A letter to the CM

Sir/Madam,

Recently, the Chennai High Court upheld the decision of the Municipal Council authorities to suspend water supply to those residents who failed to pay their water tax. Although this seems like a very simple method to deal with the defaulters, the underlying consequences are multiple. In my case, I live in a cluster of apartments along the Usman road in T Nagar, Chennai, along with 20 others. When it so happens that one of us fails to pay up the water tax for various reasons, the suspension of the water supply will not happen individually but for the whole building. Does this mean the authorities see it fit to deprive even the honest tax-payer of what is due him? Water is a natural resource, and the reason I pay a tax for it is because it is delivered to the taps in my home by an institution whose duty is to do so. Therefore, it will be justified on my part to expect, nay demand, for my supply to be restored when I have paid my tax. Unfortunately, the High Court’s decision makes this impossible. My question is why the lawyers as well as the judges have upheld such a frail decision by the Municipal Council authorities.

Secondly, the law has also made it inadmissible for an apartments’ association to take any action against such defaulters, thereby making silent persuasion the only available course of action for the irked and the deprived. If such associations were given the right to disconnect the water supply to the erring resident, then the law need not step in from time to time to resolve such issues. Furthermore, with the decision making power in the hands of those who can truly and more quickly make a difference in the way things are run, a greater degree of compliance with the rules can be established as well as issues of non-compliance can be dealt with more quickly. However, with the said decision being taken, the number of cases of inconvenience in and around the city is definitely posed to increase.

What I would like to stress upon in this letter is that the Municipal Council has, in essence, not concentrated sufficiently on this issue. Although it is improper to abstain from paying one’s taxes, the actions taken thereupon to accordingly penalise the defaulter must ensure two things: first, that services to those who do pay their taxes are not disrupted in any manner, and second, that the concerned person does not repeat his or her actions again. If a such a thing as a municipal council has been established to this effect, then what they are doing does not seem right. Following a similar train of thought, it is now in my capability to demand that all branches of the Chennai Silks franchise in the city be demolished just because their T Nagar branch has failed to comply with the corresponding architectural rules. If a rule or a law is framed, then it must function and behave as one. It cannot curtail one offense by stifling a large group of similar people. I, as a citizen, can only demand that my rights and opportunities remain the same as they were previously; however, I am also driven to ponder upon the manner in which this situation has been deliberately complicated.

Mukundh V

T Nagar

(P.S. One copy each of this letter has been sent to the municipal council, the EiC of the Hindu publication, and the CM’s office. Awaiting response.)

Writer's Block, Be Damned Thou!

For someone aspiring to work in a newspaper, writer’s block is an evil sickness. It is physical as well as mental. It cripples your fingers and blights your mind. It throws you overboard from a speeding ship, leaving you to wonder where the hell you are in an ocean of words. Your tongue grows numb and sentences no longer flow as easily as they used to. However, one important thing I have observed about it is this: the writer’s block only overcomes you in such awesome proportions when you have spent weeks together writing incessantly about all kinds of this. Your words, then, literally are spent, exhausted, and there’s no way to bring them back if you can’t tear down the wall. Tear down the wall? Tear down the wall! Preposterous! My tools have been stolen from me, and they’re stowed away behind a wall I’m supposed to tear down with those tools. It’s Biggleman’s safe all over again. Of all the things I imagined could spell doom to a writer, I never thought it would be a mental block. I imagined paralysis, gangrene, amputations, leprosy, and what else not, but not the writer’s block. At least, with the other illnesses, you could feed off public sympathy and have them do something for you. But with writer’s block, it’s a dead end. You can’t go up to a person and ask him to write articles for you! You have nothing to give when all you want to do is take. You feel like screaming, but all that comes out is a muted rage. It’s like you’re watching ‘LoTR’ for the first time, and just when the Witch King of Angmar is about to kill Gandalf on Minas Tirith, the power gets cut. It’s heart breaking.

I was on a roll, I tell you. I had uncovered this wonderful new article on time as a physical quantity, and somehow managed to worm my way to the idea of God as a teleological consequence – it turns me on, I tell you! – when the words snap. Yesterday, I had such a hard time trying to differentiate between form-following-function and function-following-form, I lost my appetite. My god, it is demeaning. Demeaning? Where did that come from? Oh yes, demeaning! It’s like some god gave you eyes and then blindfolded them. It’s degrading to be subjected to such torture. You not only question your very presence, but also that of your purpose. It’s like being gifted the Thrust 2 and then having your limbs cut off. It’s like being handed a million cartons of cigarettes but not a lighter. It’s like, in short, being handed a paradox. How do you use a paradox? Its effect negates the cause, which in turn negates the effect itself; the effect is a contradiction of itself! Oh, this is killing me. That’s another thing the writer’s block is: a labyrinth. If you’ve got in, then there’s only one way and you have no idea where that is unless you are prepared to look. And I am looking! There are no markings, no sign posts, I don’t even have a wand like Hari Puttar, no Mad Eyes to guide me, and the worst part is, some of the walls are disjointed. If you place your palm on the face of a wall and begin to walk without ever detaching from the surface, you have a good chance of ending up going round and round in circles.

Science has to catch up soon, I tell you. Just concoct some pill for it. Taken with a glass of hot water, it should induce a severe case of verbosity. Watching ‘Big Bang Theory’ and reading about the LHC, I’m surprised scientists can do so much more but not this. They can tear apart the smallest of the small things, they can put together the biggest of machines to do that, but not a pill to cure sick me. Cocktails for cancer, DNA combinatorics for AIDS, nothing for the writer’s block. Yes, I am being unreasonable! I am allowed to be unreasonable! Where are my words?! Do I lodge a complaint with the police? Because that’s all I can think of!

Stupid muted rage.