|
Urban designing is a matter of building as you go along from early habitation or planning from the architects drawing sketches to the final habitable city. There is the example of the city of Chandrigarh capital of Haryana in India that was constructed after Punjab was partitioned and Haryana was created. Chandrigarh was designed by Le Corbusier of France. The images of Chandrigarh, of the hand shaped sitting place, or the stone garden are common in travel pages or other magazines. Our own Sher-e-Bangla Nagar of course was built in a planned way with the Shangshad Bhaban being the center of the plan. However, the rest of our city is another matter!
It is a mess but then there are moments when you feel uplifted like the inauguration of the circular waterway around Dhaka this past week. Over one lakh people will be taking the waterway leaving the streets to float to their destination. Though these people are commuters in outer areas of the city, so the result of building of the waterway would not be immediate. However, the concept is marvelous although this is a longstanding concept and should have been by now in operation. But a start is better than no start and we look forward to the increase in length of this water way. Year long navigability is a must for such a waterway since a waterway that becomes operational for the common commuters is like an every day road with all the economic and social byproduct and it has to be kept open for people and even more importantly for goods. There are reports of the problems to be faced by the city authorities to keep the waterway navigable but instead of sounding alarm bells or making negative noises, let us hope that the city officials and the government will offer full support for the project.
The taxi drivers are an intelligent lot. This has been proven to me many times, and the last driver one took-on was a veritable treasure trove of different types of insights and had very pragmatic suggestions regarding the city we live in. The man was very caustic about the city beautification project. He was categorical about the need for building entertainment facility of the class and type that would attract foreign visitors, and if you take his remarks a step further, then what he actually was asking for is for the city builders to improve essential infrastructure and build a few select places where one can be happy in relaxation and have some clean but good fun. He did not dismiss the beautification outright but the sagacious driver was actually calling for a master plan of beautification and urbanisation that would prove more effective and better for the expenses and the objectives that city planner s may have had in mind for starting beautification! He also had some tasty suggestions about Chittagiong, the usual of the need for taking the city to the next level of development. These people driving the taxis are smart. One hopes that their problems, like having no permission to go outside Dhaka will be solved in time. They still go outside Dhaka, but illegally if the law has to be viewed and they can be facing harassment when caught .
Load shedding has started and this actually means shedding load by the hour for the city dwellers as the sweat pours down and takes the weight off the bodies. What a frightening thought, to imagine millions of people sweating, one could visualise a flood of sweat purging down the city line lol (laughing out loud)! No, one is not thinking of smelling dhuro selling the script to any moviemaker! But the start of the sweats is going to be keeping people in edge and bringing some seasonal windfall for the traders who sell "cold ". We wish them well including the IPS and UPS sellers who are going to be making some money as load shedding gathers pace. .
If any one is wondering about this LOL (Laughing out Loud) thing one has written above then you should know that it originates from IRC or Internet relay chatting ( IRC) where people use short hand to communicate . This is a place where many a adda happen as people log in from different parts of the world and congregate in chat rooms to talk to their friends back home or just plain talk. The people prone to be emotional or romantic even search for steady partners of love! Stories abound where people have become very close by chatting in the net and even marriages have taken place from the liason formed in IRC! Well, handsome devils like us do not or should I say, did not need such a device. Off course, we still do don't !
|