“Time is so strange and life is twice as strange”

Ray Bradbury

The beautiful pottery road passes the left side of my current house in Bengaluru. The road is visible to me from my balcony all the time. It’s been more than a month, I noticed one strange thing on pottery road. All open drain slabs were recently repaired and cemented by the workers but this one slab was kept open just behind this huge tree with full of a green canopy. Almost every time, I click a picture of this tree whenever I see it. Every day I notice a few people coming and just getting down into the open slab and filling water in different sizes of the pot. I believe these people live in a nearby slum area.

Whenever I saw it, it compelled me to think about the people who don’t have water for daily use and fill it from this somehow unusual drain water lane. This thing brought two kinds of emotions: the first one-I felt sad that even till today people in our country don’t have access to water and the second feeling was about the Indianness way of dealing things that is also called juggad. How did someone get to know that there is water source just below that one slab, how did those people decide not to cement that particular slab, how everyone in the slum area got to know about this water source and they started coming and filling water from there? And how come no one from the road administration department didn’t care to know why one slab of this drain water lane is still open?

Whatever is the reason, this open slab of drain water lane is acting as a ray of hope for people leaving in nearby area and also pottery road finally living up to its name.

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