Those PSU towns

Kashipur. Malanjkhand. Korba. Itarsi. Avadi. Medak. Government factories or PSUs have their own towns. Most city bred people wouldn't have heard of these towns ever. Lot more. I lived in a few. Aruvankadu. Bhandara. Chanda. These towns have their own simple government provided beauty and simplicity. Usually, you know you are at one of these towns when you see a black and white signage proclaiming "savdhan" and then the town's name and then some message. Then, there would be a road that will be reasonably well kept with government maintained culverts and government marked trees. The trees will have numbers. You go on for a bit. The functional silver painted lamp posts will be on both sides of the road and there will be numbers on them too. Reasonably well kept towns will have all the lights working and others maybe will have a few missing. The roads will always be total 90* right or left. There's nothing winding away on any side in these places. A strange phenomenon will happen when you are entering the estates. You will see goats in the fields for sure. You will also see trees in round fences around. Either brick fences or steel fences. If it is brick, they will colour it again with brick red and white. I never understood the concept of brick red on brick red. But that must have been some highly creative mind at work somewhere in the 40s. That continued. There will also be some sporadic lean cows tethered to pegs in the distance. But not on the roads or sidewalks. They are strict about such things in such places. In the distance, you will always find a bald patch that's now a cricket ground and if you ask the alumni of the town, they will always proudly say how they hit a six and it landed on that very road that you are travelling on. Usually, that's a lie. You enter the estate. Estates are where people live in such places. The quarters are well lined up always. Earlier they used to do it with stone. So, you'd have some places with stone buildings. Always two storeys. Never more. Always four quarters in one building. Functional numbers. 14A to D, Sector 1. That way. Small patch of garden in front and another small patch of backyard. They never gave car parking space. They never put up closed storm water drains. So, you have a slab over the drain and then the house. You can ride the bicycle into the houses or push the scooter or bike into the house. The place to keep all the vehicles is either the gardens or the stairway side that's underneath the stair incline side. The useless side made useful. The garden usually has some trees. Not really fruity trees. But some towns may be blessed with mango trees, pear trees, sitaphal trees or even some drumstick trees. Early workers also planted their own trees that the later generations proudly fed off. The backyard may also have a water tap and a vegetable patch. Beside this patch you will find hose pipes curled up like tired anacondas. The hose pipes will have the broken areas fixed with cloth straps, plastic bags or even the son's cricket bat grip. On some days, the scooter or bike is brought here and hosed down till the bike is shed off every milligram of dust and mud that the town has contributed to the vehicle. Usually, it's the father's job. But sometimes PSU fathers are smart. They make sons do it. If you go early in the morning, you will see sons and daughters trooping off for tuitions. Yeah, in these towns studies come first, second and at all positions thereafter. Early morning tuitions are highly rated. People then make it to IITs and AFMCs just because of these morning tuitions. You can walk now. Because the morning aromas are nice in such estates. Sambhar aroma, you know you are passing a Subramanium probably. Melting butter aroma. It's an Arora. Lovely coconut flavor in the air. Pillai. Then noise. Too many instructions floating out. Usually a Banerjee. Once in a while bark. It's probably some Athavale. Man in a banian doing scratching noise. Srivastav. So on. It's cosmopolitan. Men talk to each other in Hindi. Women in broken Hindi. North Indian to South Indian in difficult English. South Indian to North Indian in lilting broken English. School buses come to designated spots and carry off waiting children. Usually 2 to 3 schools for such townships. Retail centres are sparse and all of these places have something they call as Co-operative store. That's run by the employee representatives. They usually don't change for years. It's a thing. Lucrative thing. There are other stores. Newspaper store. Saloon. Repair center. Atta chakki. Tailor. Bakery. Simple stuff. Nothing fancy. Outlying this estate and on the fringe of the town is usually a Kendriya Vidyalaya. Big building. Big playground. Breeds engineers and doctors like crazy. These are the boys and girls who have made India what it is. From these sort of places. And so they believe in merit and secularism. The present government just missed the mark with these people, these leaders.