Have you ever uttered or at least heard the upcoming words, “Are dekho ekdum foreign jaisa lag raha hai. Kitna accha hai!”? Well, it’s great if you’ve ever been familiar with them and if not then most likely you belong to one of the non-Hindi speaking states of India. I, myself am sure to have used it many a times whenever I get a glimpse of beautiful surroundings anywhere on and around an Indian road.
The prior question engenders another curious question: Do “foreigners” also in their foreign countries utter and admire the countries foreign (better consider India in this case) to them on seeing a balmy sight in their streets? Actually, I really do not know. But does that matter? The point that matters is for how long we will keep admiring the milieu of developed countries.
We Indians are known for keeping our houses neat and tidy. We are adept at keeping the purity and spirituality intact in our houses by following various sanitary practices. We even refrain from rubbing off our sh*t with a tissue as we find it filthy and less clean. But the ambit of these sanctifying practices is limited to only our houses. They abruptly disappear like a phantom on moving outside.
An attitude of ignorance on the part of both the country’s citizens and the local governing bodies has led to such a beleaguered state of places surrounding the roads and pavements. What we do is that we make sure to dump every meager form of scrap produced within our houses in the house’s dustbin and then shamelessly invert the contents of that dustbin on the sides of the road which in turn, due to the ignoramus attitude of sanitation authorities remains open creating a lot of stink and ugliness.
But this was just the role of garbage in obliterating the beauty of the something extant. In India, decorative antics, arched railings and lush green outfits aren’t even constructed in the first place up to the required extent. Dusty asphalt, kaput dividers, pale pavements and uncontained garbage dominate the Indian roads. Besides, even if plantation is done initially on the dividers, no heed of its maintenance is taken. Naturally, it becomes an exemplar of the famous Hindi phrase “Chaar Din ki Chaandni” where the pleasantness of the roads can’t survive for more than a month after its foundation.
Many goliath cities of the world like New York and London were once at the brink of sinking into the concrete jungle and ending up suffocated just because of the dense and unplanned construction that took place in there. It was only due to the solemn efforts put in after 1990 by these cities’ citizens and the authorities that not only they precluded the danger of becoming an abode of only human beings and vertical structures, but also have now become a paradigm of beatified surroundings, lush green city gardens and roads lined up with alluring artifacts, teaching the remnant world that how a soothing milieu nurturing both humans and nature can be created to sustain high standards of living.
It is also to be taken into account these two cities, especially NY, has much bleak climate than any of the metro cities of India. Even after getting thrashed by perennial snow storms, NY has maintained its greenery and bucolic landscapes since many years. On the other hand, the urban India doesn’t have any such harsh weather problem or naturally punishing nature or climate. If the biography of India tutelages green meadows of Cunnoor, Valley of flowers in Uttarakhand and crores of acres of cultivable land, then why can’t our cities be made green? And if we can spend 70,000 Crore on the temporary Commonwealth Games, then why can’t we spend some amount on the structural beautification of our cities, a thing that will bedizen the cities for a very long time.
If we can blindly adopt the nuances of Western culture, then why can’t we learn from their cities’ architectural layout? Hence, it is nothing less than imperative for the local development authorities of various cities of India to plan vacant space while drawing the maps for city roads to fill them with some magnificent artifacts and greenery so that next time we see a beautiful street in our city, words like:“Are dekho ekdum foreign jaisa lag raha hai!”Don’t naturally come out of our mouths.
