Too Late For Everything –

Once It Was Called Garden City

 It used to be quieter, once upon a time, when it was mostly local people and a few science research institutions and mostly parks and trees. It was even then known for a cooler climate and gentle surroundings, but humanity goes for living wherever people find necessities of life - water and fertile earth, in older days; jobs, today. The quiet town remained so for a long time, until a few factors came together in time and met here and blew it up. 

 India deciding to be liberal economically and releasing the stranglehold of government on industries was one, and the IT factor with internet and www was another - the two put together allowed a lot of people in India and companies from the around the world to find each other desirable to work with and find a suitable place - and this one was more or less perfect. Cool, quiet, not crowded then, not troubled by any local politics factors (leftists, militants, Naxalites, racists) making it impossible for talent from elsewhere to come and stay put and make a life - temporary or otherwise - in the town here. If this was not enough there was even a then quiet pub culture, before it had exploded and become another social phenomenon. Those working late at night could go relax with a drink, and that helped the international companies feel at ease. What else would the foreign visitors do away from home! 

 So the building industry boomed first, with new buildings coming up and land being bought around at rapidly escalating prices that had a high acceleration curve - hotels, flats, houses, offices, everything was needed more. Multinationals arrived in droves and so did various potential employees from all corners of India - and even abroad, since various NRI young people found it more attractive for the first time to return to settle in India - and the town grew and grew. The roads still had bumps and taxis were mostly rare, with autos ruling the roost, often being arrogant and rude in refusing local passengers, looting for the ignorant foreigners to dupe them into shopping at the various outlets that had names to fool those very wealthy people - names that copied the names of reliable government shops - and pocketing what commissions those fraudulent outlets offered. Travel within town became unpleasant, what with the bumpy roads, the kerosene that was commonly used in not only trucks and auto-rickshaws but even some private vehicles used by middle-class owners. Air was too foul to breathe and people risked health in going out. 

 Soon, the pubs were not enough, and nor were quiet old style pegs at the pubs - the young were exhilarated with never before imagined levels of income and the flow went into not only brand name clothes and shoes and the newly available stereos and home entertainment systems, it had to spill over into parties to show it all off, and newer sensations for the parties to make them one up on others. Some NRIs were heard at mornings at gyms, neither whispering nor loud in expressing their shock and the goings on at the local scene, at the regular swinging they saw here, and their inability to join in due to commitments they had back over there. This certainly was a turnaround. 

 The prosperity made its demands heard soon enough, with foreign clients displeased over how long it took from airport to city to various IT offices. The city - the town had now definitely grown to be a city - could not afford to displease them, since the new phenomena of health-care tourists were far too valuable to lose. Often a person in need of an operation could travel, have the problem taken care of, and travel within India for a few weeks as well, all for the price of the same operation back home - and with no loss of quality in health-care in the equipment, medicine or doctors but much improvement in terms of personal care by nurses and so on. So the medical tourism was booming and unthinkable to lose. 

 The city pulled up its socks and got on to making roads and reducing pollution, and finally deciding on a venue for the huge new airport that had been in the offing for well over a decade, with indecisions about the venue due to political factors. The pollution was reduced effectively with public education and a little help from the govenment to the vehicles - auto-rickshaws especially - and it was only a recalcitrant or out of the state truck or so then on belching smoke, and then pretty soon those too reduced because public shame does what laws don't often. So now it was time to begin building the much needed infrastructure - roads, airport - even as some old politicians vented steam against the IT industry from time to time for not "benefiting the poor" or some such blah, not because they meant it but because they had probably not had any slice off the IT pie. 

 Soon enough the momentum gathered and while many dates were declared for the finishing of the approach road for the new airport, soon enough (that is, in a decade or so) it looked as if the airport would finish sooner than the road to lead to it from the city. Which would have been ridiculous, since it would then be necessary to operate a full jet service from the new airport to the old one to get to the city. So the private builders of the new airport were obstructed with the various permissions and inspections and so forth that the various branches of the government could co-operate with each other in not providing too soon, and the builders being foreigners were steaming through every pore instead of trying the regular back channels of getting things done. Finally the road was completed in the sense that vehicles could ply to and fro - and the city had brand new bus and taxi services plying exclusively to the airport, which were so enthusiastically and quietly embraced by the people that the numbers and services had to be extended. Those who had predicted the new bus and taxi services as too expensive and doomed to failure had reckoned without the people's need for good services, for value for the money paid. 

