This just in: A school bus attacked by hooligans in the name of moral policing. A woman dragged out of her car and raped on the busy Sector 57 route, prohibitory orders imposed at cinema halls, a 23-year-old molested by PG caretaker, stone-pelting, traffic blockades, shooting in schools, violent protests, lawlessness – is it time to rename Gurugram once again?
How safe are we in this much-touted millennium town? Is pollution of a very different kind vitiating the city’s environment irrevocably? Is it time to move out of this illusionary metropolis so mired in crassness that its bubble of modernity is about to burst revealing the ugly underbelly?
Many Gurugramites, sitting in their houses or working in offices are mulling their options right now. Those who have lived here a long time feel cheated by a system that has time and again failed them. Those who moved here with high hopes and soaring aspirations are utterly dejected by the turn of events in the recent past.
Not very long ago expats, especially with infants and toddlers, were advised to stay away from Gurugram’s smoggy atmosphere as levels of particulate toxicity recorded alarming levels, way above the danger mark.
Today, I can feel another kind of poison, much more potent, spreading across the city and gradually sucking the life out of it. What is the point of having modern education facilities when students can’t even reach school without trouble? Why should corporates, call centres and industrial giants set up offices here, when traffic jams, roadblocks, arson and looting are the order of the day? How can a city thrive, when its women constantly feel vulnerable? Beti Bachao indeed!
In a nutshell, nobody: kids, men or women feel safe in Gurugram, this misnomer of a metropolis. There is no arguing that right now. For even as I write, Whatsapp is furiously relaying videos of “Horror On A School Bus;” everyone is on their phones, reading the latest news updates to decide which route to take home in the next hour, which outing to cancel, how to get every family member home; School committees are reluctantly coming round to the decision to declare tomorrow a holiday. Life is coming to a standstill once again. Vandalism rules.
It’s frustrating! Yes! I live in fear. In a city called Goongram!