odzer's blog

We have these wonderful “E-Sampark” centres all over the city where you can among other things get a bus pass, pay your electric and water bill, file a right to information request, pay your mobile or landline bills, buy stamp papers or revenue stamps, get a birth or a death certificate and if you happen to be starving even buy subsidised and vitamin fortified wheat flour at a discount. Nothing to complain about them really, they are nice comfortable places which are air conditioned and they even have a TV to pass the time while you wait.

So yesterday I went to pay my electric bill and I observed they had this notice there. I guess the photo is a bit incomplete so I will repost what I saw on the notice …..

“Dear Customer

1 PM is cash tally time and the same has to be handover to bank collection team which comes around 1:15 PM as such case the cash counter’s will stop taking bills for atleast 5 to 10 minutes (approximately) at around 1 PM.

Kindly bear with us

Sampark Centre-18″

Apart from the terrible English, I am sure you can probably guess what it means but if you can not what they are basically saying is — that the bank people come around 1 PM to collect cash from their centre and they can not take bills for around 10 minutes around the time when it happens.

So here is my question now, why should not some person who has every intention to get rich by a couple of hundred thousand rupees come over at 1 pm, point a gun at their heads and take away their cash one fine day? Which brilliant mind had the idea to give away this information? I mean these guys are loaded with money, so any of you guys out there if you want to make a quick buck  and if you own a high calibre handgun or two, head over to E-Sampark Centre, Sector 18 its adjacent to the road that heads to Madhya Marg and cuts between Sector 17 and Sector 18. Good Luck!

I wake up fairly late but I was moved out of my bed yesterday by the loud shrill voice of my neighbours wife. She sounded like a rabid cat. As I could not help my morbid curiosity and she was screaming at the bin men who had come to collect the payment for their services I eavesdropped. It seems that our local ’safai karamchari’s’ or bin men have decided to work independently from the association that runs this area. Now some days ago I had received a letter from this association which is mostly a silver haired club warning me about the dangers of paying the garbage men who had dared to step out of their domain.

Interestingly this letter does not mention anything significant about garbage collection except the fact that if the association loses control of the garbage collection then the prices for such services are sure to shoot up. They are also worried about the fact that the garbage collection guys will take many days off. So what are the conditions in which these guys have to work? Garbage in India is just a mess, literally. People seldom use bin liners or bags and its collected in cycle carts and it smells. These guys handle this noxious stuff with their bare hands. Probably they get paid a pittance and I can imagine they are sick and tired of these old fuddy-duddies telling them what to do all the time. So I say yeah let the garbage guys run the garbage. I am sure they can do a better job and for once let them tell people how they want their garbage laid out for them. It is time that the grossly spoiled people of this country learn how to manage their trash.

As for the price at the moment we are paying around 150 Rupees or around US$ 4 for garbage collection services. This has to be paid every third month. I think it is a ridiculous price per house for such services. It should be this much at least per month! People do not mind paying for useless things here so why not pay to have a cleaner environment around them? Remember the plastic ban? Which has failed by the way since plastic bags without handles are now used by everyone. When I said in my previous posts that garbage was the main issue I was not that wrong. This post basically proves it. I am glad the bin men have gone on the war path. Basically we are all in a mess.

Every year around this time the Municipal Corporation blooms in to action and organises a chrysanthemum show. This time it was held between December 12-14 at the Terraced Garden in Sector 33. As with all the flower shows that they organise this one is the same. It is self congratulatory, ill-organised, botanically irrelevant and full of bored wives of Chandigarh’s bureaucrats. The prize winning flowers are mostly always from the Administration itself.

Having said that I must say that at least it is a chance to see some flowers even though if they are basically destroyed by the thousands upon thousands of visiting public with their ill-mannered loud children. I just happened to be there at this years show after many years of skipping it consciously. Of course I had not expected any change, they had the same tired looking displays of marigold stuffed animals. The same old pots put in a circular fashion etc etc. I managed to take some pictures of some chrysanthemums which I particularly happened to like and we purchased some “Ber” which is a sort of an Indian fruit. In Chandigarh you can find the red variety of these things all around the city and poor people usually gather them and sell them up for some profit.

I have often thought about this but flower arrangement is not one of the strongest of traits among Indo-European people. It seems there is a sense of beauty that is missing from our genes. Most of the arrangements that I have seen in India seem to have no ’style’ at all. It is just basically some flowers that have been put there. However we seem to be a bit better at planning geometerical gardens. I think one should stick to what one does the best. Would it not have been just wonderful if they had just used the whole garden as a display? They could have grown the chrysanthemums in the garden itself and opened the garden to the public. There is no need to have this vulgar stage and put sofa’s for the benefit of the so called VIPs. I am sure the VIPs could enjoy a stroll around the garden as well. There is no need for camel rides! What do camels have to do with a flower show! It seems that all they can do is just put a jumble of things together to attract a “crowd”. Flower shows should be for the benefit of the people that like flowers, there are plenty of events that you can do which can be transformed in to a fair. I guess it is again our Chandigarh Administration who thinks that it knows the best for everyone. I am basically irked at these bureaucratic types who think that they are doing such a good job at running this city. Well I have some news for you guys, you are not.