 Meanwhile even as the new road and the traffic were getting used to the still going on road building and various far too few over-and-under-passes for traffic, and the widening that was still going on, one problem no one had thought of was becoming critical every day - no one had thought of the people who lived along the road and used the various road services, such as buses or other vehicles other than their own, and hence often needed to cross the road, walk along on the side, and so on. Those in the city were adept at managing since they were used to the traffic, although the traffic thereby became not quite so much of a highway as a goods train traffic - slowed and stopped according to the needs of the cross traffic, the pedestrians crossing everywhere - (allowed or not), and the policemen often switching off traffic lights under the illusion that they could do a better job personally, and hence making a thorough mess of it further. 

 But the highway went further into the rural areas with fields on both sides and there being no barriers constructed on either side to prevent any stray crossings nor any provisions anywhere along the highway to allow people to cross with either over-bridges or underpasses (the latter could be worse, but useful for animals and old and handicapped) there were accidents every other day, and the villagers blamed it on the high speed traffic that would not stop when they saw anyone crossing - and so they jammed the road by stoning the vehicles and crowding on the highway, which was duly reported in newspapers. So that then became a mode of protest for any reason at all - latest being prices of tomatoes dropping low and so the farmers jamming the road with a few truckloads of tomatoes dropped on the highway. 

 The drivers, not necessarily only the professional but even the owners, are another story. Still mentally in the times when they would bicycle around various obstacles such as stones or animals or puddles, they drive any vehicles they happen to be driving the same way exactly - so you suddenly find a bus veering left without warning and stopping for a bus-stop and then veering right back all the way right to the fast lane - which is always occupied by trucks, buses, and even auto-rickshaws, anyone who in fact cannot speed for his life - while the other buses do not wait for this one to move on but try to go around it to stop ahead of it, and so on, while other vehicles play the game too - no one would let anyone else go if they could help it, and everyone tries to take every half inch available on the road, by shifting into another lane or ahead or laterally, even. 

 Motorbikes go round every vehicle to fill in the gaps left by other vehicles and if they bang on your car they wonder why you are upset, you are not dead are you? Tempos do their best to take out your mirrors - serves you right for driving an expensive car, you are not even a powerful official or a politician that could threaten them - and they succeed often enough; what can one do, thrash them? The owners of the vehicles claim they have no provision for the driver doing anything to you, you can do what you like with him; and the driver pretends to be poor and old, while secretly he is exultant to have punished you and jubilant you can do nothing to him, actually he owns a three floor house that is nine times the size of your own tiny flat. So you let him go and wash your expensive much loved leather seats with Lysol, just in case. And shout at your driver for competing with the stinking guy and then making him sit in your car. 

 Meanwhile, thousands of trees have been felled along the roads to widen them, and the once upon a time so called Garden city is on the way to becoming a desert with fields and orchards converted to tall building complexes for flats and offices and malls - that being the latest need of the city, of the young uprooted population that needs somewhere to go during off hours, to meet people and to relax and to see a film and shop, even. Further along the highway the fields and orchards are giving way to vineyards that will serve no need of anyone at all other than losing consciousness further, but no nutrition for either rich or poor. 

 Someone asked how I liked it here. Perhaps the answer was rare, since most people that come from outside do like it, and why not - they are young, just graduated from somewhere in the country where it is too hot in summer and possibly very cold in winter as well, and now they have come here for a very lucrative job and get company of peers while losing parental grip on their day to day life. I am not in any of that category - including those of pub or disco goers, or club either. I have nothing for me here, I said to him. It is life in a limbo, while I have been still waiting patiently for life to begin.

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