Irony

In this otherwise irregular, unreliable (anittyam, asukham) Bharatvarsha of ours, some odd things have a clockwork precision. You wish for these things to happen less punctually or others, which are reliable, to be not so damn reliable. But that is mere wishing. It need not yield in India.

For punctuality, I am referring to power cuts: A threateningly rare number of professionals keep their appointment without an excuse for the inadvertent (always!) delay. A carpenter says that he will be there @ x.yy hrs, but he shows up just as you are preparing to get your afternoon siesta five hrs later, just when you do not want to be disturbed. The chap who has to do a routine UPS/inverter monthly check comes a month or two later. You ask him about the check for the previous month and he says, "my boys came, but no one was there." National dailies slog it 24/7/365 to bring the daily news to people on a daily basis, but the delivery man DOES NOT deliver your paper when it rains. Why? "because nerriya mallay peieeda, sorry Sar!" You want to ask whether he is sorry because it rained, or because he did not bring the paper.

These things get at me, these lies and the shoddy state of affairs and the irregularity and above all the total absence of professionalism. But the regular punctuality with which they cut your current supply is something which really upsets me. They announce in the papers, " due to X reason the transformer at XXX is in a state of disrepair..........

THERE IT IS, THE CURRENT IS OFF! RADIO STATIONS AND THE TV STATIONS PLEASE ADJUST YOUR CLOCKS! IT IS 9 O'CLOCK, THURSDAY THE 17 SEPTEMBER 2009.......(it is 9.2 as I type this!)

......I read in the Hindu this morning an announcement about the power cut today between 9.00 and 17.00. I had about 18 minutes to write this and post before the cut. And Lo! What I am writing about has come to pass. That is what I am saying - this almost eerie reliability! Unfortunately it happens only in matters of vital necessity like power supply. As for the rest, it is best left unmentioned.

The other thing that punctures my balloon of mirth is the sticky sticker on plastic bottles or cups and other bottled products. I believe that those bottles are designed for reuse. After you have finished the contents of one you want to wash the bottle for reuse and so you start scrubbing the unassuming little sticker. It simply does not come off! You soak it in eau d'javel, burn it on glass bottles, scape with cutters, knives or blades, it simply remains there, stuck and unyielding. That, too, makes me mad. Paula and I call it "indian-design".