Heat and chaos = Hyderabad....lest we forget!

The heat's beginning to get us now, and who knows what lies ahead? Added to all this the 'inmates' of this city have to deal with (as one knows the rest of the country does) an apathetic bureaucracy reflected in a zillion little everyday things. One of the results of chaos or the complete absence of planning, if you will, is the denial of free, open spaces to children to cut loose. Where do kids in our metropolis play? In streets and lanes--when and where they can, that is--on the odd rooftop of an apartment cluster or in front of a tv set. In a sense, this is denying them childhood. As kids growing up in the sixties, we simply had to cycle beyond Mehdipatnam or Masab Tank (in days when there were a few buses and not many cars on the roads) to find large expanses of wilderness. There was simply no dearth of playgrounds--very often we had to choose between this place or that, where we could cut loose till the cows came home.

Cut to circa 2007 and what do we see--shrinking parks, shrivelled up lakes conveniently passed on to 'builders', and a bureacracy that has in sixty years of Independence only learnt to wink and nod.......

Oh beloved land--waah re watan-e-azeez!

SATY