The Mess

While bridges fall and newer craters emerge with each spell of rain- even as rollers roll and labourers toil tirelessly- I sit on my bed trying to think; blocking out the metro’s din and carpenter’s drill. My plight is shared by hundreds of DU hostel residents who are being evicted on the “occasion” of the Commonwealth Games. That’s all I genuinely wanted in my life since DUTA strikes, semester system, hostel eviction, rising café prices, college politics, assignments, projects, exams, CAT, lack of money and work are petty things and of absolutely no consequence to me. All I needed for celebrating the glory of the Queen was dug up roads, falling bridges, and of course, no place to live!

In case you haven’t figured it out already, I fail to see a point in any of this. Unless it is to make news, which isn’t a good enough point in my book. Roads are makeshift pools and breeding place of mosquitoes, every project incomplete or sub standard and the GoM has proved it is as efficient as the OC. The Games Village is filthy and unliveable and one can almost imagine it pleading to the Yamuna to drown it, again. The footbridge outside the main venue falls injuring 27, and the Union Urban Development Minister refuses to talk about something as little as that. Metro, of course, never disappoints as the next disaster waiting to happen.

We insist on having bus stands, shades, dust bins and streetlights that are no less than a work of modern art and are eager to portray Delhi as the next New York, but is it so hard to see that we are nowhere close? I don’t even know why we have to be. Why are we so bent on putting a face pack, in an attempt to hide the zits and scars, knowing full well that it’ll only take another good spell of rain to get rid of the facade?

I am appalled at whoever decided to bid for the Games and then went ahead with it, partly because it is a pointless event but mostly because we were just not ready for it. We still aren’t, and won’t be in another ten years if we go on like this. And believe you me one doesn’t have to be Einstein to figure that out. The point is that we haven’t matured enough, as a nation and as a people, to host an International event like the CWG or the Olympics. We don’t have the infrastructure and we don’t have a system or the people who can get the infrastructure ready. Not anything world class anyway. It is just another exercise in looting the aam junta and pocketing the taxpayers money or gifting the moolah to one’s son, if you please, as our dear OC Chairman has done by allotting contracts without taking out tenders.

My only regret is that we’ll give the world a proof of our inefficiency and corruption. We’ll justify the stereotyping and branding we’ve fought tooth and nail against. And all for something like the Commonwealth Games. What a waste.

~ Sakshi Arora