It has been a traumatic few weeks for Bengaluru. The 19 th century German philosopher Nietzsche didn’t say anything about potholes or monsoon disasters, but he gave us the expression ‘Eternal Recurrence’, which applies to Bengaluru’s woes. Potholes are eternal, and flooding is an eternal recurrence.
‘We will fix it by the next monsoon’ ought to be the inscription on the city’s monuments – this has been the motto of the authorities for some decades now, a promise full of promise and nothing else.
There is something almost childlike in their innocence. Every time you wave a rattle at infants, they think it is something new, something they have never seen before. It is the same with the monsoons and city officials. They are surprised every year when it rains that it rains. It would have been charming if it weren’t so insidious.
