Yes, the Dark Nights are rising,
and No, I am not talking about Gotham city. If that title reminded you of the
much anticipated and hyped movie of Nolan and you came here expecting a Batman
fanboy, suffering from a post- Nolan -movie -induced-hallucination, raving about how epicness and awesomeness is written
all over it, then I will do that for you tomorrow. As for now, you are just
going to be subjected to a longish rant about a much darker and grimmer city
than Gotham. The Dark Nights we are subjected to in this city are on the rise and
the sorry fact is that except for the bats in the neighbourhood there is no
caped crusader coming along to save us from this misery.
Let there be darkness. –Gurgaon
If Gurgaon was a person and the
above line is quoted from him then I would give full points to him for
integrity. There would be very few people in history who would have toed the
line they have spoken to such an extent.
Welcome to the Millennium city. I
had this friendly neighbor kid in my locality named Sourabh. You know that
quirky play of fate where you name a kid and when he/she grows up they
epitomize the exact opposite of what their name means. This kid’s consistency
and frequency to fart would even put Sachin ’s 100s to shame and you would be calling
the name of a hundred Gods (Sau- Rab) to teleport you away from his vicinity.
Bush should have gone after this kid if he was looking for weapons of mass
destruction instead of attacking Iraq. I have absolutely no clue how people
came up with the sobriquet ‘Millennium City’ for Gurgaon unless you are talking
about the fact that you get relegated back to 1000 AD where people lived in the
Dark ages.
The city is full of MNCs housed
in their fancy towers and office buildings. The roads are expressways with well
manicured lawns to complement the landscape. It tries really hard to give you
the illusion of a city of the future. But then it all falls apart when it comes
to the power woes. The power problems in the city are so acute that it can put
even the remotest village in Lalu-era Bihar to shame. As my roommate puts it, to say that there are
power cuts in Gurgaon is grossly inappropriate; it is more like there are
intermittent occasions when power is available in Gurgaon.
The astronauts who are chosen by
NASA have to undergo extreme physical tests and endurance. In case, NASA is
planning for a mission to the Sun, then I must say, they should look no further,
but pick up their candidates from Gurgaon. We are subjected to temperatures in
the mid 40s and we survive in this awful weather condition even without a fan.
That is no menial challenge and one which we are forced to undertake. We act as
real life counterparts to the Human Torch, the guy who blazes in Fantastic Four,
but with the opposite ability. We are like the human showers whenever the
electricity goes ‘puff’. There is sweat oozing out of every single pore from
the body and before you know it, you would be drenched and standing in a pool of saline water.
The situation is not all that
great even when the lights are on. The bulbs and tubelights get converted into
psychedelic lights because of the constant voltage fluctuations. You can raise
the excitement quotient higher by having a makeshift arrangement for a
discotheque in your very own room. Also, you can have the odd spark from one of
your electronic items to give you the necessary techno-beats, and if you are
lucky enough, you can create a fog effect from the smoke coming out of your
burnt devices due to short circuits. I was able to manage this surreal fog
environment when my laptop charger got burnt on two occasions.
Don’t even think about venturing
out, the streets are like dark alleys where the odd street light is put up just
as a showpiece from the days of yore. The presence of modern marvels amid a
lackluster infrastructure to support it has given Gurgaon quite a contrasting
Two-face.
Here I am, typing away my
frustration on my laptop sitting in my room waiting patiently for the bulb
above me to show a shimmer of light. Only 5 minutes of power backup is left in the
laptop before the last flicker of light in my room dies out. When are the
authorities going to get serious or are they going to need an anarchist like the
Joker to ask them “Why don’t you get serious?”
