Blowin’ in the wind

14 months ago,

Yes; house hunting can at best can be described as a difficult task, and even more difficult if it’s Noida! No shortage of houses though, with cake icing balconies, haveli like jharoka’s, turrets & towers, gothic baroque structures; glass, steel, more glass, missing is the genre called home, home sweet home, the kind you’d see and instantly want to move into;

So, walking into this prospective home in C block Sector 30......we exchange quizzical glances; “Is this for real?” my wife Aarti asked me, as the fawning broker led us into the house. ‘Hush’, I said, casting a sideways glance to see if the broker has picked up her positive vibrations, but fortunately he was intent in leading us into the house to show us around. We had a pact not to display emotions if we liked a house till we were out and on our own.

This time round, it was a no brainer. After seeing many dozens of houses in various sectors of Noida, and not even entering them, we had finally made up our mind; Yeh ghar kuch ‘simplax’ hai Sir, chortled the broker, but we weren’t listening. We had exchanged that silent eye contact; the special glance between husband and wife, a silent nod, and decided this was the house we were looking for. A beautiful old world independent home; a structure on a 400 meter plot, there she sat, facing a huge verdant park with flowers of Gul Mohur strewn  on the road almost to welcome us, rustling Peepul leaves; breeze, tranquil sounds, quite forgotten since our childhood days. Whilst we were soaking the ambience in a reverie, the broker couldn’t quite figure what was going on in our minds,  looked us up and down a few times, and seemed to think ‘they seem to be well heeled, but poor chaps, perhaps they don’t have the money’!

Anyway, that was some 14 months ago, today, the leafy avenue, park, almost sylvan surroundings have astonishingly vanished...disappeared?? In just 14 months??

When we shifted in Feb 2012; the desire to have a beautiful home was rekindled, so in came the polishers, carpenters, plumbers & electricians and with all the enthusiasm at our disposal, set up home. Universal jubilation followed, our family & friends from Delhi came, saw, and fell in love. Such a glorious feeling, sit outs & lunches in the garden with the mild winter sun filtering through,  Earl Grey’s & Twinings with cookies in the early evenings; and finally cosy evenings with a book and Aarti glued to her favourite serial... could life get better? Well, there was a dark side too; yes, literally the dark side...the infamous power cuts. Just whilst enjoying the racy novel or serial, you’d be plunged into darkness without warning, an of outage for no apparent reason, no information, no time frame, no customer care to enquire from; to the Delhi Wallah this is a stark reminder of difference of being in the NCR and the Capital, where power outages are few and far between.

Winter gave way to Spring, gardening, planting, plenty of planting, a gruelling Summer, and then Monsoon..... The weather finally broke, a brilliant Monsoon enabled the creation of a beautiful garden, plants, ‘khad mangaoo mali, jaldi jaldi please’!!, plants, nurseries, gamlas, more plants, ‘he’s obsessed’, muttered my mother under her breath, but quite pleased at the progress; ....’Mali bhai, iss ka kya nam hai? main bhool gaya hoon’; I’d ask our cheerful mali Ramesh, who seemed to have endless patience in dealing with me, and immense knowledge on all gardening matters. The ‘green revolution’ was well under way!

However as the weather changing, and the dark clouds of the monsoons passing by, a perceptible change seemed to be manifesting itself in the neighbourhood as well. The park across had more hanger ons, loiterers, in the evenings the shadier corners would convert into drinking hangouts, the children with their ayaha’s seemed much less, the lazy walkers diminished in numbers, the genteel folk making way a rougher rowdier lot... my imagination? Aarti and I exchange notes and concurred, both of us had the same impression.

However, the decline like rust on unpainted iron had set in, marauding hordes from the nearby urban villages descended into the park ostensibly to play cricket & football, which is not a permitted activity but who cares anyway; and other nefarious deeds best left unsaid, their abrasive crude abuses ringing out large and loud. The grass, plants & shrubs, so callously trespassed and trampled upon, unable to bear the brunt of this heavy invasion wilted and died, leaving in its place brown earth, dusty, muddied, uninviting. Park it is no more, Rest In Peace (RIP) dear park of yesterday, now a dry barren patch, a desert in an oasis, bereft of green, soulless, abandoned and no one’s baby. We callous residents have only ourselves to blame for such apathy and destruction of this treasure, the jewel in the crown of our block and sector. Our collective conscience must awaken in guilt for this monumental neglect, and translate into a self help group ,take the upkeep of this park upon ourselves, and nurture with TLC (tender loving  care), it as we  would of our children.

Suddenly packs of dogs have appeared all over....Dingoes... are we in Australia? Littering, breeding, with the ferocity of planet of the apes, they appear intent on taking over if not the planet, definitely this block!  Enemy number one of the dogs....the hapless residents, ferocious, they attack at the slightest excuse, whilst cowering residents taken to walking with sticks and stones, valiantly trying to defend themselves from unprovoked attacks. The Dingoes don’t attack humans unprovoked, but not so with the packs here, you could bitten by a rabid dog, that’s no crime, but you can’t get it captured for interning, as the ‘law’ prevents it!!

Each community has its fair share of activists, and each time a litter would take place, animal rightists most of whom who don’t live here, would magically appear from adjacent sectors to feed these litters, ‘excuse me young lady’, I asked one of them, ’would you consider adopting these pups?’  ‘Oh no sir, they are good here, you see, this is their home!’ I nod sagely, ‘right’!

Inevitably with these almost fortnightly litters, my wife too became a victim, and on one of her early morning walks in the park was viciously attacked by two dogs biting her on her calf, undefended and injured she managed to limp back home, sending us all into a state of panic, more panic, family, phone calls, doctors, anti rabies, righteous indignation, and yes, the President of the RWA, he’d sure know the correct thing to do, so let’s call him up..

Good Morning Sir, this Mrs... I have just been bitten by two extremely vicious & ferocious dogs in the park, what do you think we should do?

Mmm, Well Mrs.... you can do two things.....write a petition and get 12 residents to sign it, and we’ll go to the dogs to show cause why they did so,

or,

‘We can try to get someone to talk to the dogs to apologise.’

‘You’re quite right sir, the right civil way to do things’ said my wife in amazement, impressed at sense of justice and fair play that the collective wisdom our RWA possesses.

The leisurely hand in hand evening colony walks have now given way to walking with brick and mortar, sticks and stones, to repel unexpected dog attacks. Early morning genteel yoga practitioners a hallmark of this sector’s wise, righteous and wealthy, are consigned to  a corner to practice their yogasans, since the park has been outrageously degraded and littered, we seem to have accepted this state of affairs with an almost a resigned fate.

However all is not lost; living in this sector has more than its fair share of joys; an early morning workout at the ‘Gold Gym’, buying milk and vegetables whilst chatting with the most friendly and amiable owners of Mother Dairy Milk & Vegetable Vends, dealing with the helpful ICICI Bank and Bobby Stores, greeting friendly neighbours, are some of the pleasures and indeed the intrinsic strength that makes staying here most enjoyable.

The time has come for decisive action; can the residents get proactive to correct the anomalies that have set in? Can ‘We the Residents’ get past our apathy and re establish the Sector’s pristine glory?

As Bob Dylan crooned in the 60’s

‘The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind

The answer is blowin’ in the wind’

Rajeev Suri: email:rajeevsuri.cbms@gmail.com