I came to live in Artist Village somewhere in the beginning
of the eighties. At that time it was conceived as a commune for artists,
writers, actors and, well, anyone of an artistic persuasion. The chief
attraction of living in Artist Village, to me, was that it was set in a valley
and was surrounded by hills. The houses were designed by the renowned
architected Charles Correa and had tiled roofs. The rafters were made of rough
unpolished wood and the eaves were fashioned out of similarly unpolished
planks. There was a pond from which an artificial stream coursed through the
Village giving it the proper look of an Indian village. The village was created
on the model of clusters of huts opening on to a central courtyard as was the
custom in Indian rural areas. The houses were so positioned that residents
couldn’t see inside each others’ homes. It later became an embarrassment when
sound couldn’t be similarly banished. Due to some strange acoustics and, may
be, because Artist Village was situated in a valley, what was spoken in homes
could be heard by the neighbours.
The design was good from an architect’s point of view.
However, when the harsh rain hit the valley like a deluge of hail, the tiled
roof started leaking and the rafters became wet and soggy. The eaves all but
disappeared, falling down by bits. Moisture hung in the air like a thick
blanket cordoned by the hills on either side and rain fell like sleet. Swarms
of mosquitoes converged on the village from somewhere and people fell sick
including me. The months of monsoon were feared in Artist Village. After all,
nobody wants to live in a house that has a leaky roof. I realized I will have
to make changes to the house to protect my family and reconstructed a
two-storey structure, after obtaining the requisite permissions from the
Corporation.
I particularly like walking and hiking and perambulating
every morning in the open. It keeps me alert and in good health. My preferred
time for walking is early morning and late evenings. On weekdays before going
to work I would walk around the pond and return home invigorated by breathing
the fresh air. The Village offered immense hope for exploring the nearby hills,
which became my preoccupation on holidays and Sundays. However, the roads of
Artist Village were not laid when I came to live there when my son Ronnie was
aged one.
As was my habit I wrote letters to the Navi Mumbai Municipal
Corporation (I will call it the Corporation from now on) detailing the state of
the roads. This was the only letter to which I received a reply. It was typed
on cheap government stationery and had the signature of an Assistant Engineer
of the Corporation. As a consequence, so I believe, the Corporation laid the
roads and fixed the paths between houses with rough tiles of what provenance, I
don’t know. They are popularly known as Dholpuri stones, may be, because they
are mined in a place called Dholpur.
x-x
Then came the elections to the Corporation when my son was
in Class I of the local school. The roads were now cratered by four rains and
were resurfaced. A lot of the aggregate were left behind and weren’t cleared.
The Dholpuri tiles also became crooked and broken. The new Corporator in his
enthusiasm raised the level of the paths and relaid the tiles. However, the
debris was not cleared and it lay there along with the aggregate left behind by
the road resurfacing. I wrote to the Corporation about this, as it was becoming
an impediment in my daily walking. My shoes became coated with dust and walking
had become arduous and not at all a pleasure. I explained all this in my
letter, but received no reply. I contented that all was being done in the name
of progress and dismissed it as such.
x-x
When my son was in class III the roads were dug again to lay
storm water rains. Overnight multi-armed JCBs converged on our roads and tore
them up day and night with monster-like whining and screaming. The persistent
sound of the mighty machine echoed in the hills and I became disoriented with
its insistent caterwauling. I sighed in relief when the work was over. But more
travails were to follow. The roads lay devastated as if a giant leviathan had
run his fingers through it. Again, I wrote letters to the Corporation. After
three months the roads were laid again.
x-x
The second Corporation election came when my son was in
Class V. By now I knew the Corporator. He was a genial and rather pudgy-looking
individual who dressed as the occasion demanded. If Id-ul-fitr was being
celebrated he would wear a skull cap and white kurta and pyjama. If Ganesh
Utsav, the festival wherein idols of Ganesha were worshipped, was being
celebrated he would wear a white garrison cap and white clothes according to
the local tradition. When I met him one evening – dressed in a garrison cap and
local traditional dress – I told him that the debris left during the digging
for storm water drains was not cleared. These were creating unseemly mounds on
the road and I had lost all hope of seeing an Artist Village that had nicely
laid out roads and pathways.
