Moving house is as traumatic as kicking
a useless boyfriend to the curb. In fact, if you're living in the
third world, it's probably more emotionally agonising. You get sucked
into renovation and hire plumbers who aren't plumbers, electricians
who aren't electricians, tile-layers who wouldn't recognise an
Anthangudi handcrafted beauty if it suddenly came to life and bit
them in their collective, untutored asses.
I have never quite figured out how
India survives. There are various techniques, sure, like for example,
driving and switching on the left signal. Never, ever, then turn
left. Oh, no. Wait for that one bozo who will try and overtake just
to beat you to the turn. Where is he going in such a hurry, you
wonder? Nowhere. It's just the way he is.
But this is just one of the few tricks
you figure out, the rest is a mystery box to beat any on Masterchef.
We survive by dumb luck more often than not.
Not the best of times to visit one of
the most startling countries in the world: China. So efficient and
effortlessly beautiful it made my heart hurt. I always knew democracy was overrated. If anyone has had the
misfortune to visit Bangalore and travel on the ugliest metro ever
built, you will understand my rage thinking of the money we wasted on
things other than an engineer/architect worthy of the name. That, at
least, we wouldn't have minded if we had then built a metro that
looked like Dubai's.
Anyone who tells you India is a poor
country, by the way, is either ignorant or a bullshit artist. What we
are is a rich country that is completely mismanaged by a bunch of
people who have never understood the concept of either shame or
patriotism. They are much like most teenagers, clueless and living
for the day. Vision-less. Indifferent to any other concerns but their
own.
Here's a vision other than a
teenager's:
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