ON LIVING A CONGESTED CITY
Living in a congested city, is like a memory in an already congested (worth memories) heart. In a crowded city one feels suffocated like a potato thrust among numerous other potatoes stuffed in a bag-difficult to breathe, unable to budge a millimeter. There are two kinds of over-t crowdedness-large cities with enormous population, or small old really congested cities. Most of we Indians live in one-room houses, whole family [living in black holes. In large cities, over – population can be accommodated: particularly in modem cities built on modem lines. Suburbs that grow around an old city like Delhi lighten the burden with the result that though the people living in suburbs live rather comfortably but those in the walled city/cities live most inconveniently, uncomfortably—like the chicks, in crates, to be slaughtered or like bales of cotton or bags of grain stored in a store, in a go down. The streets, the lanes, the by-lanes, the houses, the rooms… are all jam-packed. Unhealthy cities which are the domains of dust and dirt are like dustbins—polluted air, polluted water, polluted food, polluted hearts, polluted minds, polluted heads, polluted sleep, polluted dreams, polluted everything under the sky above the earth: death, deficiency, dearth, destruction, dust, dirt, disdain-polluted wholesale.
Apart from this but a sequence of this, there is another difficulty— no privacy, no time people can have to themselves, no place, nothing. Everything is to be done in open, under the open sky. Much, it seems has been said against the crowded cities, the congested towns. Now a case for them, Men and women live and remain close, very close to each other like, the noble creatures in dens and kennels. Always available to each other for help and assistance in the time of need and in case of trouble, a danger. Whenever there is need, help would be high, at hand. There is a greater feeling of security and safety and protection in crowded cities. People are thick as thieves. Everybody seems to know everybody else. These facilities are not available in the modem master-planned cities. All facilities are scattered, broadcast. Only those who are rich enough to have [their own means of conveyance can afford to enjoy, or even use these; facilities.
For all the pomp and show in the posh modern cities, the life in congested cities is always preferable. People do not seem to know each other in big cities. The people reach the places of parties and function, or rites or ceremonies when everything is over, finished. Nature also seems to have a preference for congestion. The number of red corpuscles in blood per sq. mm. is something like a few million. So many cells are there in the body that their numbers defies count and puts to shame even the most powerful computers. Man is gregarious animal, and as such
like sheep and goats, or ants and bees even as mulch cattle should live in groups very close to each other tightly packed—a congested city, like a congested heart is always better, compact…