Recently I visited India, and for the first time in a long while, I felt cheated...yes ,by the garden city - Bangalore. I searched in vain for landmarks in a place that once held many fond memories. As the travel to the airport stalled to a crawl, as the dusk smelled of exhaust fumes and future smogs, I think I saw a piece of history...may be of significance only for me.There was the piece of wall/fence that still look like it was a forgotten piece from the edge of MG road once... I had earlier seen the identifiable signs of schools on residency road , and had thought my lack of cognition was due to pure fatigue, but it was not so. I searched in vain for the rain collectors,ponds and lakes that years ago had dotted the state ,those large aquifiers, a hall mark of a state that knew water scarcity. That land where once we walked swatting at mosquitoes by the lake, now stand apartment buildings and the insanity of traffic .Ironically, here I come across tankers-the new water carriers..My friends described the water scarcity in the city as we pass yet another tanker ...may be here they can try some thing akin to UTEC of Peru, but how to fix a man made calamity, that is being fed to grow further....
The boulder that had few wilting flowers at its base ...a hope to assuage the daily struggles of an occasional villager from some past, not too far ... has grown into a full fledged temple with much religious fanfare now. The boulder still stayed weathered and hence identifiable. Few trees peeking from the walls of another compound and the wall of the Dairy had aged but remained sentinels to a graceful past. It could be just my sentiment that calls it graceful, when every one who considers construction as progress will disagree.
As the dust hung low in the garden city, and the traffic crawled to a stop, I sadly recognized the death of a city that grew beyond itself... growth defined by poor planning , almost like the bacterial colony-lysis inside a petri-dish...when progress out paces resources and decline sets in sliding to death. May be the planners could take their cue from nature...possibly the lowly plated agar plates, or an ant hill, just learn of resource management, planned layouts,community growth , development of satelite colonies etc...well one can wish and just sigh, at this slow slide to death....
The boulder that had few wilting flowers at its base ...a hope to assuage the daily struggles of an occasional villager from some past, not too far ... has grown into a full fledged temple with much religious fanfare now. The boulder still stayed weathered and hence identifiable. Few trees peeking from the walls of another compound and the wall of the Dairy had aged but remained sentinels to a graceful past. It could be just my sentiment that calls it graceful, when every one who considers construction as progress will disagree.
As the dust hung low in the garden city, and the traffic crawled to a stop, I sadly recognized the death of a city that grew beyond itself... growth defined by poor planning , almost like the bacterial colony-lysis inside a petri-dish...when progress out paces resources and decline sets in sliding to death. May be the planners could take their cue from nature...possibly the lowly plated agar plates, or an ant hill, just learn of resource management, planned layouts,community growth , development of satelite colonies etc...well one can wish and just sigh, at this slow slide to death....
