save aarey – The Metrognome

A Mumbaikar makes a fervent plea for all of us to be more involved in saving Mumbai, our home city.

by Jatin Sharma | @jatiin_sharma on Twitter

Mumbai…

We have always spoken this name with a positive emotion.

The city’s name invokes a great sense of pride in the minds of those who live in it. Others swear by its spirit, its bravery, its innate humanity.

But if we’re so proud of the city, why are we murdering it?

Mumbai is being killed in bits and pieces by those who felt they were its legal custodians. They wanted to claim first rights to its guardian of a city that they never made in the first place. We have so many guardians now that everyone has been killing it slowly and softly. From the real estate mafia to the babu taking bribes under the table, to the politician diverting funds meant for the city’s improvement to his own bank account, this city is now reduced to a shell of its former self.

Over the years, the sentiment of Mumbaikars has changed from “I love this city!” to “I love this city’s people!” Because that spirit is still intact. Everything else is just falling apart. The city is now just a facade that tries hard to show that it is still as fabulous as it used to be. The middle class of this city is still its middle class – in the current atmosphere of inflation and corruption, it can hope to do no better – when it could easily count as the upper middle class in other towns, even other metros.

The filth we see all over the city refuses to abate. The hardworking citizen is still part of an unwanted sandwich in local trains, the sincere Mumbaikar is still mocked at by the real estate prices in the city. Over two and a half lakh houses have been unsold in the city for about two years now, but still the builders will not lower prices as it would result in a huge real estate crash. And how would they recover the money they’ve pumped in to build those homes, plus the bribes they’ve paid to get the requisite permissions?

But this is not somebody else’s problem. It wasn’t just ‘other people’ who ruined the city. We did, too. In earlier years, we could get away by saying, “We didn’t know these problems existed.” But now there is an unprecedented amount of activism, news reaches us the moment it happens. There is no excuse to “not being aware” any more. Sure, most activism these days is driven by agenda. But not everything people do is driven by commercial interests. When we circulate Facebook messages about a lost senior citizen in Mumbai and discover that widespread sharing helped find the person, there is no commercial agenda driving it. When we share pictures of men harassing women travelling in public transport and get them booked, there is no commercial agenda driving it. When we band together as citizens to save the Aarey stretch, where is the commercial interest for us?

Today, Mumbai’s largest green tract, the Aarey zone, is facing an enormous problem. In a city fast losing its last vestiges of green, the trees in Aarey are going to be chopped. We have had many parks, many open grounds forcibly taken away from us by the corrupt. Isn’t it time we banded together to claim our city?

And if you think, “Why should I bother about Aarey?”, I have just one reply: You should bother because you are losing your city.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else. ‘Overdose’ is Jatin’s take on Mumbai’s quirks and quibbles.

(Picture courtesy lifeinmumbai.co.in)

Aarey says ‘Bachao!’

An RJ with Radio City writes about her station’s ongoing campaign to save Mumbai’s prized green lung – Aarey colony.

by Archana Pania

Mumbai has two sacrosanct areas that are green covers of the city, Mahim Nature Park and Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The third could have would have been Äarey Forest, but too many have settled in, tried to make it a residential area, while forest retreat hotels have been built therein and very little has been done to maintain the sanctity of the park.

Since its high connectivity to the western suburbs and Powai, the idea of making it pivotal to the real estate agents who look for lands like vultures look for rodents, Aarey is being eyed as the next hub for commercial office space generation, a large residential base and the Metro Phase III shed to be built into!

At the Radio City morning show ‘Kasa kai Mumbai’, we are huge supporters of progress in Mumbai and we want the city to converted into a world class city – but not at the cost of losing the green lungs of the city! “If Aarey colony’s 2,000+ trees are cut, I am going to leave Mumbai!” said one of our listeners! Hence, if we don’t raise our voices in support of the trees now, we shall lose the most bio-diverse green cover Mumbai has.

Jackie Shroff, singer Shaan, Dia Mirza and many eminent personalities are all for green cover in Mumbai, and it’s time we show respect to nature, as opposed to ‘development’ in the name of progress and take the green cover away. Singer, lyricist, actor, composer Piyush Misra said “A sign of a progressive city is their parks…closer to home, there is Chandigarh or Hyde Park in London…”

Yes, we lost parts of Mulund and the Powai forest to builders, but the least we can do is save whatever is left and help make a clean and green Mumbai – but this seems only to be a text on hoardings, rather than a movement in action!|

Hence, ‘Radio City ki Treety’ is a campaign where a lot of commoner, where our radio jockeys, Sucharita, Sudarshan, Rohitvir and Gaurav, apart from others, extended their audio signatures on our TREEty!

Join in today, Mumbai. Log on to www.saveaarey.org or simply go to their Facebook page (saveaarey) and make your intent heard. We want our children to carry school bags to school, not oxygen cylinders!

Archana Pania hosts the morning show ‘Kasa kai Mumbai with Salil and Archana’ on Radio City 91.1 along with RJ Salil Acharya. She has been actively campaigning for the cause of saving Aarey.

What do you want to do to save Aarey? Tell us in the comments section below.