A Tale of Two Cities

“7.30am – No time to put back the clock.

The day is dressed to devouring readiness.

…….And I feel the crunch of my bones,

The mad rush of blood and people,”

muses Dr. Shyamala Nair, a city poetess and now Principal of LAD College, in her collection of poems, ‘A Side of the Sun’.

It is true that life has become so full of activities that we really have no time ‘to stand and stare’ the beauty and happiness that are spread all around us in small bits and pieces. Moreover we have become so self-centred that we can not see things beyond us as we have to prove ourselves on so many fronts of life, whether it is Mumbai or Nagpur ( Oh! my city, a unique example of missed Capital status as promised by erstwhile mergers of C.P& Berar)

Long back when I was in school I read a novel by Khwaja Ahmed Abbas in which he had painted a grim picture of the fast life of Bombay in sixties and seventies. Life began at four in the morning and ends well after twelve and the space between the two points of time was filled with an extremely hectic schedule that could easily transform a person into a heartless machine. The soft feelings of life were evaporated in the complexities of struggle for survival.

Recently I met my old classmate who lives in Mumbai, and through her experience I conjectured how this new nomenclature, Mumbai is truly suited to the Cosmo-life of people there rather than its old name, Bombay. According to her, the life in Nagpur is so relaxed and complacent that she wishes to enjoy life here rather than going back to the mechanized life there. The roads are always full of people, traffic jams have become a part of their life, locals are flooded with commuters day in and day out, nothing is easily available from getting milk and newspaper in the morning to going to offices and schools, and wasting a large portion of life in travelling (or should I say shuttling) from one place to another.

Today, when the life in general has become so fast to keep pace in this break-neck competitive world, I can well imagine the life of this big Metro. It must have got faster, harder and tougher or perhaps to the extreme limit of human capacity to cope up with the ‘fever and fret’ of life. But it is not the only case, the life in general whether it’s a big city or a small town we find the same hurry, the same rush, and the same packed schedules.

Even in Nagpur life is not as easy as thought by some of us. Of course we need not run after city buses as is happened in Mumbai (thanks to our poor bus services!) or for local trains (locals! A distant dream for Nagpurians!), most of us including school children have to go for two wheelers, of course a costly option which has given our orange city (without oranges!) a unique distinction of being recognized as the number one (Numero Uno) city in India for maximum number of two wheelers running on roads.

Moreover our RTO feels proud in registering cases against school children for driving vehicles under the name of some XYZ drive, with warning to their parents for not letting them drive until they are adult (perhaps18 or 21 years of age when they look fools to learn driving a two wheeler). Practically it is really impossible today to depend on public transport system for doing so many things at one go, as going to school or office, attending coaching classes, hobby classes, training classes, sports activities, meeting people, getting some official or household work done as electric bills, cell bills, etc.

We don’t have time whether it’s Mumbai or Nagpur, for small social courtesies which cement one to one relations to an intimate bond and feel like becoming a kind of aching-heart (not heartless)machines as Longfellow has rightly sung “Not enjoyment and not sorrow; Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow; Brings us farther than today.”

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