Supplying Our Backsides

Otherday I went to buy my favorite filter coffee. The shopkeeper shook his head vigorously. Filter Coffee nehin hai sir. Backside se supply band hai, he added. Then I went to the fish man to see, if I could get some prawns. Prawns nehin hai sahib, said the fish man. This time I beat him to the punch line. Backside se supply bandh hai kya? I asked. Bilkul, ji, he affirmed. Backside se supply bilkul hi bandh hai. Prawnless as well as coffeeless, I ruminated on this ubiquitous Indian backside that constantly seemed to seize up in a fit of selective constipation which could nip in the bud, so to speak, supplies of one thing or the other, be it coffee, prawns or anything else. You come home, tired after a hard day's slog. There's no bijli. You phone the local bijli station. What are you told? Backside se supply bandh hai. You go to wash your face. Turn on the tap. Which splutters two drops and dries up. This time you don't have to ask anyone. You tell yourself in the mirror: Backside se supply bandh hai.
I think of a vast, national backside, poised in mid-motion, straining mightily to produce the requisite supply — of bijli, paani, health services, essential commodities like food grains and edible oil, inessential commodities like coffee and prawns - but all in costive vain. Try as it might, it just can't seem to deliver itself of the necessary supply after being fed with enough input.
Take for example the amount that our Sarkar spends (or so do they say) on tribal development, and reconfirmed by Rahul Gandhi's pan-India speeches, which is pretty much a standard. As per the prince, the money that leaves
This niggardliness of 'backside supply' might mystify those who, if anything, tend to identify India with the polar opposite of backside deficiency: namely, a backside profligacy, amounting almost to incontinence, as represented by that endemic bane of visitors and indigenes alike, known variously as Delhi belly, Bombay bog-trot, and Calcutta collywobbles. But while individual backsides are indeed notoriously susceptible to these and similar afflictions, the generic Indian backside in toto is perennially plagued by the contrary problem of too little supply, or sometimes none at all, rather than too much.
The Indian backside — generic, not particular — has a curious anatomical structure, as demonstrated by the frequently seen directional signs on houses and shops: Entrance from backside. Even as the pan-Indian backside remains resolutely thrifty in meting out supplies ('backside se supply bandh hai') we are at one and the same time routinely urged to enter each other's backsides. How does one explain the enigma of the one-way Indian backside: no supplies coming out, but plenty of access going in? Maybe it's just a way of our Sarkar and other powers-that-be telling us that the only thing not in short supply is what in local parlance is aptly known as a bumboo. Which is only too frequently administered to our haplessly receptive backsides. The 'Entrance' to which being clearly and helpfully marked.
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