The vanishing green

I go to Siliguri sometimes, on office work. When I went there for the first time, I was under the impression that I am going to some kind of a hill station, at the foothill of the Himalayas. Nice cool breeze and cheerful people, maybe. What I found was a nightmare. The town is filthy, badly maintained, populated by short tempered, edgy people. The roads are narrow, the bazaars are just like any bazaar in heartland Bengal, the air is heavily smoke laden. And off course, the mountains are nowhere to be seen. The entire town gives an impression of business like activity, people selling fake foreign goods across the streets, the town being on the Indo-Nepal border.

When I spoke to the people they said the city was like what I expectd it to be, but some 50 years back. These days, if you want to feel the mountain breeze, you have to go up. I generally go with very tight schedule, still I somehow managed to squeeze out some time, hire a car and started up the mountain road. I had seen beautiful photographs of the Coronation bridge at Sevak ( bridge over Tista) and those of Kalijhora and I wanted to see those places. Kalijhora, I heard is an wonderful place and the photographs I have seen ( taken by a friend when she visited the place with her famil back in 2001) make the place look heavenly. At Kalijhora, Tista takes a sharp turn and there is this river washed valley which looked like a valley of flowers in the snaps. The whole valley was full of beautiful green grass and flowers.

So I took this car and couple of kilometers up the road, the air started to clear up, a forest started on both side of the road and air became distinctly cooler. Then Tista appeared and started running along the side of the road and it was beautiful. Like any other mountain stream, the Tista is green, and cuts deep gorge across the mountains. And then the coronation bridge came into the view. It's a beautiful old bridge and you get a great view of the mountain and the Tista from there. But as I neared, I winced to see that the place was crowded with screaming shouting badam eating tourists, and the serenity was nowhere to be seen. The ground was littered with peanut shell, gutka packets and the like and looked awful. In fact people were dropping their waste cellophane bags right in Tista.

Then I drove further up to Klijhora, hoping to catch the beauty of the place. And lo behold! They are making this giant hydel water project there. Public Works Department has taken over the whole place and what used to be the valley of flowers is now full of cranes and trucks and workmen. They are even changing the natural course of the river to facilitate the project! The place is changed beyond comprehension and looks like a battlefield. So much for my sight seeing.

While coming down I stopped at a place where again the river bends creating a small sand filled riverbank. This was a place where the sahibs used to catch trout in the running stream. I got down there and saw a huge group of tourists having picnic with loud hindi film music. The beautiful bank is litterd with bottles of alcohol and all sorts of garbage

I am not surprised. The worst is yet to come. There was a global conference on environment recently where the scientists warned that within 50 years due to global warming, the Sunderbans would be completely submerged, killing the flora and fauna that we have there. 60% of the flora of the great Barrier Reef would be gone forver.

We, as a race, are chalta hai types. Unless the govt imposes restrictions, the green would never be saved, the city will continue to eat up all the greens we inherited over those millions of years.