The other virus

Pune is of little interest anymore to the news channels all suffering from attention deficit disorder. So we've been left to rot as far as they are concerned. The city has the bad news-sense to go on having an epidemic even after its news value is over - that's the city's problem. From 'chalo Pune', the media is now in a 'Maro, Pune' mode. As is the administration, which has not had the guts or wisdom or the responsiveness to issue any directive or advisory about massing at ganesh or at ramzan festivals. Why would they take on religious nuts of all persuasions by getting the festival off the road - so what if theres a flu epidemic - they too must be saying "Maro, yaar".

Meanwhile, the kids are back in school, and supposedly safe from the epidemic. But wait a minute, there are many other hazards that you’re exposing them to every day that you march them off to school. This was brought home to me even more clearly, last some days when the school buses, school riks and school-dropping moms and pops were off the road, and the children were safe at home.
What are some of those hazards that your kids are being exposed to every day – they come from a virus that is much more long-lasting, invidious and deadly than any passing epidemic. It’s called Whocareforanyonelsesitis – and its spreading rapidly in the city of Pune. Particularly virulent during school opening and closing hours
A) The short-cut takers - rikshawallah/mummy/chauffeur/school bus driver. These are the people who drive your kids to school every day, and every day they run along some stretch of road in the opposite direction, to avoid looping around the legitimate way. They’re much smarter than the rest of us law-abiding idiots, you see, so they think that nipping along at break-neck speed on the wrong way or into a no-entry or up the down flyover is the real smart thing to do.
B) The zig-zaggers – these are 2 as well as 4 wheeler drivers that cant drive straight. They weave through the traffic, and your crossing school children and/or their grandparents dropping them to their bus stops can and do get mowed down.
C) The overstuffed rikshaws – they routinely cram 20 kids and their bags, water bottles and dabbas, all stuffed together, the whole overloaded contraption listing and groaning up and down curves and slopes, to spill its contents anytime any other driver on the road makes a false move. The Whocaresitis bug seems to have bitten the parents too, or they wouldn’t have spent their hard-earned on putting their kids in this chamber of horrors on a daily basis. Now there are lovingly and protectively masked kids piled high into these riks.
D) The bug has bitten the traffic lights too. So they’re not turned on (and of course there is no policeman) early in the morning , not even till 8 am on many days. This means your kids are thrown in the way of chaotic traffic at junctions like the University, or near Sancheti, or at hundreds of treacherous intersections all over the city. Out-of-town buses racing to the depot, overloaded trucks, schoolbuses in a hurry, and an entire population of Whocaresforanyonelsesitis bitten people are crisscrossing each other at break-neck speed.
E) The glorious RTO of Pune, who get all their neck exercise by always looking the other way and finger exercises by counting the bribes – they have been bitten by the bug for long now, and spread the virus every time that they stamp and issue licences and distribute them like prasad to anyone who has the money.
F) And while you, dear parents, panicked and buy up masks and meds and vitamins and eucalyptus oil to protect yourself and your kids from H1N1, all the while the Whocaresforanyonelsesitis burgeons, unchecked. It thrives and claims lives and mutates, each time that you speed, jump lights, use the wrong road, don’t bother to track your child’s rickshawallah’s or driver’s acrobatic techniques, and bribe the traffic cop.
Note: this is not to trivialize the H1N1 issue. It is to raise the alarm on other dangerous and active silent viruses for which there are no shots, no tablets, no hospitals and no quarantine procedures.

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On a different note, can someone tell me why a bunch of dead horses are flogging another long dead horse in the capital of this country? I mean it’s all very well for academics and historians to dodder around and debate endlessly about what exactly did or did not happen circa 1945 or something – but people who are supposedly serving the country in the capacity of leaders and ministers and whatnot, isn’t there a lot of work to be done for the alive as well as barely alive here-and-now population of their matrubhoomi? I find it grotesque that mythical characters and long-dead personalities can command so much footage and newsprint when there is just so much real work to be done, and not enough people to do it. Of course, our TV news channels report all this gibberish with so much glee and over and over again, because they too seem to not have noticed that there is really much more to talk about, good as well as bad, than a bunch of superannuated men having a dog fight.
Gouri Dange