Death on the roads.... people and trees... Besant Avenue Chennai

Death on the roads.... people and trees... Besant Avenue Chennai

"Hush be still my heart. these great trees are prayers."
Rabindranath tagore

The juggernaut is on the roll again. Roads have to be built in the
summer and contracts have to be awarded. The roads that were good till
last year are suddenly inadequate. The traffic is a beast and snarling
for more space. The two wheelers need wheeling space and the 4
wheelers too need the more space.. but more, they need clear straight
road space , to travel fast... the new, high rpm engines need to match
the ads on TV screens. If the roads don't offer such possibilities the
riders and drivers feel cheated, the manufacturers press for better
and wider roads, read 'better infrastructure', and the administrators
need to find things to improve.

In the meantime the road has to be cleared... not asphalt roads, but
the trees that are crucial to road widening.. they need to be cleared
out.

So roads will be built, and pavements narrowed, and trees will be
murdered. The reason stated is that, trees cause accidents and young
people die. The reason also that the speed of traffic is 'too
difficult to curtail'. Also that replacement trees with tree guards
have been planted further away from the road. Thus, for the logic of
things, roads will have trees, only new trees. And we will all have
more space for our vehicles. And all will be happy ever after...
Sorry, till the next spate of road widening...

On Besant Avenue there are many old trees, just as there were on many
other roads in the Chennai of the years gone by. These trees, many
over 80 and 100 years old, have grown slowly and have seen 3
generations of the city dwellers move from bullock carts to fast
moving cars and two wheelers move under them. But suddenly we hear
that their time is come.... the executioner is ready, the contractor,
who will carry out the job for the Corporation of Chennai, will come
one night and when the city sleeps fell the trees. This is the one way
of presenting everyone with a fait accompli. People with their
sensitivities are hindrances and have to be overcome or sidestepped.
Who can argue once a tree is felled and then carted away? The
anguished cries are impotent and will last but for a small while!

It is sad to see a large living thing felled, killed and
slaughtered.... but we have all seen trees die, what is the problem if
people want to fell them?

There IS really no problem if one tree has to be cut. But if we see
this as part of a systematic pattern - 900 trees have been earmarked
for disposal - questions begin to form and doubts begin to surface....

We talk about protecting the environment and then we take down
trees... large tall old trees, older than most of us alive today,
trees belonging to another era. Do we all like the idea of the
environment, but unable to work for it in our small ways?

Today getting rid of 3 to 4 feet of pavement seems very important, to
hustle the traffic along. But what will happen tomorrow? Roads fill
sooner than expected. Have all options been considered?

For example, is slower traffic on Besant Avenue not a boon? Should we
not have more speed-restraining mechanisms such as rumblers to meet
the unseemly hurry sponsored by the advertisements?

What has been done in the city when the traffic congestion is high? In
Panagal Park and in a thousand other places, the roads have become one
way. Not only is traffic more orderly but also slower.

In a city full of 10 million people there is only that much road
space. One thing is sure - the roads are going to fill and soon will
be filled to the brim. This cannot be changed. But can we have full
roads and trees or shall we strip the roads of all cover?

Besant Avenue is among the less crowded roads. Why this attention to
this road? Is it that it is easy to widen the road and allocate some
money for the purpose? Is it that the other animal, the budget and
expenditure, has to grow, at least a little fatter over last year?
More contracts have to be given, more rock quarries given permission
and the industrial juggernaut needs work? And building roads here will
be easier than building them in some remote village... any day.

What is the minimum size of pavements needed in the city? What are our
entitlements?

And what about public transport - one bus can carry the equivalent of
30 to 40 car loads of passengers. Is there no answer in that
direction, learning from Bogota and other such experiments? Or is our
commitment to the 2 wheeler and 4 wheeler market more pressing than to
the environment?

Many more questions, many more questions!

In our time does the tree not have a voice? Can a tree just because a
road needs to be built have no defence? Are there no men or women to
raise a voice? Or have we all been co opted into silence... punctuated
by the rasping noise of the tree saws? All! Citizens, students,
bureaucrats, politicians? Don't the tax payers have a voice? Should
such schemes not be debated openly?

We all agree that some trees need to go. But don't we need to question
the inevitability of this direction?

Sure, the city will fill up, with more roads and more cars, and more
high rise apartments! Sure, the water table will go down further and
the trees won't find water... this has happened to all large cities.
These large trees have managed to survive despite being choked in the
pavement and despite years of drought. And now that all other devices
have failed, we say the lives of people are more precious than the
lives of trees?

I invite, any politician, any minister, any bureaucrat to bring his
old father or mother, hold their hand and try and cross some of our
roads. They will see how speed has stolen our birthright to safety on
the roads. Sure, young motor cyclists, even if they drive fast,
sometimes under influence of alcohol, must not die. But surely, we
cannot maim our population giving privilege to speed over the right of
the pedestrian and the cyclist!

Soon, all too soon, the oil is going to dry up, Soon, all to soon,
before the next generation of shade giving trees grow to 30 feet or 40
feet! in fact their only chance of survival and growth is less of this
madness.

Surely the next generation will ask us.. what did you do to these
beautiful trees? Have you merely replaced them with asphalt roads?
Surely we have photographs for calendars and images for the screen
savers..

And Tagore, if he were to visit Chennai again as he did in the 1920s,
would he say, "Hush be still my heart. these great trees are prayers."

Sure go ahead and cut the trees! Just tell me what should I say to
your grandchild when he asks "Where did all the green go? Did you all
save trees or cut them down?" I am a teacher, you see. My ilk meet
questions that others probably avoid...
G.Gautama

We are here together....

We are here
all together
we are responsible for the way things are
we may not think so
but we are.

all of us are not responsible for all the things
fully
but all things, all things we like and dislike
we are part of
in tiny measure or not so tiny

mostly we can be only responsible for tiny measures
we one in 6 billion
even if we count ourselves as one in 100 million
the well to do
we are still a small part, only a small part

the temptation is high
to just give up and believe
since we are so small we dont count
since we dont count we need not make any effort

the temptation is high
to continue with the small follies
believing again, that they dont count
and since we dont count, we can continue

but we count, a wee bit
and the wee bits add up
wee bitsof caring add up
and wee bits of uncaring add up

no one can say
if the world is a better place
for the wee bits we have added
or a worse place

a choice we make each day
what is yours, what is mine?
to say it hardly matters, so let me do little?
to say it hardly matters, so let me do a little?