Being Aquatic....

Well now I feel what Tom Hanks felt in the Castaway......I mean its monsoon in Kolkata( as if you don't actually know) and its been two days since the city is having serious excretory disorder......and its rather difficult to surmise why havent we developed webbed feet by this time......I mean we are told that necessity is indeed the mother of creation....but I guess we all are somewhat hoaxed by what is much endearingly known as the 'drainage system'......yah right the drainage system.....thanks to beautiful nature of we Kolkatans to address things more humbly than they actually are....as a result we do have to put up with a lot of grin and a little scorn all the bemusing variety of things like the strike....the cricket match.....the not-so-encouraging muddy soccer matches.....and now the sad reminiscences of what used to be streets in sunnier and more predominant days of the year.......as it is, its now all water.....and we actually manage to derive sufficient amount of solace and......what...fraternity ??.....from the fact that we are not the only one....thanks to the equally efficient drainage system exhibited on the other side of the country in the commercial capital..........and if you have way too much free time to switch on the radio.....you know sometime you actually get bugged of the more fashionable service of visual media that the television promises to provide...just for sake of.....well romanticism....nostalgia....and err......a break.......you can actually come across an amazing collection of rhetoric from a number of more fortunate and poetic souls scattered across this 'cultural capital'(oh yes.....bazaars replaced by shopping malls....notes on banishing the tramways......cultural capital indeed) commenting upon the beauty of the rains and the imaginative train of thoughts triggered by it and what are they eating in this endearing month of monsoon.....as if life is short of things to do!!!!But if you think about the taxpaying duties that you performed few months ago that somehow became a part of this 'democracy' and decide to go out for an errand just a few blocks away...you may come up with a scene of domestic water transport which will make the nobles of Venice pluck their beard with envy......its definitely not gondolas here in Kolkata....but people have actually come up with more prudent and materialistic ideas that even the most mundane amenities of life can actually be used for water transport with surprising effectiveness.......automobile tires....dilapidated roofs of hamlets......and the more docile varieties of inflatable rubber canoes all wondering with confused frustration as rows of yellow cabs lined up with half their torso deep down in water.....pedestrians.....to be more specific fellow half-swimmers trudging the wall of water with slowmotion strokes.......slippers floating by.....the crows enjoying a nice cruise upon them....and elderly gentlemen commenting on what the leaders commented upon the 'state' of the city....as if all its residents are suffering from hyperopia.......and then you come up with someone more sympathetic to the 'sorkar'...ie the government and supposed to have a 'politically balanced mind' explaining how our bygone rulers of two hundred years had actually developed the system that Kolkata has to drain out only liquid waste and how the more imbecile citizens use them to dispose their solid wastes as well...and he throws a big packet of jackfruit peels and continues lamenting........well at last you come back to the dry safety of your home and sit by the window overlooking the 'jhupris' and the 'bastis' where the residents had long ago come up to their thatched roofs with most of their belongings and you turn on the radio yet again...this time its "n point n FM"...and you listen to the weather departments amazing prediction of the development of the depression resulting into this many milimeters of rainfall....and what the opposing party leader say about its entire 'infrastructure'.....and more 'civilized' citizens provide immaculate statistical detail of the 'development' of the city's condition over the years.....