BANDH!!!

Bandh is a Hindi word meaning “closed” and in the context of today’s events it means government strike!  All civil servants strike, this includes postal workers, auto-rickshaw drivers (the ones who aren’t greedy, wait, let me qualify that statement, the ones who aren’t SO greedy that they would go against personal values and possibly risk physical harm to charge people over 10x the normal fairs) and even some police!  The strike takes place throughout the entire country and in some areas that have strong leftist movements, mainly Kerela and Kolkata, there is violence.  This is mostly limited to stone throwing, but if the roving bands of leftists see a government agency operating (e.g. a post office) the leftists have been known to destroy and loot the facility.  As it turns out, most of the government workers don’t strike for ideological reasons, they do it out of fear for their personal safety.  The fear of the leftist groups is only half of it though, it is compounded by the fact that much of the police force strikes as well.  This opens up today to all sorts of other unsavory characters seeking to act with relative impunity.  All this and the biggest victims are the day laborers who are forced to lose a day’s wages. 

For most though, this Bandh is best described by Uncle who put it as, “today is a vacation, you go get a bottle of liquor, a whole chicken, then you fry up the whole chicken and you sit around playing cards all day.”

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