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If you have a good idea about how to improve things in your city, buy a month’s raddi of your fav newspaper and check it out. Chances are that someone somewhere has already proposed that and a file has been racing through babudom with the pace of a tortoise. It is just that we don’t appreciate the good work. Advent of a new year was an occasion for me to pay tribute to the kind of city the city would have been, had all these good intentions come true. May be the prayers we say aren’t really sincere.

This piece appeared on the morning of January 1, 2003 on the front page.

 
 
     

 

 

 

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“Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.”
Charles Lamb, 1833


“Frankly, despite my horror of the press, I’d love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers.”
Luis Buñuel,
Spanish filmmaker


“I often wonder what future historians will say about us. One sentence will suffice to describe modern man: he fornicated and he read newspapers.”
Albert Camus,
French novelist, dramatist, philosopher, 1956

Welcome Aboard Ut 2003,
If You've Said Your Prayer

S P Singh
 
  If wishes were horses! We gives you a peep into your city, a city which the UT could have been, had all the promises and plans of its administrators translated into reality. Alas! This is a picture postcard you can't send to your friends. But it's yours for keeps.  

THIS year-end, take Chandigarh as a cauldron of hopes, toss into it all the ambitious projects announced with unfailing regularity by the UT administration, say your favourite prayer and take a deep breath. Let it simmer into 2003, and if your prayer is heard, be sure you won't recognise your City Beautiful.

If wishes, and the administration's noble thoughts, were to really turn into horses, then welcome to Chandigarh 2003. Fuel gas on the tap, electronically metered gas, water, power supplies, power cuts a stuff of fiction, lazily ambulating cycle tracks crisscrossing the leafy swathes, electric trolley buses offering the smoothest-ever ride to Sector 17 Plaza where a 25-storey commercial complex offers all-you-can-dream-of facilities.

Dream on, please. After all, there is a file pending for each of these projects, and more. An international airport, in case you insist on dining at London's Savoy. Just make sure you stick to good citizen code on your way to the airport, since 2003 UT cop is all wired and gizmo-flashing Robocop. Deadly and friendly -- Gaurav Yadav take note.

If you see too many faces-from-different-races, it must be employees of all the foreign consulates which were to open in this city.

Who knows the city municipal authorities may beep you on your palm top about the refuse collection van being late by 15 minutes because all hands in Sector 34 were required to handle a vehicle pile-up and area grounds had to be cleared for emergency chopper landings!

Night life will be a curious concept, for not many may notice the advent of night in a neon-lit city. But since the city has an extraordinarily large number of Chandigarh Conservatives, even relics like red post boxes will survive. So count on post offices functioning past-midnight. After all, there will be enough to write home about, if you have time after all those multi-plexes.

If you are how-dare-you-gimmie-that-ugly-polybag variety of ecologically-awakened citizen, UT 2003 is the city for you. Everyone lugs around eco-friendly paper bags. Nothing is called waste. Solid refuse is treated. Sewerage treatment plant in Mohali's Phase X spews out gas. And wonder of wonders! Pipes have already been laid in Sectors 47 and 31. Just you wait, Higgins! New Year Eve isn't far.

Castle in the air, did you say? An MoU with BHEL has been inked by Administrator Jacob for Rs 200 crore for electric trolley buses. By 2003, dear Chandigarhians, you should have been sniggering at Delhi-come-lately's Metro.

For a good bird's eye view, climb atop the Rs 11 crore 25-storey complex in Sector 17. Feels like the World Trade Centre (WTC) tower? No, thankyou, but Eiffel is old hat.

Take in some fresh air. Pedal around the 150 km of cycle-track. Or row away dreamily at de-silted Sukhna. You can sign off with a trek into the wild _ a natural wildlife park was to come up behind the lake, no?

Or is your idea of fun a five-star hotel? City has it, depends upon your prayer's power, of course.

Phew, you still plan to ride your own Maruti 800 in 2003, and not Uncle Jacob's power trolley? And on Jan 1, you and your buddy have an Indane LPG cylinder sandwiched between you two on the old scooty? No gas from tap? What? You didn't see a high-rise WTC in Sector 17? Blame yourself.

Obviously, your prayer hasn't been heard. Wait for the shooting star again when it's time to change calendars.

Till then, have a blast, and love your city on an as-is-where-is basis.

Happy 2003.■

December 31, 2002

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Robert Mugabe: Zimbabwe Herald

In May 2002, a journalist on assignment for The Economist spent some time visiting Robert Mugabe's tattered nation:

"Apart from the stench, the filth, the lice, the cold, the damp and the absence of windows, being jailed in Zimbabwe was not so bad. The cell was a bit crowded, so your correspondent shared a bunk with two feisty young Zimbabwean journalists who had been arrested for the same alleged crime of publishing falsehoods.

"We passed the time discussing press freedom in Zimbabwe and Africa. Even the guard joined the debate. When we found a copy of the state-owned Herald newspaper and started analysing its contents, he reminded us that prisoners were allowed to use newspapers only for toilet paper."

 

In 2002, those who "insulted the army" in Congo faced the death penalty. In Angola, it was an offence to "slander the memory of the dead," and for those charged with defaming the Mozambican president, "truth is not a defence". The Economist once proposed sending tyrants to a remote island. "It is not just the thought that each other's company might provide a punishment of kinds to those, say, who now tyrannise Cuba, Iraq, North Korea and Zimbabwe. It is also the belief that at least some of those rulers would slink off if they were guaranteed immunity from prosecution, plus a lifetime supply of gin and tonic."

 Its proposed name for the island? "Despotamia"!

(Source: The Economist, May 9th 2002)

  
 
 

 

 

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People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news. But, if words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention.  Click on any below to find out:
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