Thimphu as we know it

29 August 2008

Picture Thimphu all dressed in white. Not the sporadic out-of-the-blue attempts at green roofs and blue signboards. That has finally been laid to rest in the capital. The ghosts now haunt urban towns further away and will keep doing so in the absence of a ministerial notification. After all, when the surface ground is thick, things don’t sink in easy. A snow-white Thimphu, and other towns as well, was actually proposed as the best solution to combat the lime-smear problem. Not at an official gathering or the workshop of workshops. It was idle talk, on a very pertinent issue.

If every open space was white, then a doma-chewing resident cleaning his/her finer on a surface would just be adding a fresh coat. If only it were that simple. What about the red spittle that is spewed out? It is not made up of a solid shape or size that can be carved or sculpted into the surfaces. And fastening spittoons to the wall of every building isn’t quite feasible. Not to mention the kind of really unique look that would give the towns. Imagine explaining to a tourist: there you have the only hanging spittoons in the world.

Traffic is not as bad as it is elsewhere in the world. This can be evinced from the fact that we have no road rage incidents in Bhutan. See that person, smack in the middle of the road, conversing with another driver coming from the opposite direction. Now that is not a traffic violation. They are just exercising their positions. The rest will wait because this is blasé, happens everyday. Ever been hemmed inside a maze of a parking because someone decided to park at the entrance/outlet and disappear. That too is cool.

There is no rage because there just isn’t any left. Take a good look around and play the mind game: did the dogs come first or the garbage? Couldn’t be garbage just because it’s free-floating from the vehicle up ahead. Now that’s a tough one. Never knew a moment in time when either was not around, in plenty. The playing field is level though because people litter religiously. The litter in turn sustains the canine litter. That is called harmonious coexistence. Today, we are neck deep but little concerned. Who cares – it’s a dogs world; we’re down in the dumps; hooray.

Every week, an accident is reported along the expressway. Yes, that slow-motion of an expressway. Mostly happens at night because the street lights don’t quite work. The bulbs have become the bulls’ eye for sporting stone-pelting. Cables and coils have been stolen. In the darkness, there lurks danger, dagger-wielding ones at that. Don’t take that too seriously. They are just misguided youth, some school-going ones at that. As for the harmlessness of the daggers, that’s another story. And now, we as a nation, hope to enroll for civic sense classes. All of us.

Ratings: 1 Star