Outside Aster |
Paraphrasing Shelley, I may say that ‘Hell is a city
much like Kochi.’
Kochi was my favourite city when I was young. I
studied in a college there for five years. I walked kilometres and kilometres
in that city. I cycled even more. I was in love with Kochi.
Now I detest going there. I avoid Kochi as far as
possible. Too much development has undone that city. Huge buildings and
flyovers and the metro rail all together have made it an enormous mess. I am
not a Luddite opposed to new technology and progress. Not at all. It’s just
that Kochi never had the space for the kind of development that has been
imposed on it. Its roads were not even wide enough for its traffic and then
came the pillars of the metro rail right in their middle. The traffic crawls
now on the arterial roads like the Banerjee Road and the MG Road. The gap
between your vehicle and the next one is just a few inches. If you steer an
inch wrongly there comes a scratch on your vehicle, if not a dent. But the
drivers in Kochi are all experts. They manage dexterously even when umpteen
two-wheelers and the occasional auto-rickshaws come unexpectedly as if from
nowhere.
Such proximity is no good. That’s why I would love to
stay away from Kochi. But I had to navigate the mess on her roads yesterday as
Maggie and I went to visit a patient in Aster Medicity Hospital which is on the
other side of the city. We had no choice but drive through the chaos on the
Banerjee Road.
While returning, I dropped in at Don Bosco, the
seminary where I studied for five years. Just for nostalgia’s sake and all the
more because it was only 4 km from Aster. Unfortunately the place failed to
evoke any nostalgia because hyper-development had encroached even those sacred
spaces. All those places where flower plants and charming trees used to be now
have gigantic concrete structures. Every inch of space was marked by the
obscene presence of concrete, except the playgrounds which remained thanks to
the many schools running there now.
On the way back, we chose to land in one of the largest shopping malls of Kerala, Lulu. Oh my God! I wish didn’t stop. The entire underground parking space, acres of area, was packed with cars. Some digital signboards showed that there were a few empty slots left and I kept on driving until I came to LB12 which had just one parking slot left. [LB = lower basement]
Inside Lulu |
The entire mall with its four or five storeys was
filled with people. I have a serious problem with crowds, especially when people
jostle though unintentionally, and that too with no sight of open space
anywhere in that centrally air-conditioned artificially lighted cavernous space.
Such proximity in a place which engenders claustrophobia is not what I would
ever choose.
We didn’t even enter the popular hypermarket which
offers enormous discounts every day. There were serpentine queues of people
waiting to enter the market. We could see similar queues waiting at the exit
counters inside, shoppers waiting for paying the bills and getting out. ‘No, no
discount is worth all this,’ I decided to Maggie’s disappointment. Our humble hometown
with its Reliance Smart and Reliance Jio and Reliance what-not will continue to
serve us without shoppers elbowing one another out.
The biggest hypermarket in our hometown was named
Ajmal Bismi. Yesterday we were told by the staff that it was already bought by
Reliance. That will be the sixth Reliance outlet in my little hometown of
Thodupuzha. Eventually the whole of Thodupuzha may belong to Mukesh Ambani. It’s
ok, I suppose, as long as I have the freedom to move around.
Outside Aster |
Unethical development of human civilization.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of ethics, Pinarayi has taken political morality to a new low.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteIt's relentless, the sprawl... YAM xx
It's reaching even the villages!
DeleteI'm not fond of crowds either.
ReplyDeleteIn India, we don't have much choice when it comes to that.
DeleteThe 'development' in our cities today is to keep up with the Joneses. Not serious planning, too carcentric, going towards a stage where all of Europe has gone and retreating.
ReplyDeleteYes, we need to learn better lessons from the West now. There's a very unhealthy craze for expensive cars and houses.
DeleteI live in a far-flung suburb of Mumbai and am seeing a sudden spate of redevelopment of residential buildings. The new apartments, I'm told are of match-box size with high maintenance bills. The city, of course, is going through a development and redevelopment on another level, with the metro, coastal road, new airport etc.
ReplyDeleteAll so-called development belongs to the affluent and the powerful. The ordinary people will be brainwashed into believing that matchboxes are luxury provided there's the metro rail nearby.
DeleteI felt you were talking about Delhi! I don't recognise the city anymore. It no longer feels like home.
ReplyDeleteYes, Delhi keeps changing every day. The city used to confuse me no end when the metro constructions were on.
Delete