Summers-I 'm Hating it

It's 6 am in the morning of mid April 2012. Sun is yet to remove the darkness fully. Yawning and amidst the chirpings of birds, I am trying to concentrate on my past month happenings and feelings related to it. This blog is special in itself as it is the first blog which is being scripted on my own laptop. Early mornings have never been my cup of tea rather I have always wished to work till late nights. This time I am ready to explore this side of a day also. Freshness in the air is hard to resist. Traffic sounds are also minimum. Whether all these factors will help in bringing out the best out of me or not, we will figure out soon.

Since the summer season is already on, the first requirement for everybody is water. One day without it, would result anger and dissatisfaction in public. This is where my role comes into picture. I cannot even dare to think about not supplying water to the city even if the circumstances demand so. Either I need to ensure the proper supply or I need to keep myself ready for listening to public comments and outcries. In all, I could not even think of doing a mistake even unconsciously and if I had done it then I could not get away with it without bearing its consequences. on the lighter side, I had my first party in the government job. The occasion was SE's retirement and the venue was a five star hotel. A female singer was invited to set the mood with some gazals. She tried her best but everybody wanted to pump up the beats. In the end, the troop put the punjabi music on and we can't resist ourselves to matchup the beats on the dance floor. It was the first time in last 4 months that I had danced and enjoyed myself. Though I was missing my friends and bollywood music still it was a good fun.

But I could not keep the happiness for long due to obvious reasons as explained above. Sirhind canal, the only source of water for main water works in Bathinda, got closed for 25 days and to worsen the situation, the storage in the tanks was already less so it resulted in major crisis of water in Bathinda city that too in hot & humid summers. I had dealt with major structural problems in my professional life but this kind of problem I had never come across. Supply was decreased substantially, water tankers were arranged to smoothen the situation but all in vain and once again I failed to establish myself as a responsible officer.

Regards

Parul Goyal

A Government Officer in the making

Another month passed; now it's been more than 3 months being an SDO. March 2012, the month started with a movement called "Water crisis in Bathinda". After getting instructions from my XEN, I got a work started of a pipe repair. It is a main pipe starting from main water works in Bathinda which controls the water supply in the city. To get it repaired, I needed to cut off the supply. For the pipe repairing, it took our men almost 4 days and for those 4 days, water crisis in the city was spreading like an endemic disease.

For a while I thought, whether I might had taken a wrong decision to get it repaired? To increase the woes, annoyed and frustrated common people started visiting the site with their empty buckets to make me realize the gravity of situation. Moreover, I was bombarded with indefinite number of calls from city residents, political leaders etc. Even the press people interviewed me searching for some hotshots. After the movement, as the situation settled & after many sleepless nights, I realized the sense of responsibility as an SDO towards the public.

It was one of the incidents which made me understood the meaning of a gazetted government post and the responsibilities related to it. Generally people have very different opinion about the government job and with same frame of mind I joined but now I find it absolutely opposite.


Regards
PARUL GOYAL