This story dates back to 1992. I lived in Hyderabad in those days, and would use the weekends to discover the twin cities and their hinterland. Back then, the Golconda Fort was a bit of trek, but I had heard paeans sung to its grandeur so it was a matter of time before I landed up there. As I climbed up to the main citadel through a succession of concentric battlements, I stopped abruptly when I saw a young lady diligently carving her name or initials into the ancient wall. And snapped. "Utro neeche, ye kya ho raha hai?" Without pausing for breath, she responds, "Tere baap ka hai kya?" "Hai, ab utar nahi to kuchh ulta seedha ho jaega". By now, my voice must have gone up a few decibels, attracting the attention of others nearby. The girl slinked off.
Vandalism is vandalism, whether it is Taliban fundamentalists pointing their artillery howitzers at the magnificent, serene Bamiyan Buddha or a stupid girl carving her name into ancient ramparts. Vandals are sterile, mindless trolls, who believe that violating and destroying what someone else built with love and toil, will immortalise them, and erase the memory of the original builder.
An act of monstrous vandalism is unfolding, at this very moment, in the national capital. A glorious, 3 km long, arrow straight boulevard, formally designated the Central Vista, which connects that great Victorian pile, the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the National Stadium, running right through the India Gate and the Amar Jawan Jyoti, India's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and around which, Sir Edwin Lutyens laid out the imperial capital of British India, is in the cross-hairs of this grotesque, hideous attack.
Our overlords, for they no longer see themselves as merely temporary, democratically elected, incumbents who would, in time, have to relinquish charge and pass the baton, but fancy themselves as founders of a thousand year reich, have decided to take a giant wrecking ball to the Central Vista.
A huge swathe of land on either side of the Rajpath, which is the modest amount of macadamised road a mere two lanes in width, running the length of the Central Vista, has, for a century, been a public commons. For generations of Dilliwalas, it has been a place for paddle boating in the long, reflecting pools, morning walks and late night ice-cream sorties to the green tubelit Sardarji Di Gaddis. The Central Vista was designed to emphatically denote the power and grandeur of the Raj. It segued, effortlessly, into the living heart of the Republic of India. If its great sandstone buildings denote solidity and endurance, its endless acres of turf, gnarled old trees, pools and fountains create a haven of peace and calm where brows uncrease and stress falls away.
A bureaucratic decision, rushed through when the country's attention is on combating the COVID-19 pandemic, and one which would be of a piece with despots of the Chinese, North Korean or Russian regimes, has changed land use of this entire, beautiful commons and appropriated it for building a brand new Xanadu for our brand new Kubla Khans.
Unsurprisingly, all pretense of democratic, consultative process, has been dispensed with, in arriving at this decision, purportedly in the interest of speed and decisiveness. It doesn't stop there. As the government of the day completely abdicates its responsibility for protecting hundreds of million migrant labourers, petty traders, small business owners, blue-collar workers, and their dependents from imminent economic devastation, and offers nothing except hollow homilies to help them to survive and build back their lives, these new age Neros and Marie Antoinettes have set aside Rs. TWENTY THOUSAND CRORES, for funding their Forbidden City. That's money from the Consolidated Fund of India. Money that you, I and every other Indian voluntarily handed over to the government, in the form of direct and indirect taxes. Money which was meant to be held in trust and spent for pursuing the greatest good of the greatest number.
Catastrophes are the despot's best friend. They provide cover fire for unspeakably grotesque, unapologetically egregious, self-aggrandisement.
One day, in decades to come, we shall look back and wonder how we remained mute spectators as the new empire vivisected and dismembered one of the grandest, most beautiful cityscapes not merely in our country, but in the entire world.
Right now, though, cry a quiet tear, for yourself, and for the generations who will follow you. Our Bamiyan Buddha moment is at hand.
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