Yogesh comes to pick me up from office at Kothrud to home in Wakad. (I just love him for this.) It is a 14 km and a 45 min journey that gets boring and routine most of the time. I keep asking him, "Ghar kadhi yenar?" ("When will we reach?"). And he replies 10 mins just for the sake of it, even though it is about 30 mins away.
There is traffic with dense black fumes coming out of PMT-PCMC buses and 6 seater rickshaws. (Seriously guys, don’t the pollution rules apply to public transport???). And I feel sorry for the kids begging at the signals or some poor homeless man sitting at a pavement with just 1 cloth bag full of god-knows-what as is sole possession. Sometimes I get anxious when I see little school/high school kids crossing the busy roads chatting with their friends, paying little heed to the speeding vehicles. Dunno how I am going to let Arya go to school on his own, ever! And then there is tree-felling going on all around for some road widening work. I plunge into thoughts all over again.
Yogesh weaves his way out from all this mess. Poor guy. Sometimes I think he knows that I am pondering over such seemingly petty things, and hence tries to distract me by talking about Arya, a guaranteed mood up-lifter for me.
These days I try to find some silver lining in such cloudy mess. Just to uplift my spirits and carry on like any other sensitive but lazy-to-change-anything person.
Few days back when I was on Senapati-Bapat road, I saw many trees on the road-divider. PMC is working hard at maintaining the shrubs and trees on it. (There are some areas though, where the shrubs have dried up and need a good trimming.) Some of the trees are dried up too (deciduous/lack of water? Dunno). But suddenly I found the silver lining there!
Even on the dried up trees I saw there were many bird nests. On almost every tree throughout SB road! It means that although the citizens and PMC are doing their best to cut trees off, the birds have still managed to find a small haven right in the middle of the busy road! We need to give a thought to give them more space, more safety. If we can’t plant trees, we can atleast arrange for some artificial bird nests and artificial bird feeders (Actually, one of my friend sells these.)
I must admit though - Bravo to the birds, and to the spirit of living!
There is traffic with dense black fumes coming out of PMT-PCMC buses and 6 seater rickshaws. (Seriously guys, don’t the pollution rules apply to public transport???). And I feel sorry for the kids begging at the signals or some poor homeless man sitting at a pavement with just 1 cloth bag full of god-knows-what as is sole possession. Sometimes I get anxious when I see little school/high school kids crossing the busy roads chatting with their friends, paying little heed to the speeding vehicles. Dunno how I am going to let Arya go to school on his own, ever! And then there is tree-felling going on all around for some road widening work. I plunge into thoughts all over again.
Yogesh weaves his way out from all this mess. Poor guy. Sometimes I think he knows that I am pondering over such seemingly petty things, and hence tries to distract me by talking about Arya, a guaranteed mood up-lifter for me.
These days I try to find some silver lining in such cloudy mess. Just to uplift my spirits and carry on like any other sensitive but lazy-to-change-anything person.
Few days back when I was on Senapati-Bapat road, I saw many trees on the road-divider. PMC is working hard at maintaining the shrubs and trees on it. (There are some areas though, where the shrubs have dried up and need a good trimming.) Some of the trees are dried up too (deciduous/lack of water? Dunno). But suddenly I found the silver lining there!
Even on the dried up trees I saw there were many bird nests. On almost every tree throughout SB road! It means that although the citizens and PMC are doing their best to cut trees off, the birds have still managed to find a small haven right in the middle of the busy road! We need to give a thought to give them more space, more safety. If we can’t plant trees, we can atleast arrange for some artificial bird nests and artificial bird feeders (Actually, one of my friend sells these.)
I must admit though - Bravo to the birds, and to the spirit of living!
