As usual Radu drove to work in his aging Hyundai i10 one spring day in 2018. As he caressed the bank of the Wangchhu River to reach his
office, the river appeared to beckon to him. ‘Come
and drink me. Why don’t you tap me up?’ The river knew that Radu was thirsty. He
heaved a sigh, that was neither of relief nor of pain and hit the accelerator,
for he could not bear to see so much water flow freely!
Radu was a career bureaucrat. A cohort of 1990,
he had risen through the ranks to head the Disaster Management Division in the
Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs, Royal Government of Bhutan. After twenty
years of working in Bhutan’s civil service, Radu had saved enough to book a 3BH
apartment in Thimphu. However, after he booked the apartment, Radu was worried
that he had probably bitten more than he could chew. But then the sales deed
done with the real estate company came with the luscious ‘loan transfer’
option.
‘Pay half between now
and the completion of the
apartment. The remaining half can
be paid through a transfer of loan with Bhutan National Bank’,
said the sales deed.
The location of the apartment was as abstract as
they come in Bhutan, which doesn’t yet use the western style of defining
addresses using street number, house number and PIN codes.
‘From the
Druk school junction, you head towards Kalabazar. After about 200 meters you
come to a sharp turn on your right. Take the turn and head towards the Ashi
Building. Turn left and then right until you see a cluster of white buildings
located right below the Guru Rinpoche painting on a large rock face that you
can see from the other side of Thimphu’.
This is quite a mouthful for direction to a
residential building. Quite exotic too! However, like other residents in the
area, Radu had memorized it.
Long ago, when Thimphu began its tryst with modernity,
hordes of skilled as well as unskilled labourers poured into the valley from as
far as Nepal and the southern foothills of Bhutan. They lived in shacks of
houses, most with roofs and walls made from flattened bitumen barrels they
would have emptied in the course of paving the emerging city’s roads. The long
rows of black huts on the upper ridge of Changedaphu earned the place the moniker
‘Kalabazar’, literally Blacktown.
Blacktown reminds me of a town by the same name
in New South Wales, Australia. East or west, human beings fall on the same
basics and logic to recognize and accept things around them. Blacktown, a
suburb of Sydney is a melting pot of residents from myriad background, most of
whom are not white, but brown, grey and black. Hence, the name, I guess!
Besides the loan, two things kept worrying Radu –
road and water. Water supply in most parts of the city that Radu lived in was
sporadic and unreliable at best. Indeed, it is a pity that Thimphu, the capital
city of Bhutan has been grappling with water scarcity for domestic consumption.
The deal was done, but the builder betrayed. What
was to be a 24-month project took over six years to complete. When Radu moved
into his new house in November 2017, with his two sons and a wife, he suffered
from post-purchase cognitive dissonance. On one hand, he had a brand-new
apartment of his own, on the other, he was once again reminded of the three worries
hanging over him - loan, water supply and the road.
As the last carton box was emptied from the Mahindra
Bolero truck, Radu’s wife ran to the two bathrooms and the kitchen and opened
the taps. Wonder of wonders! The taps came running out in full vengeance. At
first the water was brown, then turned into the colourless and ordourless
liquid as defined in grade two science books.
‘Water no problem, hubby’, Dema shouted in excitement at Radu.
Ha! Radu sighed. After all, water is not a
problem.
However, the relief was short lived. In the third
week of their moving in, one afternoon the taps ran completely dry. The whole
colony was without water. People poured to the verandah overlooking each other
and shared their frustrations. Some started making jokes out of the situation.
By the third day, a lady cracked, ‘my
husband is smelling like goondrook’ (Goondrook is a typical fermented spinach, considered
a Nepali delicacy). Well, she knew what she was talking about!
Radu and Dema bundled their dirty laundry and
went to their friend’s place near the Swimming Pool to wash and launder.
On the fourth day, the water pipes connected to
the ground storage tanks started to sing. Everyone ran outside. Adults were
excited as kids would be on seeing an ice-cream vendor. Everyone started
filling their jerry cans and empty oil jars.
Radu and his wife went down with two of their
biggest buckets. They were able to beat the residents of the other block to the
pipe, with whom they shared the water connection. From the other end of the
block came Rachna with her fat body and a bucket made of emptied building
paint. Then a fight ensued!
 |
| Not an exaggeration! |
Rachna removed the water pipe from Radu’s bucket
and started filling her own. Dema intervened and requested that they be allowed
to do first as they had already started. Rachna would not listen.
‘You have
filled one bucket already. Let me fill one first’, she exploded.
Frustration of being without water got the better of Radu, who was normally
mild mannered. ‘Our bucket is already
half-filled, let me finish it,’ he stared angrily at Rachna. Similar screaming and swearing could be heard
from the other block.
Radu had had enough. It had been a long day and he
wanted to forget the water ordeal they had gone through. He reclined on his
sofa and switched on the TV for his favourite news channel NDTV 24x7, that broadcasts
news in Indian English. The newsreader seemed to talk directly to him:
‘The Supreme Court of
India has instructed Karnataka to
release 177 TMC ft
of water to
Tamil Nadu from the Cauvery barrage’.
His thick upper lip parted into a half smile. ‘How I wish, our Supreme Court would instruct
the Thromde (Municipality) to release at least four buckets of water daily’.
Life imitates life, he thought as he changed the
channel on his Toshiba LED TV to CNN.
‘President Trump has warned China that China’s
claim over large parts of
the South China Sea is
illegal’, read Becky Anderson from
her teleprompter.
‘Everyone is fighting over water, it is not Rachna and I alone’. Radu
comforted himself, with a sense of regret for the tussle he had with Rachna.
Radu was trained and skilled in disaster
management. Every day, he reviewed the Standard Operating Procedure titled ‘Should
Disaster strike’. He led a team that was well versed in handling emergency
situations during earthquakes and glacial lake outburst flood. Alas, solving
his own water shortage was not part of his training or responsibilities!
Radu moved to the kitchen to help his wife
prepare dinner. As usual, Dema was listening to music from her mobile phone.
And playing at the moment was the popular song by Kunti Moktan, which
translates to – Even if
you go to
the ocean, the
quantity of water you can bring is limited by the size of the container you have!
