the Times of India
reports that in the last decade alone, the depth of the Hussain Sagar lake in Hyderabad has come down to 40 ft from 60 ft... worse still, in some areas, the depth of the lake is only about 20-30 ft.
this is attributed to the immersion of approximately 30,000 - 40,000 ganesha idols in the lake each year.
in fact, the size of the lake as it exists today is itself supposed to be only 40% of what it used to be...
is this a dilemma any different from what we see happening in rapid proliferation to 'natural resources' in other parts of the nation? i'm willing to think that it is different... but i may not be able to articulate why... as yet.
in most cities, water bodies, small and large, have been filled with sand to reclaim the land for establishing settlements. the city of Bangalore as we know it (of course we no longer know it as Bangalore), for instance, stands on what used to be a minimum of 400 water bodies including ponds and tanks.
but few cities have water bodies (other than rivers or beaches) that are constitutive of the 'image of the city'. for example, in Chennai, who would want the smelly 'Cooum river' to represent the city??? in fact the history of the Cooum might tell a different tale of the city altogether...
but no, in Chennai, the long strip of the Marina beach is such a source of attraction - apart from all the elites who drive down to the beach to then walk on the 'jogging track', - even the flights that take off from the Kamaraj airport will do a little jig and take you a few thousand meters through the beach into the Bay of Bengal and return to its normal course...
just as the flights that take off at Bombay will do the same into the Arabian Sea via the Juhu beach...
of course the beaches that are the edges of seas which tie up with oceans are mainstay for the fisherman communities in these regions...
take the Hooghly river... popular visual imagery is so crucial for the ways in which it shapes our 'images' of the places we inhabit and imagine. even before i'd seen the Hooghly river, the utterance of its name would bring to the fore an image of sunset, and silhouetted boats with fishermen.... this is the river that annually sees the immersion of hundreds of thousands of durga idols... this is also the river that is source of livelihood for fishermen...
but then again, these are big rivers and beaches... lets get back to smaller water bodies that exist... a place like Baroda has the Sursagar lake which like the Hussainsagar is a dumping/immersion ground for the ganesha idols... of course no one fishes here...
or take Nainital for instance... tourism and the lake.... tourism which has generated new forms of employment, but is slowly killing the lake...
same shit, different place? perhaps... but something needs to be said for such inanity that goes by the name of 'cultural practice'!
can the existing vocabulary of water bodies as a source of livelihood translate legibly into concerns for ecology?... from where things stand today, no.
so is it for this 'image' of the city that heritage conservationists clamour for the preservation of water bodies?... or is it for the ways in which water bodies are so constitutive of our built environments?... how does ecology itself become the cause/ name by which we attempt its preservation?
added to this dilemma is that the heritage conservationists have to contend with socio-cultural and religious practices of people, which they cannot disregard... so what do they say, then? they say two things - one, turn to more eco-friendly idols that use organic clay instead of plaster of paris and eco-friendly paints... of course they don't know how cheap the PoP and chemical paints are.. and how many people would afford this eco-friendly material? and perhaps some might even say, why the hell should we give a damn about eco-friendliness; its the government's job! following this, the second thing that the heritage people say - government authorities should 'wake up' and clean these water bodies. if they claim that they do clean, then they should clean better.
is this the best we can do? go the 'eco' way or the 'management' way?
surely 'management' is an issue... but clearly the dangers of the 'management' argument are apparent - in its inevitable conclusion, it speaks of the privatization of the lake... who knows ten years down the line we see a TATA/Birla board all around tank bund... perhaps we'll be ticketed to pass by the lake... perhaps there'll be a statue of aforementioned TATA/Birla among the esteemed few that find place in tank bund...
and forget what to do with the lake.... what can be done with the practice? why have the number of idols been increasing at an alarming rate over the years? should immersion be banned? should there be a limit imposed on number of idols per society/ neighbourhood? but that's all anti-democratic... so how does ecology work with democracy? can ecology work only through capitalism - a la the new eco-friendly and organic exotic - or through state control - which despite its seeming horrors is in fact only a miserable ideal...
and finally... what of 'the people'... is this what 'popular culture' is? this maddening, inane practice that seems to be championed in the name of some 'diversity', 'ephemerality', and 'vibrancy'... or worse still, in the name of 'democracy' and 'secularism'...
what would the city or town or village be without its rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds, tanks? nothing.
perhaps the biggest myth we rely on, apart from the superiority of man over nature, is that of the eternality of water...or air...
why hark over the 'image of the city' when there won't be one any more...
