Wow! to Ohh no!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The rain continues its affair with Namma Bengaluru. Every evening by the time I come home (which is exactly around the same time), the clouds get overcast and it starts raining within half an hour of me reaching (thank god!)

Today was particularly cloudy. So much so that it was blackening. Subhash called and said it was raining heavily near his office and asked me to take an auto home instead of walking and if it starts raining while I am in the bus itself, I should wait and eat somehting in Pizza Hut while he comes over to pick me up.

So all set. I checked the clouds after I got off. Not too bad.

There was a cart vending particularly good looking mangoes which smelt heavenly as I walked past. I had to really control myself to not go there and buy some since I needed to get home as soon as possible. Believe me, it was tough. Anyways, I got home the usual time, and within 5 minutes the clouds enveloped even this place and right now, its raining so hard, its beating the doors and windows off everyone's homes. Luckily for me, I have a good window view where water doesn't come all the way through the windows so I can actually afford to take in the rain AND the breeze all without having a drop of water enter the room. Can there be anything better? No sir!

I had this urge to eat pakoras. Actually I do, every day, since one other card vends these heavenly smelling ones being freshly made just as I am walking home. So every evening I think I should go home and make some. Today I am actually going to implement the plan. I put in the batter and onions to soak :D (Did you know the best pakoras are made when you do not add water to the batter and let the onions mix with it to ooze enough water on their own, you do need to leave it for 15-20 minutes though, the more the better).

So looking forward to a nice evening with rain pattering on the window panes and us having hot pakoras inside the cozy comfort of home. Life couldn't be any better :D


Now the oh no!! part


Moments after I wrote the post, went closer to the window and peeped out, what do I see! We have a flood situation. Not in Bangalore, just in our house, somehow the three drains (*ALL* the three damned drains!!!) seem to have lost the will to drain water and its been steadily building up. I went out in a flimsy wind sheeter and made a lame attempt to unclog them three, but I couldn't find them in the water for a long time and when I did too, it didn't help much :(( And I got royally wet in the process, so I found some bricks and stashed them against the main door, found some old curtains and propped them against the door. Subhash is stuck in but-natural Bangalore traffic (especially Bangalore traffic when it rains), I have lost the appetite for pakoras and the rain seems to finally have taken mercy on me and slowed down. I am cooped up in the house, there is no power (thanks to the UPS, I don't have to sit in the dark at least), and I am blogging for lack of knowing what else do to.

Sigh! So much for an evening which started out beautifully! Still, at least I can blog, how about that eh? :)

The rain has downgraded to a drizzle now, there is no power anywhere and I didn't afterall need the bricks and the curtain proxying for a washer. But I still don't know how to unclog the drains. So I will just wait for Subhash to come and sort it out. Right now I am feeling at peace finally and am hoping and praying that it will not be short-lived. Please pray with me!!

Squashing a misnomer

Here, let me do my bit to eradicate this terrible falsehood:

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/blogs/show_entry/1039-i-voted

AND, read through the comments.

Now some more:

http://satyameva-jayate.org/2009/04/14/none-of-the-above/

So guys, please vote. "No Vote" doesn't really help beat anything out of the system if that was the notion you've been carrying around.

Yes!! We did!!

Vote. I mean. I must say that the democratic process was not so painful for us as it is made out to be. Fill in forms on Jaago re. Submit it in the ARO office off 100ft Road, check lists online a week before the D-day, remember your serial number, go and vote! :) Simple, right?

It was a mandatory election-day off today. We left home around 10.30 AM thinking that the polling booth on Wind Tunnel Road was ours. It was not to be. We were told to go to the one near Manipal Hospital. Since we started off walking (the rains over the last 4 days have made us treat the sun with impunity;) ). So we decided to walk it out. We stopped on the way for a cool Mango milkshake and the neighborhood bakery and set off again.

We reached the SDA school on Airport road, only to find that even this was not our booth. It was one that was further down the by-lane right behind Manipal Hospital. There were two tables outside every booth, presumably, Congress/BJP/JDS workers helping people find their names in the list. We had checked our names online, but the PDF file online didn't have our names, just the search showed up with both our names. And these guys just had a print out of the names. So, we were in doubt now. Will the polling officers have our names at least? Or are they also carrying the outdated lists?

We went into the school. This PS had the longest line of all the polling booths we stopped by!! So we decided to wait hoping that at the end of the wait we will be able to vote. Meanwhile I saw one of the school ayah's cleaning and separating seeds from fresh tamarind. Looked around and found a tamarind tree sure enough. Went looking for fallen tamarinds and found one nice one on a bench and came back and enjoyed it. It reminded me of school when my sis and I would collect tamarinds beating them off trees with stones in case my Dad was running late to pick us up :D


Finally went in after about a 45 minute wait. Thankfully we knew our serial numbers from checking online and it was a short 2-3 minute search for the polling officers to lok up both names. I am damn sure it would have been a mess in case we didn't pay attention to those and didn't have that info handy. Got the ink (which seems to be the new fashion statement) and the 2 seconds time in the secret ballot, with the electronic voting machine.

Came back home using GPS trying to find ourselves a shortcut through Rustam Bagh since walking back all the way on airport road seemed daunting. Trespassed through one small apartment complex to cross over from Rustam Bagh into our area and were home in like 10 minutes stopping for egg puffs on the way.

All in all, a great experience. I have to appreciate a good government experience when I come across it, since it is a rare find ;)

And I voted, exercised the most fundamental responsibility of my citizenship :) Hopefully next time there will be better choices. And hopefully tomorrow we will be better off for it.