Rains and Contours

The rains of the past week have created havoc everywhere. Though it is amusing to see photographs of people getting ferried across on makeshift rafts in Bangalore, it is perhaps only they who would fathom the trauma of it all. But to be critical, it seems to be a toast to naivety. After all, it is not much beyond common sense to know that water takes the steepest way down. The first question that comes to mind is why have we built our houses where water should have been allowed to flow. Why have we spoilt the valleys by building into it? Instead of retaining the lakes and converting the valleys into parks and woodland ribbons, we have disrupted the drainage. We have even enabled the corporates and the government to build matchboxes there, that work like glorified paperweights and do nothing. Of course, they “bring in investments”, as if Mammon was the only Lord around who mattered!

Travel back in time. Look at the days when the green belt for the City was conceived. Instead of being fair to everybody and not discriminate between one man and the other, a restraining girdle was conceived which restricted the way land could be used within it. It just legalized the process of making one man look different from the other. Instead, we could have converted all the valleys and the lakes into woodland ribbons and parks, which could have grown with the City. It would have diverted development to higher ground where it not only damaged the environment less, but allowed a purposeful use of the valleys too. Valleys which allowed parks to be proximate. The number of people visiting Lalbagh and Cubbon Park every day is a mute testimony for a need for such parkland places. Our City Fathers perhaps never thought of it, and sadly, we are left with houses today that get flooded with every monsoon rain. Development based on land contours still continues to be a myth in our City.

Travel west into the lush greenery of the Western Ghats for a change. Cross some three or four thousand feet altitude and look for the forests. You would see the Sholas: forests that extend like fingers along the valleys up into the surrounding hilltop grassland. Down below they lead to the what was once the forests of the lowland. One would immediately appreciate that nature grew forests in the valleys and grass on the hilltops. A model which has survived for millions of years in all weathers. Instead, we have gleefully allowed economics to rule the land, and put our faith in models that cannot even forewarn us of the next market crash. And certainly not the next flood of water into our homes.

[2008. Published in the Deccan Chronicle]