Or clean drains, or beautiful buildings, or well lit streets. Now don’t get me wrong. We don’t deserve it because we just do not know what to do with them—except destroy, litter, pollute. We may be driving a 2019 model SUV, but our civic sense is two or three centuries behind. With the state literacy rate at almost 80%, we can safely assume that common sense does not come with education. Perhaps the fault lie with us due to the centuries and centuries we jumped from the loin cloth wearing era to this 4G era. We did not undergo the gradual process of development but fast forwarded nay hopped, skipped and jumped to where we are today. How else do we explain the utter apathy towards our most important assets like our roads, streetlights, water drains, government buildings, commercial complexes? Because even animals do not act like us.
We are forever whining, and grumbling about the lack of development, about the bad roads but it appears that we do not know what to do with it once our demands are met. Because I live in Kohima, I will talk more about this blessed, beautiful town. We have a lot of rain. To quote some wise man, when it pours it pours! And it appears some fellow citizens do not know that water, falling from a height has pressure. In fact waterjet is used for cutting stones and metals (hoping a little GK will help some people understand what I am about to say next). So, fellow readers and more importantly fellow culprits, to use a colloquial term, your ‘pipe’ protruding about a foot or two from your terrace/roof top which drains rain water straight onto the black topped road from a height of not less than 20-30feet is surely going to have some impact on the integrity of the long-awaited-much-desired-precious-asphalt-road, and also on poor drivers like me who are 1) temporarily blinded by the gush of litres and litres of rain water and 2) have to deal with the aftermath of potholes nay, craters created by your brilliant drainage system. Traffic congestion being such, I have quite a collection of photographs pertaining to these type state-of-the-art plumbing system in and around Kohima town. However, I am sure it will not take too much effort to identify which buildings I am talking about if you were to drive around town on a rainy day.
If, despite your wealth, someone has to explain to you what you are doing wrong, I am quite suspicious how you managed to come in possession of such a marvellous engineering structure such as a double storey, triple storey building without having the least amount of common sense, ‘common’ being the operative word here. This is where I come back to my statement that you do not deserve the things you own.
So in conclusion, please fix your drainage system, use a roof gutter system, and if absolutely unavoidable, use a hose to drain the water down to the ground level. Let us be deserving of the facilities and development we demand for and complain about, and are finally provided. Let us act like 21st century citizens.
