How the pig took out my internet

My house is situated on the intersection of a T made by a narrow street leading out in three directions. Now the two plots of land on both sides of the street leading straight on from our gate are empty. And there is a drain on either side of the street roughly the width of an average full grown pig, and slightly deeper than the height of one. Why draw comparisons to a pig of all things? Well... read on...

It was a late afternoon on Monday. I had come out of the house to see off an aunt. As my mom, my aunt and I stood at the gate wrapping up the numerous threads of the many conversations struck up during the afternoon, I could see people gathering on the street and peering into the drain. They were staring at whatever was in there, slowly shaking their drooping heads. Finally, my curiosity got the better of me and I just had to go and see for myself. It was a heart breaking sight and yet, even as my heart broke, I could hardly resist the urge to burst out laughing. It was a dead pig. Now, granted there is nothing inherently funny about dead pigs. But this poor thing was in the drain upside down. 

Now I can imagine a pig falling into a drain. But why was it upside down? Did it hear a joke and go OINK and then ROFL? Because of the recent rains, the drain had around a foot of sludge running through it and being upside down, the pig had is head in the sludge. This pig must have tried and tried, but not having the most flexible body in the universe, it just couldn't get its head out of the muck. It basically drowned in food and died. It DROWNED IN FOOD. AND DIED.

That is a cruel death. Made me wonder if maybe the pig was a reincarnation of Hitler. God got bored of roasting him in the fires of hell and so sent him back to die a series of cruel deaths (we Hindus believe in that sort of thing). Maybe he'll come back as a snake next. It will stick its head down a rabbit hole, swallow the rabbit, and then get stuck coming out because it had swallowed the god damn rabbit. And then army ants will come and eat it up. 

Now the pig had to be removed from the drain and buried because we are the Assamese people. We're the nicest people you'll ever meet anywhere. We believe that even the pig-that-was-Hitler deserves a proper burial. And also... well... rotting pigs smell bad. 

The municipality people came the next day to remove the dead pig. It was pulled out of the drain with ropes and laid on the street as they contemplated where it should be buried. After around ten minute of just standing there scratching their heads, they decided the plot of empty land just opposite them was as good a spot as any. 

The JCB mini excavator got to work and it was not long before a proper ditch was ready for the pig. It was at this moment that one of the neighbours complained that they shouldn't bury a pig in someone else's land. What if the owners found out? That seemed reasonable. You are digging in your plot of land to lay the foundations of your future home and what do you find? A pig skeleton. Not an auspicious beginning. And who would want to live in a house haunted by the pig-that-was-Hitler?

So it was that the dead pig was moved across the street to just outside our premises. After fixing a spot by the street right next to an unused electricity post, the JCB sunk its teeth in. It was a few moments after that that my mom noticed our phone was dead. That struck her as odd and so she went outside to look down from the balcony, and sure enough, the municipality people were standing in the ditch looking completely baffled and holding in their hands what looked very much like a broken phone cable. Only, by the confused look on their faces, you'd think they'd found a gigantic earthworm.

When mom went down to talk to them they apologised and said they couldn't possibly have known. What was done was done. We promptly called up the telecom people. About an hour later who should come to fix the cable but a certain Mr Ali and a couple of Muslim workers. Muslim people tend to dislike pigs. They stood there looking disgusted for a while and then made it very clear they weren't going it. You couldn't blame them. You don't have to be a Muslim person to not want to jump into a ditch with a one day old rotting carcass of a pig. It was already starting to smell terrible.

Handkerchief covering their nose and mouths, they assessed the situation from outside the ditch and found out they couldn't see one of the cables that was supposed to be there. Meaning that more digging was required. By now I was standing with them looking at the dead pig. It just lay there, resolute even in death to deny me my broadband connection, as if saying "Internet chahiye toh mere laash ke upar se guzarni hogi!"  After a while the people left leaving me standing there alone.

And so the municipality people had to come again. They dug up the dead pig which was a grotesque mess by now with the entrails trailing as they carried it to the other side of the street where it found its final resting place (hopefully). The ditch lay open for the next two days but no one came to fix the cable. We called and they assured us they'd be here soon, which turned out to mean Friday. They were probably waiting for the land to forget the dead pig that was buried in it. When they did come though, they fixed the damn cable in a little under two hours. TWO HOURS! I had to wait three damn days for a repair that took two hours! Now that is what a perfect week reads like. Bloody pig!