I live in a metro city and I am enjoying the well-laid
roads, sky-scraping shopping malls, and posh restaurants and coffee shops,
transport facility with best connectivity, communication facility, best
education, medical facility and job opportunities. The metro rail network is also
coming up which will still shrink my traveling time. I am still not proud to
live in a metro city despite the facilities listed above. Read on to know why.
I travel a long distance to my office and back home. In fact
I spend 1/8th of a day on travel. So I have a lot of time to gaze at
my surroundings and pass time while commuting in my office bus. I see a lot of
development. The development is not positive. I am denied with calm and stress-
free environment, clean air to breathe, congestion-free roads, green patch of
land, chirping sound of birds, rustling sound of trees etc. Lot of greener
pastures has been turned into concrete jungle by the real estate developers. Farmers
sell agricultural land to a builder and look for alternatives for survival. We
can’t blame them either. The rain god is playing havoc, so farmers do not get
proper yield for their crops. They also have loans outstanding at various banks
which they are unable to repay. This puts them in a pitiable situation. The
builder exploits their situation and purchases lands at cheap prices, builds a
gated-community area and sells it for enormous profit. Considering the pace at
which these buildings are coming up, our future generations will own an
apartment in one of the gated-communities but will be left with no grains and
vegetables on their plate. Instead they will be forced to eat energy tablets to
sustain themselves.
People settle down in the outskirts fearing higher cost of
living in the heart of the city. The city is ever-expanding with its radius
increasing at enormous pace. One has to undergo a lot of struggle to commute
even a small distance, thanks to the bursting of human and vehicular
population. I have seen innumerable times how an ambulance struggles to find road
in the evening traffic when the vehicles move at snail’s pace. There is no
guarantee for the patient’s life inside the ambulance. The worried looks on the
face of the patient’s relatives is painful to see.
Most schools are not situated in a calm and peaceful
locality. They are situated right on the main road where vehicles honk and honk
endlessly even if they see “School Zone. Horns prohibited” boards. The children
are not able to concentrate in the class and they get to inhale only carbon
monoxide. Children are robbed off their evening play time because they either
have to travel a long time or wait endlessly at traffic signals. At the end of
the day, they are mentally tired and only get to bury their faces into the
pillows when they get home.
Working professionals also spend a lot time on travel but
little time with their children. This deprives kids of the necessary attention
and guidance from parents to mold their kids’ character. The wife and husband
rarely meet due to erratic work timings or because of reaching home late. A
strong bond is missing in the family which is very essential for a happy
living.
Shopping malls and super markets were alien to us some time
back. It was all western culture. But now I can see super markets on every
street and shopping malls in every area. The trick used by super markets and
shopping malls to increase sales is very simple. All products in different
brands are kept on display. When a family enters the super market with a
groceries list, they definitely end up buying more than required. This is
because they want to try out different brands kept on display and also because
their kids would be attracted to the colorful stack of chocolates or chips. Same
is the scenario with shopping malls where all items are over-priced. People
throng the malls on weekends to spend their hard-earned money in an unhealthy manner.
Everyone wants to “eat, shop, dress and live western”!
I have not heard the chirping of birds ever since I
relocated to the city. Squirrels, small birds like sparrows, owls are nowhere
in sight. This is because there is a cell phone tower in nearly every home.
Birds are not comfortable with the radiation from the tower. We are only
creating an unfriendly environment to those friendly and lovely creatures. I
have heard about Darwin’s theory: Survival of the fittest. The fittest will
survive. But the human race will be alone on Earth in the distant future. The
other creatures would have succumbed.
We can proudly say that we have developed in terms of
economy, technology, culture and stuff. But according to me, this development
is at the cost of all the above.
