I recently met up with a colleague who was visiting Mumbai from Hong Kong. He asked me in the sweetly spoken but difficult to comprehend Hong Kong English – “Why is your city always under construction?” for a lack of a better answer I replied “For a better tomorrow’.
“Inconvenience regretted. Please bare with us for a better tomorrow”, screams the ubiquitous signboard without making a sound. No one particularly misses the sound, as the frantic pace of construction activity and the myriad motorized beasts with horns do their bit in banishing silence to another planet. I must admit thought that the unromantically sultry Indian summer can make the invitation to ‘bare’ quite tempting but the fear of the moral brigade and the ever willing desire of the police to invoke obscenity laws does keep most of us in check. On second thoughts, an overwhelming majority have nothing to fear – We are not celebrities, wouldn’t help the moral brigade’s noble cause.
Coming back to Fraggle Rock, I mean Mumbai. Once upon a time our belov
ed DD (not Delhi Daredevils) of the ‘see from far’ kinds aired a Muppet serial by this name which had stories depicting Fraggle Rock and it inhabitants. One of the species within Fraggle Rock was ‘Doozers’. ‘Doozers’ live’s were dedicated to work and industry. ‘Doozers’ spent much of their time busily constructing all manner of scaffolding throughout Fraggle Rock. ‘Doozers’ did only one thing in life – ‘construct’. That was their only purpose, day after day. There was not a single day that Fraggle Rock was devoid of construction activity. Same holds true for Mumbai. Completion of one project paves way to another and then another and so on.
ed DD (not Delhi Daredevils) of the ‘see from far’ kinds aired a Muppet serial by this name which had stories depicting Fraggle Rock and it inhabitants. One of the species within Fraggle Rock was ‘Doozers’. ‘Doozers’ live’s were dedicated to work and industry. ‘Doozers’ spent much of their time busily constructing all manner of scaffolding throughout Fraggle Rock. ‘Doozers’ did only one thing in life – ‘construct’. That was their only purpose, day after day. There was not a single day that Fraggle Rock was devoid of construction activity. Same holds true for Mumbai. Completion of one project paves way to another and then another and so on.The tomorrow in “For a better tomorrow” is actually is the same tomorrow which earlier inhabited often quoted slogan by shopkeepers -“Cash Today, Credit Tomorrow” and therefore carries exactly the same meaning. With ‘tomorrow’ gone the adaptive shopkeepers didn’t waste time in rehashing their slogan with new transplanted words and now finds usage as “No Cash today, Credit card OK”. I hope the borrower of‘tomorrow’ does not default else we may never get it back. But then I guess we would be okay. Apathy rules us. We Fraggles or Mumbaikars, sil vous plait, are used to the ‘Doozer’ activity all around. The ‘Doozer’ activity is just a minor hiccough when you are on the way out of the city for a loooong weekend. Holiday over Elections. Apathy still rules us, whichever way you choose to look at it.
Constructions! If things go this way at present in Mumbai, then it could be synonym of construction one fine day. Back in 90’s, a stretch from Chakala to Saki Naka called as Andheri Kurla road, was the most congested road with traffic at any point of time, widening of road was taken under the name of increased traffic and later a metro project along that stretch, since 19 years it is facing construction. Metro will be a relief to the commuters but how the load at the exit point on all the station will be handled, for this again a new construction or a new project in the surrounding, as said a project give birth to the other is true in Mumbai City.
ReplyDeleteInadequacy in planning or may be a greed of some contractor could be the reason for the continuous work in the city, even after 62 years of Independence, we could not develop to the standard a few square miles, so how long it will take to develop such a huge country, is the difficult question to be answered, but at present every citizen here in Mumbai may be trying to understand the standard of life he is living or should he accept "Work in Progress" with respect to everything, as a part of his living.