He told me that ‘the needful will be done.’ Indeed, it was
done. The roads of Artist Village were cleared of debris and as a bonus a
playground was leveled and given to the children of the Village. This was good
news! Ronnie now had a place to play football and cricket with his friends. Children
created a big racket in the evenings when they played on this ground. I didn’t
mind that as long as my son was one of the people who was enjoying himself.
x-x
When Ronnie reached Class VIII, the Corporation, out of the
blue, decided via ducts had to be created to empty the water collecting in the
residential areas into the artificial stream. Again, the JCBs got into action
and a barrage of sounds started offending me at all times of the day. On my
daily walks I had to skirt many mounds of dirt and stones. The tar and
aggregate would lie around as if no one was responsible for them. I wrote
letters to the Corporation, received no reply, and was, in general,
disappointed by the way things were going. I decided that the Corporator,
though an amiably man, wouldn’t get my vote in the next Corporation election.
This seemed of no consequence because a slum sprang up on a
strip of forest land on one of the hills. Apparently the sponsor, or, guardian,
of this slum colony was the Corporator himself. On my morning walk I would see
this ugly outcropping of huts on the slope of the hill through the early
morning mist as the sun cast blue shadows on the massed trees of the hills. Men
and women in a vivid spectrum of coloured clothes would be walking to their
places of work most of them carrying their tools like mallets, trowels and
planers with them. I had nothing against them but they were occupying the land
illegally and paying no taxes. This chagrined me. I wrote a letter to the Corporation
with a copy to the Corporator pointing out that the rubble from digging for the
storm water drain was still not cleared and that a slum had come up in Artist
Village, which had to be uprooted without delay. Slums have a habit of
proliferating and this slum was growing day by day into around forty hutments.
x-x
In the Corporation election I didn’t vote for the
Corporator. I didn’t vote for anybody. Still the Corporator won because he had
the vote of the people living in the slum sponsored by him. Soon after he was
elected the Corporation decided the storm water drains were not big enough and
set about removing the old pipes and replacing them with newer and bigger ones.
Rumour was that the Corporator had spent ten million rupees to entertain the
slum-livers with liquor and food to gain their votes and had to regain this amount
as soon as possible. The new contract was a means towards this purpose.
One day, I met the Corporator as I was coming back from my
evening walk and, somehow, all my complaints poured out in one litany of
grouses. At that time he was wearing a Mundu and shirt as he was returning from
a function of the Ayyappa temple. I had harboured my complaints for long and I
wanted to be rid of them and who better than the Corporator himself? He listened
patiently to my spiel, smiled, and assured me that ‘the needful will be done.’
Days later, during the Christmas season, a man came and
delivered a cake at my residence. This was the Corporator’s way of buying
peace. A bribe! I returned the cake to the man and said I didn’t want it. I
also pointed out that I had bought enough cakes for Christmas to want his
measly offering.
Now my son is in Class XII. Several heaps debris mar the
road leading to my house. The playground has been dug up for laying some new
set of drainage pipes for the people living in the slums. They pay no taxes to
the Corporation, use stolen electricity, and now, are given drainage pipes too.
At my cost! My tax money paid for all these! My umbrage didn’t find a suitable
outlet so I shut up.
The Dholpuri stone tiles that were laid when my son was aged
one had disappeared beneath these mounds. In places where it showed it was
chipped and broken. The dirt that was dug up to lay the storm water drains
still lay and obliterated the stone dividers on the side of the roads. There
was aggregate and stone lying around everywhere. By now my dream of seeing a
serene, foliated, debris-free Artist Village had faded and I began taking life
as it comes, without much expectation, without any preconceived notion. Garishly
constructed concrete bungalows were replacing the old tiled-roofed huts. I was
becoming old and my health didn’t permit me to write long-complaining missives
to the Corporation. I had decided that writing letters to the Corporation was
of no use and stopped that habit. After all, why waste money on stamps and
stationery when ‘no action was being taken’? What I had thought of as progress
hasn’t been progress at all because, I think, progress also means a betterment
of the quality of life.
