Couple At The Garbage Dump

‘With the next boom, this will be a gold mine…’

She held his hand tightly while he voiced his hopes. She tried to share his enthusiasm, desperately wanting to believe that there is hope.

‘I remember my first trip to Mumbai in 2004. I saw that garbage dump at Malad bloom. I was there when the first guys entered Inorbit Mall, when the investment banks opened offices there, every day I breathed in the sulphurous air from that dump and the Malad Creek, I watched them landscape mounds of plastic and I kept track of real estate prices hitting new highs. It’s going to be like that here…’

They walked past the area for electrical stuff and then rushed past the plots for plastics. They kept their heads down. Those are prime areas and frequented by the middle-class call girls and their clients. The high-class ones use the deserted high-rise apartments all around town and treat that turf as their own. With most of the owners dead or broke, there was hardly any resistance to those trespassers.

 The first signs of trouble ironically started when the old garbage treatment plant was shut down by the panchayat of that locality. And that was just before Christmas in 2011. The people accused the government and the city corporation of stalling because they were controlled by different political parties. The government asked for a compromise but the people refused to yield. The corporation brought out plans for satellite treatment plants but the people in those areas objected. The city began to stink and it spread all across the state.

To make matters worse, the Iran crisis enveloped the Middle-east area and oil prices doubled fueled by speculators and other vested interests. At the new International airport, the Arrival lounge had only locals returning from abroad and the Departure area had businessmen and tourists racing to the exit. Then, the Eurozone collapsed. It started with one small country saying that they do not want to follow any Franco-German dictate, and then others followed. Even though this state hardly received anything from that zone, the chaos that followed was as terrifying as the earthquake-cum-tsunami disaster in Japan, actually more terrifying.

Then, as they say in the vernacular, ‘a coconut fell on the head of the man bitten by a rabid dog.’

IT/ITeS based ‘techno-cities’ became ghost towns. Labour arbitrage still ruled the game and the transfer of operations took little time. The tourism industry had already been smothered by the engulfing stink. Real estate firms and gold/home loan shops started lowering their shutters. Nuclear families merged to form joint families living in very close stifling quarters, pooling in their meager resources. Co-operative banks closed shop when the books revealed that the clever had removed all deposits (allegedly, there was more black money in these local banks than in Swiss banks) well in advance leaving behind only non-performing assets. Even money bought little. One politician had the energy to joke, ‘In the old days, one could go to the market with a handful of notes and come back with a sack of goods. Now, one can go with a sack of notes and come back with a handful of goods.’

People thought that they could at least get back the good old days. They waited for maids to reduce pay and to work harder to keep their jobs, the man on the street tried to pay the old rates to corrupt hands but the rates just got higher, crusaders tried to protest but with most networks dysfunctional they could not even garner virtual support, the government talked about austerity, the masses watched government officials whizzing past from one rest house to another with half a dozen cars before and after their luxury car. Ministers and bureaucrats sat around round tables staring blankly at each other. They invited the opposition to join a joint committee to share ideas. The opposition admitted that they had had a relook at old policies and suggested that it was time to invite foreign investment. That was also received with blank stares. The government and the opposition together decided to sell some assets to meet their needs.

And that is how the couple got their plot. She had lost her job abroad. He had lost his in one of the techno-cities. They still loved each other. They wanted to get married and they asked their loving parents for blessing and prayers. They also asked for a zero-interest loan to start a new business. The loving parents sold their ancestral property, his parents gave up an old house and hers sold a few acres of agricultural land that found no workers. With that money, the couple bought their own plot of land.

It is a dump now, with the worst rotting garbage, but they knew that they just had to wait. Every stink goes up.

[Ref:  http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/article2797724.ece]