By RKB
I was in Delhi just the other day…and it was as polluted or not polluted as it has always been…nothing more nothing less…
November-December-January always have an inversion effect…and have had that effect since I was born so many decades ago…
Why are we screeching like headless chickens right now?
We forgot to plant 5 lakh trees a year around the city…
We forgot to revive all the old water bodies…the wells, baolis, ponds, lakes…in and around the city!
Bloody Hell Badkhal Lake where we used to have a picnic once every three months does not even exist anymore
Suraj Kund is in a pitiable state
The artificial lakes planned for Buddha Jayanti Park never materialised
The Ridge has been deforested as if everyone’s life depended on cutting off the last forest cover in Delhi
All the sarais with their beautiful Baolis of the Slave Kings, Mughals, Banias can even now be revived…
But we didn’t, we don’t, we won’t !
So suffer you sods!
Suffer!
And yes! Just in case I forget…
What have we done to the Yamuna?
Why can’t we refill the Moat around the Red Fort
Why can’t we let the Nahar-e-bihisht run from the Fountain to the Red Fort again right through the middle of Chandni Chowk so we can once again call it The Moonlight Boulevard?
And don’t forget the Najafgarh Jheel deliberately and callously drained out because of the widening of the Najafgarh Nullah…where there used to be herons, cranes, swans, ducks and every other form of wild life; the Jheel does not exist anymore!
NO ONE SAID A WORD
At least in Bombay (Mumbai) we are fighting tooth and nail to protect The Aarey Forest from the ravages of The Reliance Metro Yard…
Dammit! Dilli is where I was born and where I grew up…
Today it’s not my Punjabi Dilli, Peshawari Dilli, Gujranwala Dilli …Ghalib Ki Dilli ceased to exist much before I was born at St Stephen’s Hospital near Tis Hazari…!!!!
