You get what you ask for

A couple of days back, I was on the way to Chai Point with my family members for a tea outing. On the way to Chai Point outlet, I noticed a car getting temporarily struck in the badly laid out man-hole (below).

I along with my brother-in-law picked up a cement brick and put it in front of the manhole as an indicator to arriving traffic of a potential danger. Satisfied with our effort, we went to the outlet, had a good tea and snacks over some lively discussions.

On our way back, we passed through the same man-hole only to note that the cement brick had fallen into the man-hole (possibly by a nudge from the ongoing traffic) and observed that a scooter almost losing balance when it unknowingly crossed over the man-hole.

While one noble auto-rickshaw guy, sensing that the accident was waiting to happen, got down and put more cement bricks around it. I was mightily concerned with the state of affairs that day and decided to do something about it.

While walking back to my home,  I wrote the following message to a 'Traffic personnel/volunteers' WhatsApp group that I am a part of. I messaged the following after attaching the picture:

This one is opposite to Natural Ice cream parlor at Wipro signal. Quite dangerous as saw car getting struck and bike losing balance. This needs attention and some indicator for ongoing traffic to know.

After sending this, I quietly went home with my family, had dinner and slept off. I got up early next morning, went for my run. My usual post-run ritual is to go to a small tea shop closeby my house and sip my favorite lemon tea with honey. As i was walking back to home, I decided to take a short detour to see the man-hole. To my pleasant surprise, I saw a proper barricade had now being put ensuring that passing traffic now had enough heads-up for the traffic.

I was glad knowing that a mere act of asking someone who i thought was closest to providing the help really solved the problem, albeit temporarily.

Man-hole area after the barricade was put

This experience was a good reminder for me on several fronts. Like many of us in urban cities, I have also been guilty of ignoring the problems that I see around me and not doing what I could possibly do to contribute to solving them.  In such situations, all that is needed is to ask a question- "Who can help me solve this problem?" "Is there anyone in the circles that I am part of?".

Most of the times the help is just a message away but we tend to not take that step thinking laxly that "It's not my problem anyway."

All that is needed is just type in a message and ask. One of the unwritten rules of life truly is "One gets what one asks for".

Do you agree ? What's been your experience ?