friday the 10th

Today, I will get the papers of my thunderbird finally; it has been a grueling wait with all those trips of the R.T.O office in Meerut. Now I’ll just have to some minor changes and the bike will be ready to fly. Today something else also happened I got a mail from one of the moderators of the community Bull Rodeos. They want me to meet them this Sunday near film city in the evening. I have no idea what I should expect from this meeting. Let’s just hope that I get to meet a bunch of interesting people. So I will be leaving my office early today because I have to reach Meerut by 4 pm if I have to get everything in my bike to be done today itself. The only obstacle I can foresee is something that we have all been hearing about lately, the Kanwarias. Every load leading to Meerut has been either blocked or is being used by the kanwarias to travel to their hometowns. The road via Modinagar has been blocked so I will have to go via Hapur which is again a punishment of sorts because of the mammoth jams that happen at the railway crossings every hour. Now why can’t the government earmark a certain piece of road for these so called religious yatras although nothing is religious about them these days. There are hordes of people sitting in these mini trucks and tractor trollies and playing loud music. The only pious words that one gets to hear are the ones mentioned by the singer in the songs. These songs too are a rip off from the popular songs. I saw a picture today in the newspaper of a group of kanwarias holding baseball bats and hockey sticks. Now this is what I fail to understand as to why a person going on a pilgrimage would take these things along with him. Has anyone seen anyone with such stuff when they go to Vaishno Devi or any other place for that matter? I really have no idea when this is going to end as every year the number of kanwarias is increasing. The reason for this could be socio-economic as a majority of these come from the lower sections of the society. Don’t really know what will be done to deal with this problem but something has to be done otherwise our lives will continue to be held for ransom for a week every year.