I am lucky enough to be working in a place, where they believe in creating state of the art campuses. Every day when I step inside the gates, all the hectic running around of the morning gets pushed to the background. Even as I walk down briskly to my building, soft shafts of golden rays glancing off the well manicured lawns, fresh dewy sprays of flowers…they lure and refresh all senses. For the rest of the day, my cubicle is mostly all the scenery I get, but I enjoy the walk back in the evening on the same paths, now admiring the gentle dusk.
Then I am outside on the road, trying to find commutation. If you are the bike, auto, scooter sort, the din, dust and smoke is inescapable. By the time I reach home I am covered with a layer of dust and I suspect I inhale a few grams of it daily too.
Does this end when I am home? I would have loved to say big hearty yes. But Alas!
A big stretch of highway in the front of my apartment has been undergoing a road widening project for about two years now. The roadsides have been dug up and flattened to the level of the main road. Someone somewhere seems to have forgotten that it was a “road” that they were to construct, not a mud track. All the area around the building premises is a patch of mud too.
Vehicles passing by are in the greatest hurry to overtake other vehicles on the road, so mostly you would find quite a company jostling for space on those “widened road sides”. A nice consequence of this, apart from the interminable horn honking is that, we have begun to believe – Thou art dust and thou will be dust!
I see kids playing in the space between two apartment blocks, women taking an idle evening stroll. There are a few shrubs here and there, and most of the bigger trees were uprooted for the road widening.
Isn’t it upsetting? To see five year olds making play on bare cemented ground, breathing in dust and smoke, not knowing about birdsong or butterflies? I almost feel guilty for the pleasant mornings and evenings in my office campus.
It sure upsets me. Many people blame our generation for this reckless onslaught of construction which has been dubbed as infrastructure development. They think, we are responsible for the ever increasing prices of property and the concrete jungles spawning in response to our spending capacities. I don’t fully agree with that view for various reasons. Nevertheless, I feel we are in a better position to alleviate the situation than most.
The cities we inhabit give a lot to us – good jobs, better lifestyle, shopping places, eateries, a cosmopolitan society… How many times do we complain about the state of traffic and the attitude of local populations toward us? Aren’t there a few things we can change for the better?
Take the problem of dust that I mentioned earlier; recently, they published survey results for Hyderbad’s air pollution constituents. The major constituent of air pollutants is Dust – 43%, contrary to the popular belief.
I am planning to put some ideas across to the management of our apartment; things like, paving the area around the building with cement block tiles. I have seen these tiles in some places. They are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that can lock into each other firmly. No additional construction is required to pave an area with these. I think they can be dismantled too. They would prevent dust being racked up and would stand minor traffic. I also plan for planting flowering plants and patches of lawn in whatever little space is available in the premises.
Do any of you have good ideas that can help our cities? Small steps that could make life even slightly better for the inhabitants?
Then I am outside on the road, trying to find commutation. If you are the bike, auto, scooter sort, the din, dust and smoke is inescapable. By the time I reach home I am covered with a layer of dust and I suspect I inhale a few grams of it daily too.
Does this end when I am home? I would have loved to say big hearty yes. But Alas!
A big stretch of highway in the front of my apartment has been undergoing a road widening project for about two years now. The roadsides have been dug up and flattened to the level of the main road. Someone somewhere seems to have forgotten that it was a “road” that they were to construct, not a mud track. All the area around the building premises is a patch of mud too.
Vehicles passing by are in the greatest hurry to overtake other vehicles on the road, so mostly you would find quite a company jostling for space on those “widened road sides”. A nice consequence of this, apart from the interminable horn honking is that, we have begun to believe – Thou art dust and thou will be dust!
I see kids playing in the space between two apartment blocks, women taking an idle evening stroll. There are a few shrubs here and there, and most of the bigger trees were uprooted for the road widening.
Isn’t it upsetting? To see five year olds making play on bare cemented ground, breathing in dust and smoke, not knowing about birdsong or butterflies? I almost feel guilty for the pleasant mornings and evenings in my office campus.
It sure upsets me. Many people blame our generation for this reckless onslaught of construction which has been dubbed as infrastructure development. They think, we are responsible for the ever increasing prices of property and the concrete jungles spawning in response to our spending capacities. I don’t fully agree with that view for various reasons. Nevertheless, I feel we are in a better position to alleviate the situation than most.
The cities we inhabit give a lot to us – good jobs, better lifestyle, shopping places, eateries, a cosmopolitan society… How many times do we complain about the state of traffic and the attitude of local populations toward us? Aren’t there a few things we can change for the better?
Take the problem of dust that I mentioned earlier; recently, they published survey results for Hyderbad’s air pollution constituents. The major constituent of air pollutants is Dust – 43%, contrary to the popular belief.
I am planning to put some ideas across to the management of our apartment; things like, paving the area around the building with cement block tiles. I have seen these tiles in some places. They are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that can lock into each other firmly. No additional construction is required to pave an area with these. I think they can be dismantled too. They would prevent dust being racked up and would stand minor traffic. I also plan for planting flowering plants and patches of lawn in whatever little space is available in the premises.
Do any of you have good ideas that can help our cities? Small steps that could make life even slightly better for the inhabitants?
