“Parking in front of the gate” syndrome

    In the South Indian city of Chennai, there exists a place which is similar to that of the Kashmir, Jafferkhanpet/Ashok Nagar. No stone throwing but just rocking. There has been a long standing border dispute between Jafferkhanpet and Ashok Nagar which share the same postal code 600083. I am literally VenCAT on the wall, so our address reads both with Jafferkhanpet and Ashok Nagar. Our Apartment, one can say is in the LOC. One of the problems that exist here is “No parking in front of the gate” syndrome. Pretty every Apartment has this board hung over its main gate and bunch of vehicles in front of it. The vehicles range from car, auto to cycle!

   Let us now dwell into the prospect of the “terror” who hails in our Apartment.  Our terror! aka ParQueen, without any care in the world, parks her vehicle in front of the gate, just when my Dad leaves in his car. I am the one who performs the function of the gate opener/closer/vehicle clearer for my dad. That is why i am lamenting here.

  Not one but four “No Parking in front of gate” boards, along with the placer’s pimpage are hung on the Apartment gate. Out of the four, two boards pimped some Soda Buddi Buddies aka Optical companies, one a textile company ( like it needed this dreaded board in this disputed area to advertise it) and last one is #epic. When people move from one place to another, the packing and moving enterprise hangs a board which signifies that it had left an indelible imprint on that particular apartment. The irony here is that he parks the truck in front of gate blocking any space that is left. What is even more #epic is that there are a few Idea Manis who stick bills on that board itself! Look what they have done, “Please Dont Park here” has become “Please Park here”

I tried the technique of Gandhigiri where Munnabhai cleans the entrance when a person repeated spits in the same place and then on seeing Munnabhai cleaning it, the guy changes his mind and he stops spitting. Days went, weeks went, months went and my biceps bulged as i had to carry the vehicle off every morning but for Sundays. Sometimes you have to use “Gaandugiri” (Strictly in Madras Tamil which means “to irritate someone”) instead of Gandhigiri . You can do the following

1. Pull off the air from the tyres and act as if some crow had done it.
2. Create obstacles by placing stones and strategically planned places.
3. Handle with utmost “carefulness” while clearing the vehicle.
4. If none of these work, move the “No Parking” board to some other place like this and then shift it somewhere. The rest will follow!

“Wherever and whenever a no parking sign appears they will take an avatar and park, stick bills, spit, litter and Pee with a capital P!”

There are thick skinned cases like in mine. You just have to learn to see bullcrap as fertilizer, render them hopeless and write off these cases to Gandhi a/c. At least i can flex my biceps!