Measuring the loss

For the last week or so, I have been in Dehradun visiting a dear family member who is recovering from a surgery and health scare. After almost two years of being holed up in our flat in Delhi, the drive to this beloved and familiar city was liberating. The old potholed road is now a spanking new expressway that cuts out the clogged narrow streets of old towns such as Modinagar, Hapur, Saharanpur and Roorkee, cutting both stress levels and driving time. The monsoon had washed the green fields and trees and we sped along happily until a sudden cloudburst slowed us down after Roorkee. Worse was to follow: the ghat area before one rolls into the verdant Doon valley had been hit by a landslide and there was a traffic jam on both sides. There was nothing one could do but wait for the road to be cleared of the debris and the traffic to slowly negotiate the affected area.

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It was still pouring and the mountainous area had no WiFi, so no one could be called to say that we would be late. Yet even then, the impatient would try and squeeze past the orderly single file of waiting vehicles leading to yet more bedlam. What is it about us Indians that we cannot wait for our turn? Standing in queues, allowing elderly people to board a bus or train first, or simply helping someone in distress is so alien to our people. God knows when the smart cities that we are building will also be populated by civilised and smart people.

I have been coming to Dehradun since the early Sixties and cannot tell you how radically it has changed from the serene, green and quiet town it was then. The Forest Research Institute and the IMA are perhaps the only green islands left now. Those grand bungalows on Old Survey Road, or Rajpur and the quaint Tibetan settlement in Sahasradhara are now but a memory. I cannot say that making this peaceful old cantonment town and retired persons’ retreat into today’s smart city has done it any good. The volume of traffic would put even Bhogal to shame. Every conceivable type of moving body, from old carts to limousines, vies with the mosquito-like presence of the two-wheelers and tempos that roar through peaceful colonies from early morning till late at night. Time was when I looked forward to going to Rajpur Road, Ghantaghar Chowk and Astley Hall to browse through bookshops or have chaat and buy the heavenly éclairs and pastries of Ellora. I had trouble even spotting these old landmarks, leave alone attempt to find a place to park and cross the street.

Sahasradhara, once the way to the famous sulphur springs up in the mountains, is now a vast slum of apartment buildings with names like Pacific Heights that far from looking onto any ocean straddles a filthy nullah with a shanty town. The names of colonies here are all taken from Delhi’s map: so there is a Defence Colony, a Vasant Vihar and even a South Extension. Apart from the humorous side of this is the fact that all our lovely old towns, instead of preserving their own identities, are wannabe metro spaces with malls and eateries that offer a bewildering variety of food. One day, soon, all of India will start to look like a vast slum and the builders of these pathetic urban spaces will import all the muck that our metros have spawned. My heart bleeds for what we are bequeathing to the coming generations, who will never be able to see the twinkling lights of Mussoorie or the star-spangled sky of the Doon valley, or the Milky Way that we could often spot when we were small.

As I write, I am overcome with another kind of sadness: the heart-rending accounts shown on our TV screens of a proud people and country destroyed forever. The sight of the women shrouded in black, the little children fretful and confused at the rapid decline of their familiar neighbourhoods and homes, the sinister presence of the gun-toting Taliban, the crowds thronging the airport desperate to leave — will nothing ever move all those evil empire builders who have armed a deadly army of rabid and heartless bigots? The western world has much to answer, for using this once beautiful country as an arena to play their Great Games. A curse on all of them, for anyone who can abandon women and children will one day pay a price for this lack of humanity. Decades will pass before peace returns to this beautiful mountainous country and the scars of a senseless war will damage this proud race of Pathans in ways we cannot even imagine.

As a woman and a mother, I urge all of you to read the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata and hear the lament of Gandhari as she curses Krishna and the Yaduvanshis (the warriors) who launch wars and never stop to count the dead they leave behind. Of all the sins that man commits, the most heinous is the price that women have to pay for upholding male ‘honour’ and pride. Victory on the battlefield is backed by the loss of husbands, sons, fathers and brothers. For all those who still talk of revenge and honour here in India, beware the curse of your women.