Not long time ago, I met an affable friend in Bhubaneswar after a long time. Our chat mostly centered around our common friends, one of whom happens to be in USA and doing well. My friend back home retorted back "He wasn't so smart, so how come he landed up in America" ?
Can't blame my friend back home. He was just following the definition of smartness he was familiar with. As far as I am aware, smart is someone who is sharp, witty or brainy. But Bhubaneswar has its own definition of smartness. Smart is usually an accolade laced adjective deserved for guy, who otherwise known as a LUNGUDA ( a habitual girl chaser), is the one who attires himself with fashionable clothes and shoes, scavenging pretty girls in every nook and corner of the city.
Hence my friend in USA hardly fit the bill for smartness per Bhubaneswar parlance. He was shy, neither rode a motorcycle, nor chased girls, which automatically disqualifies him as smart. The faster one drives, more girls he drives around, more fashionable cloths and shoes one wears, makes one the smartest person on earth. Yet my friend, who is unquestionably brainy and has a great command over English is branded in local lingo as a PENA or DHAIN (nincompoop).
So when Bhubaneswar is officially declared as a smart city, it caught me between the proverbial Scylla and Charybdis, the Devil and the Deep sea. Now I have a Hobson's choice to make, whether to make an emotional call and be glad for a city, which I migrated to as a 7 year old in 1976. Or be cynical about a city, struggling to feel smart about, where the woeful infrastructure on the ground is archaic and the air is so pathetic that you can't speak to someone on mobile without your call dropping in every 5 minutes.
The city which I once called home, grew right before my eyes, as I grew up with the city. During my teenage time it grew like an infant. During my youth it grew like a teenager. Like a teenager starts putting on weight, the city loaded itself with population. Unwarranted and unplanned buildings started sprouting like pimples on a teenager's cheek. A la, a young adult starts growing taller at a faster rate at teen stage in life, Bhubaneswar grew without bounds like a teenager's heart and mind. During my childhood the tallest building was the NA MAHALA KOTHA (The 9 storied Secretariat Building). Now myriad tall buildings criss-cross the landscape. A la the cool temperament of a child changes into a hot natured teenager, salubrious weather of the city has vanished, transforming the city into a hot weathered enclave for the most part of the year. Cool breeze blowing across green foliage, has been replaced these days by hot lava winds meandering through concrete jungle.
Akin to a growing teenager, the city started flexing its muscle in form of its expanding traffic. The voice of the traffic became coarse and it became more and more unruly, same as a teen would behave. As a teenager expands physic and vision, Bhubaneswar expanded itself growing recklessly in all dimension beyond its frontier engulfing small villages and rivulets. Now the rivulets in the form of undrainaged water due to the recent unseasonal rains has come back to haunt it. As the city grew, like the irresponsible parents the inept authority not only slept it became corrupt. Now similar to the spoilt kid which comes back to haunt the hapless old parents later in their life, the city has come back to hunt its residents. Probably a poetic justice which was waiting to happen.
So what the authorities did to cope up with the burgeoning city ? They not only slept when it grew at an exponential rate. Matching it, they became exponentially inefficient and corrupt. Now that it's officially topped the smartest of the smartest cities in India, let's pray the City-zens of the Temple city develop some smart civic sense. Otherwise nothing tangible is going to happen, however smart we call it. Hope the so called smart city eventually doesn't end up one befitting its local definition of smartness. There is Nothing official about it.
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