Ever since spring came, the leafy quiet around our house is broken morning and sundown by the insistent calls of a koel. Somebody must have told the creature that its sound is sweet and so it goes on and on. Other birds join in but soon give up. The koel brooks no competition. So at the appointed hours it sings and sings, sending a message that is loud and clear. Yes, nature is losing out in Bangalore but has not given up as yet. It will go on fighting until the last koel has no more trees to perch on.
The trees are also under attack. Grand-old sentinels along road after road are being felled to make way for widening. A couple of years ago, not one but two rain trees, at both ends of our side street, fell during a storm, the roots apparently weakened by construction and paving of side spaces to create even, un-muddy parking spaces. But the huge pine tree next to our verandah, taller than our two-storeyed house, still appears strong, home to the koel and a team of squirrels whose fun in life seems to be to jump from its branches on to our verandah and terrace and back.
We go to fetch our daughter coming home from Delhi and in the windy, cloudy cool environs of the airport she says she cannot believe it is mid-afternoon in mid-summer. The sides of the road connecting the airport to the highway are being elaborately landscaped and add to the good feeling. But once on the highway, chaos slowly takes over. Massive hoardings keep multiplying. In these windy months, which also see one or two storms, so many of them, with their visuals torn to shreds, have become scaffoldings from which a bedraggled city appears to hang out its torn persona.
Through the middle of the new multi-lane highway completed just the other day, an elevated highway is being built, to jump the traffic lights. So, on a highway where the main problem has been the temptation to over-speed, there are now a few traffic jams. Why not build a metro rail link instead of a carriageway and be done with it in one go, asks our son. Mumbai, where he lives, seems to have created in him a habit of thinking in terms of smart solutions. Maybe someday they will build a double-decker metro line on top of the roadway, I say somewhat facetiously. But you never know. A project like that, with a huge price tag and no land acquisition problems – only a few years of traffic jams during construction – can excite politicians and officials alike.
Traffic jams are a sign of progress that is made of concrete in the shape of a metro rail. By the time even the much-delayed first phase of the single-line systems gets going (imagine how much traffic will have gone up in the years it has been in the making), it will make no difference to the traffic. Maybe some time later, when everyone is much richer, another metro line will be built. Another big-ticket project, more trees cut down, more traffic jams — till it is time to have yet another metro line.
But there is no need to be unduly pessimistic. The public- spirited architects who have been lamenting that they did not get a chance to give character, shape and local identity to the metro rail and its stations the first time will get a chance the next time around, and the next time after that. In fact, a process can be standardised. With more traffic jams, the city will need more flyovers, which will create more traffic jams requiring even more flyovers. The architects can be roped in right from the beginning so that the city gets an imaginatively designed flyover which reflects its character, heritage and geography. Not a bad compromise!
Not all problems will be so easily solved. Every time I go for a morning walk to the lovely park nearby, I have to pass an informal, unofficial garbage dump with a neatly painted sign hanging above saying it is illegal to dump garbage there. The garbage is taken away by midday most days by the municipality’s three-wheeler garbage van, unless of course the van misses a day. Then the streets around also sprout tied-up bag-full of garbage left before doorways because the morning collection did not take place. By the time the following morning comes, the street dogs will have torn the plastic bags apart, foraged for food and left the garbage strewn all over the street.
By late mornings this should also be cleaned up by the teams of women in green overalls who are contract sweepers for the municipality. But they don’t come every day. Journalist friends tell me there is an organised racket. The women are employed by contractors who have to keep local corporators happy, don’t get paid the full rate that they are officially supposed to and there is mostly not enough money for them to be deployed every day on every street.
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It is a bit late in the morning and our daughter emerges from sleep a bit apologetic. It is cool, cloudy and quiet and she looks around and says: I know why I overslept, had no idea what time it was, you don’t know what a change this is from Delhi. I say it was not entirely as quite a little while ago. The koel has just finished its morning session. It is like an Indian classical music singer who goes on and on.