All over the world, one thing that really stands out in stark contrast is the amount of destruction that mankind unleashes in the name of development.
So also, in a city like this, I was appalled when I came across the fact that the so called city planners were totally unprepared at the influx of people into the city and over the last 5 years or so, have unleashed unplanned development projects in the city... at the cost of high amounts of destruction - of nature.

The first prime targets of all development are the lungs of a city, the trees.

The destruction of trees in Indore began almost 4 years back, at various locations including the existing A.B.Road which passed outside the erstwhile old Indore city. The excuses given by the city planners was that the trees were a hindrance for development and hence they must go....

I wonder what kind of qualified planners these people are that they failed to recognise the need for building their designs around existing natural structures than destroying the structures to the extent that the whole city feels the impact.
Almost 40 odd trees were cut down on the Starlit road to widen it to accomodate more traffic and more commercial structures.
Around 100 odd trees were cut down on the A.B.Road all along from the outer ring road on the South till Scheme 74 on the North, under some plan, where they were to widen the road.
But today, the plan has been scrapped and no one has bothered to calculate and consider the loss they have unleashed by destroying trees that were probably more than 100 yrs old.

Open lands have been usurped by the builder politician nexus, killing the real spirit of progress for the city.

Unfortunate again, that the common citizen in that part of the country is one who seeks for his self, there is no collective conscience that the citizens bring together to ensure that their city preserves it's charm at least for the sake of the Nature that it was known for;

Shab-e-malwa - the glorified evening of Malwa - an erstwhile oft repeated Urdu phrase that described succinctly the glory of the breezy evenings of the Malwa plateau that Indore is part of, now no longer retains it's meaning or charm.
The balmy breezy evenings have been replaced by hot dusty winds that bring in dust covering everything in it's path, turning the landscape into a bleak, dreary, hot parched brown cover.
So much so the price to pay for development in once upon a time beautiful city.

61 years - 61 summers 61 winters 61 monsoons, 61 billion and counting…- this is the story of what came to be called the Golden bird, the land of Spiritual renaissance, the elephant that was learning to dance, the tiger that never got it’s due and the abode of Gods.

The sum of the age digits add up to 7 - a lucky number for some, probably has several hopes pinned on now to hold lucky for not just an individual but for an entity, a nation.
India’s astrological star sign is the Leo – the Lion, if it ever means that India was really ‘born’ on 15th Aug 1947.

Though it existed long before it was born, discovered or for that matter ‘created’, India – a capricious notion - existed in various states, geographies, beliefs and spirit much before it was ‘still-born’ in it’s 19th century polity that the planet Earth is actively keeping history of now.
So after 61 years of that fateful midnight, a conflicting and fighting mass of people was shorn off - a forced caesarian of sorts of a predominantly British mother – to be recognized as an individual polity/entity, albeit with a polit-o-genetically misaligned twin attached at it’s head - a head that today is very messed up.

The train of fate for these, almost million odd men and women, fighting, conflicting at various levels of existence, hurriedly switched tracks to rush off into an unknown direction - much like a toy train that, totally ignored by a bored child - that accidentally slips off it’s toy tracks and veers off trying to balance on it’s tiny toy wheels, till either the child turns it’s attention to put it back on it’s tracks, or is left to crash somewhere, unattended.
Today, 61 years later, the toy train, is really ‘lucky’ for not having been pulled down by gravity - gravity of the situation it has found itself in, since then.
Lucky – to be still on it’s wheels, trembling, shaking, teetering on a path not designed for it’s wheels, but yet, somehow keeping itself up, balancing, yet chugging along laboriously with increasing mass - the bored child nowhere in sight - looking for those lost rails that it was probably smoothly running on up until 300 years back.
Even after 61 years, with its hurriedly chopped off psychogenesis umbilical cords still dangling from it’s disintegrating and misappropriating spirit and it’s unattended psychopathology, this entity is alive, and is considered an anomaly of sorts by – pardon the pun – even God.

Today, this growing, once-upon-a-time-stillborn entity, is still a kid at heart, though 61 years old.
The kid that wants all that the world can give it’s consumerist population; the kid that still wants to be on the stage struts its glamour stuff with the grandeur of cinema, music, with it’s ill-kept but still considerably beautiful contrasts of human life with nature; the kid that cries loud for a seat in the security council yet not being able to get past the bullies that guard the seat; the kid that wants to grow into a mature adult, but ‘luck’ in one form or another hushing down it’s need for growth…

So what does it mean - to be an Indian - 61 years later - today??? I say -

It would be incomplete if I mention Indore and do not mention my alma mater - St. Pauls H. S. School, Old Sehore Road, Indore.

I plan to thave a series of thoughts on my alma mater as time and inclination permits.

Let me start this series by touching upon the latest news from the school - a memorial day event. An event that began a a homage to departed souls of the 1988 batch, who once upon a time were my playmates and lab mates and house-mates.

But this day has been eternalised as a day to pays homage to all students of the school who now rest in peace due to their untimely departure from the living world.

The 1988 batch was first of it's kind
- a batch that was the first class XII (10+2) batch of the school
- the first batch to get a general promotion (GP) by the then CM, Arjun Singh
- a batch which had almost 40 of it's students getting selected in PET for engineering college admissions

The pictures here should suffice to say that under the initiative of some die-hard St. Pauls alumni, the Smruti Divas (Memorial day) has been launched officially.

I would fail if I do not mention a few of the wonderful teachers who have been with us through these years guiding us in their own way, with their invisible presence in our lives, who have shaped us the way we are today.



Mr. Amitabh Saraswati - the man with the western look way back then, never was able to understand if he was the rebel with a cause or without one.