting about anyways?”
“I was tweeting about the 4th anniversary of the trench…” he added sadly.
But then again, India is a developing country, people are developing every inch of it. One day it is a village, the next a day a fully dug out city full of trenches. We are just 60 years old and it’s not easy developing such a large country overnight. Whatever Romans will say, INDIA CAN NOT BE BUILD IN A DAY. Can it??
