Of the thin line between green heaven and hell!!
   Date :24-Jun-2021

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By Vijay Phanshikar :
 
“HEAVEN must be one such place”! -- was the loosefooter’s comment on the Seminary Hills area having bathed in initial Monsoon showers. As the rainy season deepens, the Seminary Hills area -- and all other forest patches in the city -- will assume fantastic presence. For the loosefooter, that will be the season of repeated visits to those green gifts from Nature -- at all times of the 24-hour day, pre-dawn, dawn, morning, noons, evenings, and even nights -- taking in wonderful coolness, terrific fragrances, a certain sense of inexplicable wetness that soothes the nerves and nourishes the verve ...! Heavenly!! However, that will also be a season for a deepening and rather disturbing awareness that the line of demarcation between heaven and hell is rather too fragile, and a little urban aggression can destroy Nature’s green gifts.
 
That is what is happening in Nagpur -- and maybe in many other places around the country. In that manner, we are surely taking definitive steps towards a hell of our own creation. As every Nagpurian has known for his or her lifetime that the city has been blessed with a great gift of greenery. Over the past few decades, however, the city has indulged in an almost deliberate neglect of its green cover. And in this unholy endeavour, most of us are partners -- the people and their elected representatives as well as the bureaucracy. So fortunate has Nagpur been that even this near-deliberate neglect of the arboreal cover has not succeeded in destroying the green gift fully.
 
This brings us to another level of awareness -- that we still have hope of retaining the green gifts in their pristine form to a great extent. if we apply our collective mind to the task, if we keep aside our prides and prejudices and come together to protect the green cover of this wonderful city, then we can retain not just its uniqueness but also present to the country an example to emulate. Unfortunately, such a commitment to green cause is not forthcoming -- at least in Nagpur. Most unfortunately, we have elected representatives with suspect green awareness. Unfortunately, we have also been ‘blessed’ with the bureaucracy that finds pleasure in imposing on the city an anti-green urban model. So, despite the great green gift of Nature, the city of Nagpur has begun its invariable march towards a hell -- in the next few years. This is not a doomsday prediction, so to say, or being a devil’s advocate.
 
This is sheer and sad realism that nobody can refute just for the heck of it. But unfortunately, the city is presently witnessing a sad cleavage between the green groups and so-called developmentalists. That is, of course, not going to solve any problem. What is needed is a concerted effort to find a way out of our urban lust. And if that is not done rather in a haste, things would go out of hand in multiple ways. The loosefooter does not know if his warning may even be heeded. n