Kartikey Sehgal

This is India, isn’t it? A place where members from different communities live together in dirt. Together they convert green pastures into dumping grounds. Together they tell their children to leave the residential premises and play elsewhere. Then together they complain of security problems for children.

This was once a beautiful building. For almost two years now, it is a dumping ground. What’s important is that children living here don’t like it and they talk about it. They learn in school about living a healthy life and living in greenery. And then they come back home!

And yes… people here complain about BMC and the roads and monsoons and pot holes.

Some months back…

And now with the rains…

The swing has disappeared. Imagine, it would be so pretty to have these red flowers fall on you as you sit under a tree….

Instead, what we have is…

This is a monsoon destroyed. Would you credit people from this building when they talk about societal problems?

The repairs here never seem to end. Some well known personalities from this building say that they were caged for more than a year since it took almost 18 months to have this building painted. In place of the existing cement and muck, there were water tankers, bamboos and a permanent place for the painters to stay. A few painters worked on the building at any given time. People mind it but who bothers?

Nobody seems to care or complain.

Some comments:

• “The building is well-off financially. There is no reason for this garbage to exist. How can any sane mind accept this? Imagine, living with feces, rats and mosquitoes!”
• “We are not allowed to play games here as this causes disturbance to the members. But they are ok with the filth.”

• “I have given up. I have realized I am staying in India”

The concerns of the residents are important but what exactly are they doing about the problem? The answer to this critical question needs another story altogether.

Altogether, it appears to be a farce. Maybe a zombie land. A theatre where people are so occupied with their ‘living’ that they find time only to bicker at inflation and major environmental issues but do nothing about their immediate surroundings? Perhaps this is a sign of erosion of our human foundations. It is human to want beauty and human to create it.

Anyway, something is amiss in society and in ‘us’.

This story and its events are just a representation of the inertia that afflicts Indian society.