This is actually yesterday's post. Because yesterday, far from being warm, became a little too hot for comfort. So I'm sitting here over a late early-morning coffee in the stifling post-monsoon air, writing on behalf of yesterday, today!
Some readers know that I've been battling an agonizing situation over the past almost-six months. From earlier posts you'd be knowing that there's malfeasance galore in the 100 year old building I live in. We have a bunch of demons who've captured parts of the premises and a motley crew of cowards who watch silently, without protest. These demons are sneaky and operate termite-fashion to erode functioning systems leading to their collapse. If you've ever dealt with termites in your home you'd know how intractable they are. Well this is not a perfect analogy because termites* act instinctively and know no malice, malicious and vicious as their depredations feel to their victims. These criminals will also tell you that they act without malice - but you know better. Or do you? <shakes head>
Ask me why I live in this 100 year old building, when there are challenges by the minute? I'll give you at least one answer for each year, but first and foremost I'll tell you I do because I have a right to. A far greater right than this bunch of vermin. Cheeky much? Yes! The termites know it. And that's what stops them from eating up my water line altogether. If you don't already know it, their careless/callous activities are concentrated in the corner of the terrace through which my line makes its merry sojourn like the Holy Ganges through Himalayan crags and crannies to descend into my kitchen tanks. Some of you know these demons already, as the Moshers of the 4th Floor Mosh Pit. And their ceaseless thumping and breaking and building. Well this time around they have moshed my line into extinction.
And my poor waterless self is running from pillar to post for a solution.
What do our esteemed doctors do when arteries are bust up beyond repair?
Welcome to the Bypass!
The first time I heard that word oddly enough, was when our beyond CMDA/KMDA (does it still exist?) decided to construct a road that ran through the city's outskirts through wetlands and trash dumps to connect the heart of the city with Salt Lake and thereafter the airport. Back in 1984, emerging from the city's congestion onto this deserted road and zipping top speed along it, was considered a kind of treat for the bored juveniles that we were then. And we would also revel in how dark and creepy that road got after dark and how criminals lurked, waiting to hold up our vehicles and stab us.
And thus you see how yesterday's post has rewound the tape to hit an era whose memories bring joy and pain in equal measure. This one solitary road was viewed as a major feat in what some considered a dead/dying city fit to be abandoned. You read that right. Forty years later I'm reading social media posts about what a vibrant city this is! So was it that (in)famous EM Bypass that unknown to itself, became the game changer? Perhaps ...
Returning to 1983 and EMBP, there was one lane and barely any traffic. We girls were advised not to take it after dark, why even the guys were discouraged. Everything new is initially feared before we befriend it.
The aforementioned CMDA had an office in Salt Lake near Central Park amid desolate fields where kaash bloomed and rippled and waved at us and a solitary Karl Marx stood surveying it all. And that brings a memory of vast, uncharted space that enticed one to explore. Which I never got to do.
What does my water situation have to do with this road? Wait, I'll tell you!
Two days ago, the painful realization hit me, that the rooftop game was over. That I'd been hunting in vain for ways to fix a problem that would only ever get worse. That it took several rounds of plumbers (and their inflated charges for doing nothing) to declare the patient beyond saving.
Hence "RIP water line and thank you for your service" - my Facebook status on Sunday. I need to mention that this line had been brutally broken by these devils during the quasi-lockdown of 2021 when construction businesses alone were permitted to operate (how wicked is that, tell me and you know construct=destruct in this country) and had to be restored by me at a huge cost thanks to the non availability of any workman save those who smashed good stuff and cemented it over with bad stuff, leaving a damaged pipeline or two.
Wind back to the present and some more to the future. A bypass with a difference. An artery tapping into a burst of uncompromised hydro-power at a point where water flows free and strong. At an undisclosed location. Technically a new water line. More huge costs. A quest for funds as there are none left in this Annus Horribilis that has all but crushed me (at any rate my home) into extinction - ok I exaggerate a bit because I know I die hard. That's one thing I share with termites. And I hope my home will be every bit like me.
But but but ... maybe a fresh line will give a fresh lease of life and this ready-to-abandon city that is my troubled home right now, will thrive and flourish and be spoken about in glowing terms years later?
To hope then ... and faith that resources will present themselves and above all love. Love for my home and its well being and mine.
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