New Venue Opens Up

Art of Living on a Dying River! That’s the way it was in Delhi – the irony was too stark to be missed. As is with most events and issues these days – the World Cultural Festival of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar divided Delhi vertically into those in favour and those against the event being organised on the floodplains of Yamuna. Folks would remember that Yamuna in Delhi once used to be a river where water flowed! Without taking sides, the event poses a few interesting questions:

1. How come one Mr Kejriwal and PM, Mr Modi, got on the same page and that permissions, government machinery and resources were all put to good use in unison for the event? The AAP and the BJP, more often than not, don’t see eye-to-eye on issues as trivial as payment of wages to municipal workers and Delhi stinks for days together. However, both these parties got working in tandem and seamlessly – to make things happen. Delhites now know whom to run to the next time they see dirt piled on the roads!
2. Since when has DDA taken over the floodplains? Posters, those huge banners and zillions of pamphlets for the event stated the venue to be ‘DDA Grounds’. Now when did that happen? Or is it that land-grabbing mafia enrolled a new, legitimate member
3. One Tribunal, supposedly, went hoarse dropping hints of fines ranging from 122 crores to 5 crores as damages to the bio-diversity of the floodplains but settled for a meager 25 lakhs. Gosh! one can gulp and digest a 100 gol-gappas at Bengali Market or a dozen stuffed pranthas at Paranthewaali Gali but not this! Anyways, soon we will forget all this. And why should we not. After all it is the World Cup T-20 and Delhi has got a good share of matches at Firoz Shah Kotla. And for all you know the new DDA Grounds on the floodplains of Yamuna may be a good alternative if the Kotla pitch lives up to its reputation. The precedent is there!