CWG – the ‘chalta hai’ legacy


We, the self-righteous many, sit in our couches flipping TV channels eating potato fries American style. We shake our heads at the mounting evidence of foul play at the common wealth games (and the games haven’t even started yet). We moan the delays, the scams, the stench (embarrassing because the foreign delegates are expected to better standards of hygiene... kindly pardon us, you see, first time organising these games. We will be ready by the Olympics). The omnipresent crisis fed media with the megaphones holler out pointing fingers like the hindi movie cops who arrive at the end of the fight scene when the good guy has already bashed up the bad guy. The top brass with their thick skinned tongues and the bottom rungs of the working class, with their brooms, sweep faster. Three days to go. Welcome to India.
We are like this only.
If it wasn’t for the last minute nothing gets done here. Ask me who is from the construction field and who has a front seat view of this phenomenon. Missed deadlines, postponed work... delays because of extended festival seasons, strikes, bandhs... its common place. Ah and the machinery doesn’t move unless some grease in the way of moolah is liberally spread to greedy palms...
Here, “sab chalta hai”. The column got cast at a wrong angle... Chalta hai. We can always plaster it to make it look straight. The flooring has a wrong slope. The water is collecting here. It’s okay. Just put a rug there. It will be dry as a bone. This material is not available. We should have ordered it a month back. Now there is no time to get the shade of our choice. No problem saar... see this shade, its a little lighter but it will look dark when the lights are dim. These shoes don’t fit... Wear it with wet socks. It will be snug.
Here the rug is always smaller than our feet and we kindly adjust.

But in all the chaos, there is a strange pattern of order. Look hard and you will find it. Somehow, things get done. How, is a mystery. Probably because there are still few good men who are born with some inherent sincerity and who cannot sit back and smoke in rings playing the blame game. Those with whom the buck stops. Those, who have no time to give public speeches or blame puppets. Those, who get their backsides on the grind stone and get the job done. They are there every where. The underpaid and the over worked. At our homes, in our ‘daftars’. And yes at the CWG.
I just want to applaud them, the nameless and the faceless who are doing the job as we sit and criticize.
Thank you.