WHERE IS THE THICKET? GONE... WHERE IS THE EAGLE? GONE

Early in the morning, today, I had a very delightful – rather painful - sight from my kitchen window…  A family of monkeys – small ones and big ones - was busy climbing down (slipping through the drainage pipes) from the terrace of one of the buildings in the next compound. Visibly, they wanted food… So, they stretched their hands inside the kitchens (through the windows) and took whatever they could get… Obviously, till the people inside the houses came with sticks and shooed the monkeys away. But, the monkeys, being monkeys, kept hopping from one building to another… All that they needed was some food to eat!

Some twenty years ago, when our family came to live in this area, it was a virgin place. There was nothing around here…Some locals grew vegetables, and, for miles and miles, one could see only the lush-green trees and hills. Our builder had first invaded this place and built our five buildings… We had difficulty even to reach this place. In a few years, the entire map has changed and the place has become unrecognizable with scores and scores of low-cost buildings (built by MMRDA for rehabilitation of people dislocated due to infrastructural development elsewhere in the city). Yes, the lush-green trees are things of the past… It has become a concrete, shabby jungle… Nearby, the freeway tunnel runs through the hill, which was once a dense forest… And, because this place has become easily accessible, now – due to rapid ‘development’ – the builders are busy building townships on every inch of land, where, once, monkeys and snakes lived…

So, every time monkeys and snakes visit our complexes, all that they want from us is some food to eat, and, maybe, some place to sleep!

BARC, HPCL, BPCL, RCF, TATA POWER, OSWAL CHEMICALS, UNION CARBIDE (now shut) – when these big companies were built here, in Chembur – it was a godforsaken place; it was considered to be ‘outside the city’ at that time… It was all jungle and cut off from the population. That’s why the Central Government raised refugee camps for the people (Sindhis and Punjabis) who were dislocated from Pakistan after the partition… The Army built barracks for them and the place was called ‘Camp’…

It’s still called so!

Just a few decades have rolled by… And, this place, Chembur, is dense with population… There are thousands of buildings, scores of townships, big schools and malls… and, they are growing each day… And, suddenly, we wonder, why monkeys come to ‘steal’ food from our kitchen windows and why snakes roam around our lobbies… Just as, in Mulund, Thane and Borivali, our fellow-humans wonder, why leopards, panthers, and pythons come calling!

This is how goes the saga of ‘development’… “Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the Eagle? Gone. The end of living and the beginning of survival"…  This is how the famous speech of Red-Indian Chief ends!

Yes sir, monkeys, snakes, leopards, panthers and pythons have not invaded our place; we have invaded theirs!

Last afternoon, I was teaching in my class-room. Suddenly, we heard a deadly sound of an explosion… Our building shook, and, for a while, we went numb...  Many of us rushed out of our buildings, not knowing what had happened… We knew, something serious had happened somewhere nearby… My guess was, that it was in either RCF or HPCL or BPCL… Within minutes, we learnt through social media, that it was a blast at BPCL refinery. There was panic… rumours spread faster than the fire, propelled by endless exchange of messages in social media… Of course, a large part of that was silly and devoid of substance…

Well, I, always, knew, that they did not call Chembur a ‘Gas Chamber’ for nothing. When I chose to live here, I knew we would be surrounded by BARC nuclear plant, BPCL, HPCL, RCF, Tata Power plants. Yes, they had not come to live where I lived… I had gone to live where they lived. So, last afternoon, when fear ran through my spine, I knew, that I had no one to place my blame on… I knew, that it could come at any time, unannounced…  Just like, when Bhopal tragedy came, it had just come, unannounced!

Anyway, we are still alive… God has been merciful!

But, then, which corner on this planet is a safe place to live? I really don’t know.

Many years ago, when a deadly earthquake had hit Latur in Maharashtra, Mumbai had felt some tremors. It was the night of final day of Ganesh Visarjan… A friend of mine had felt the chills in his bones; and, the next day, he told me how his elderly-and-ailing mother had calmed him down: “Beta, jahan sab, wahan hum!”

That’s how I find myself calming down, today…

GERALD DCUNHA

Pic 1.: Kamal Kishore Rikhari 

Pic. 2: DNA