Have a look at the scene above and guess where I could be ? Sample the ones below if you need more help.
..... Keep going at it .... No, not a hill station..... no, not a resort .... ........ Darjeeling ? Not yet, probably next month. ..... Keep going ....
This ladies and gentlemen is my .... neighborhood.
Yes, green, very green, highly oxygenated, bustling with the sounds of more than 200 bird species, my strictly middle class neighbourhood. Lake Gardens. A planned development in the heart of South Kolkata . And literally that is what we have, two lakes and a whole lot of gardens, trees with varied colourful flowers on them that scent my morning walk. Lakes where birds take their early morning dips and meals, a rowing club where you can learn to row crew and solo...... All this at middle class property rates with a 5 minute walk to bus stops and metro stations. How did I get so lucky !!!
My fellow Mumbaiites - savour the flavour of our defrauded, oxygen deprived lives. Our land sharks and politicos have made sure we have a single row of ugly trees and plants on our roads and neighbourhoods, every other centimetre of space is devoured to make ridiculously expensive apartments and complexes. Half the real estate in Central Mumbai is lying vacant. Our Mithi is a joke of a ecological blunder. The space these land grabbers can spare is allotted to our ugly, filthy slums a.k.a vote banks. Us, tax-paying, responsible citizens, we get a concrete jungle that we are expected to think is a thing of beauty.
We take shallow breaths and spend the mornings in bed when we could have been strolling through gardens flushing ourselves with freshly squeezed morning oxygen.No, thats what we get when we make expensive trips to hill stations or Kerala, our cheeks flush with the pink of our deep, oxygenated breaths and we feel ... alive. That's what fresh air, low on carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and flush with oxygen does for us.
Only we pay a premium price for what is our right.
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