The Evil

Does this look like sweet paradise?

A parking plaza for weary trucks? Believe us, this is where we live, and what it used to be in the days before Parivesh Suraksha Committee. Have you ever been to a truck-park? Gasped and choked in dense fumes of burnt diesel? I am sure you have. Especially if you have had the misfortune to find yourself behind lumbering dinosauroid buses on the streets of Kolkata, or behind rows of trucks on highways, vainly trying to see through clouds of poison fumes

"...Drunken bouts were common. Truck hands used to openly urinate, bathe or even defaecate by the roadside(another provision truck owners probably imagined should have been arranged by us!)..."

Consider us. A residential locality, choc-a-bloc full with families living in apartments. The community ranging in age from the yet-to-be-born, new born, child, adoloscent etc. through to the most senior citizen. Scientists, teachers, clinicians, business executives, former civil servants, busy house wives, students - mostly people from educated middle class backgrounds. There are those who must toil through the day and rest at night. Students who must at least, be able to hear themselves think! The asthmatic, the ones with frail hearts, or the very very young with lungs incapable of substituting diesel for oxygen. Hah...not yet, that is!

Even by some remote Darwinian miracle it is impossible to evolve into a diesel-breathing species. But that, exactly is what we were expected to do. This is how we used to live, ordinary citizens of modern Kolkata, who are made to pay all their municipal and other taxes, who have spent a life's savings on an apartment, or have borrowed upto the last scary penny to set up a new home, compelled to live like wretched animals in the company of trucks - 24 hours a day! Locked up in stuffy, stale rooms, unable to open windows even for a moment lest those poison clouds waft in. We are not coal miners(poor souls!), but do we employ babies even in that profession? Till recently, infants in our locality had to breath through soot-laden lungs. And to whose benifit?

The truck owners? The administration? The leaders? Surely not! N-o-b-o-d-y benifits in the l-o-n-g run from continued apathy towards a section of the community.

And the NOISE!

The window-rattling, brain-jarring, deafening roar of gigantic diesel guzzlers! Like barely constrained primitive beasts straining at their leashes.Trucks rolling in, rolling out at all hours of the day, and night. Drivers revving up, making their vehicles road worthy. Helpers learning how to start, or even drive! The common refrain was...

"these vehicles use air brakes, and before a vehicle leaves the engine must be revved up for long stretches of time to build up sufficient air pressure."

Imagine 15 odd lorries doing this next to your window at 3 o'clock in the morning! For months, for years! An illegal parking space for trucks in the middle of a residential neighbourhood full of kids and senior citizens.

Ample experts will state that noise is not just deafening(as if turning deaf is something we eagerly look forward to!). Its stress inducing. It increases the flow of adrenaline, raises levels of anxiety, promotes psychological disorders, indigestion, sensitizes the heart and blood vessels to excitatory stimulus(increased blood pressure, palpitations etc.). It has many other long and short term mal-effects on the body. In short, continuous exposure to high levels of noise is dangerous to the community.

And the truck owners, who weren't residents of Pukur Mohalla and couldn't care less for our well being, used threats to subdue isolated protests ocassionally made by local residents. Fights would break out in the dead of the night between truckers and their "handlers". Mostly over parking slots. We are sure somebody was making good commerce out of alotting parking space! Sometimes they used to park two or three rows deep, dangerously obstructing an otherwise broad stretch of road. Drunken bouts were common. Truck hands used to openly urinate, bathe or even defaecate by the roadside(another provision truck owners probably imagined should have been arranged by us!). If this wasnt hell, perhaps the word needs to be redifined.

The Evil > Goons! || Garbage heaps!

© Parivesh Suraksha Committee