1. You literally work like a donkey, and get very few breaks.
2. While hunting for news, you notice those little things which you had overlooked before.
And I am no exception.
So when I got a precious break for the Republic Day, I rushed to the best year-round resort giving the best customized services- my home in Durgapur.
On the 26th, I woke up early, and decided to take a drive around the city, and rediscover my hometown. Despite being the industrial centre of West Bengal, Durgapur was largely a green place, with acres of deciduous trees covering huge areas of the several townships, the posh residential localities and the emerging educational hubs. But now, the greens are fast giving way to concrete giants, and a string of small-to-medium industrial units are making headway along the National Highway. In the morning, the GT road was an impressive sight, with a stretch of eucalyptus and acacias and vegetable fields on its right contrasting sharply against the unpopulated fields on the left, with the factories seen at a distance across.
I looked at another sponge iron factory under construction, and thanked my stars for living in the still green residential area. In front of my home, lay two playing grounds, beyond it lay the National Geological Survey, followed by the area under afforestation. But after that, cheap housing colonies for the poor and a Software firm has come up, taking the place of the tall saal trees.
The sense of loss was everywhere. If I could take a view from one of the many malls that continue to mushroom in City Centre and look at the skyline in the evening, it would be a beautiful and terrifying sight. The industiral units on the side of the highway would sparkle with their lights, and their chimneys would look being connected by a cloud of grey smoke. None of these units have chimneys which reach the prescribed height, and near them, you can inhale the thick smell of untreated waste.
The process had start long back. We scarecely took notice, until the black dust from the sponge iron plants started to drift inside our rooms and darken our floor tiles, and eat at our ankles. Many of my neighbours, who are still unaccustomed to waring clogs at home, have long black cracks on their soles. And inevtibaly, the maids demanded more money for scrubbing the floors and cleaning the grills.
There was good side though. We started to buy more paint, as the older houses needed new coats, and the hardware store owners came to love the people.
Now Durgapur has started to show up its “industrial” nature with its black skies and black floors, and receding treeline. What do we do? With the state capital saturated and decaying, this is the emerging commercial, educational and industrial centre attracting the neo-rich and a host of short-sighted investors who zero on fast profits.
Thus I sat behind the steering wheel of my car, and contemplated about where I stood with my guilt for riding this machine in front of the growing poor-housing cooperative.Then, I thought how much I have contributed to the pollution that morning as numerous other cars zoomed past on the road far away. I also tried to think about the unfairness of trees being killed for the sake of human settlements, but my logic seemed unconvincing in my own head. How do you decide your priorities when you have millions of unfed and homeless people to take care of?
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