Mid-Day Opinion: Falling trees. Fading vision

A huge tree fell near Sydenham College in Churchgate last Thursday, damaging several vehicles. PIC/SAYYED SAMEER ABEDI

It was staring us in the face, during the freak wave of cyclones that hit the city in the pandemic years. While the rich posted swish, rain-soaked photos of dreamy views from their high-rises and sea-facing villas on their Insta feeds, the middle-class Mumbaikar, and the poor and homeless, had to once again find new ways to navigate and survive those increasingly frequent days of incessant rainfall. It was the typical contrast split-screen that one has gotten used to seeing being played out. The ‘spirit of Mumbai' - the shabbily-used, casually-thrown term emerges around this time across sections of media and the junta who are unable to think of apt, empathetic language to summarise this annual occurrence.

I recall reading a news article by author Amitav Ghosh about Mumbai's impending climatic headache with cyclones, given that it's rare for these weather systems to emanate from the Arabian Sea. It wasn't a good sign, he wrote, and that it should serve as a warning bell for our sea-facing city, which was birthed by reclaiming seven islands. The weather gods' many signals were, in all likelihood, lost on our lawmakers. That was nearly six years ago.

Well, the monsoon is here, and in full force. While we are yet to hear of a cyclone alert [let's hope we are spared, really], nature's wrath has come to haunt us in a way that nobody expected, let alone be prepared for - the multiple accounts of uprooted trees and the loss of human life and property is a new urban concern. No brownie points for guessing the hows and whys of this new horror being reported practically every single day in the press, including mid-day. Given the manic-like pace with which our footpaths and roads have been concreted over, without giving any thought to its ecological fallout, these disturbing occurrences cannot be brushed aside as one-off cases. Already, people have lost their lives, many more have been injured, and the financial loss to personal property won't be a pretty number.

With the roots of trees being trapped under layers of cement or concrete, and countless other interventions to our already-threatened green cover, thanks to multiple infrastructure projects, there is no way to guess the extent of this sitting catastrophe. The scary part is that apart from shifting the blame-game across civic departments, on-site visits post the accidents, and suspensions of officials, we are yet to hear of a robust action plan being floated by our lawmakers to safeguard the city of this among many annual weather-related challenges. One hopes that better sense prevails, and such fatal accidents don't become fodder for slinging matches, as we've seen in the past.

Instead of reacting after more lives are lost and sidestepping the problem to unusually heavy, long spells of rain, on-ground action is critical. First up, environmental scientists need to be brought on board - and soon - to offer expert intervention and guidelines to study and roll out cautionary and mandatory measures to be incorporated by any builder - be it for residential, commercial, or infrastructural projects. This must be in sync with our city's topography and ecology. Stricter vigilance is needed for careless concretisation that continues around trees, for starters. The damage already done to the areas surrounding affected trees cannot be rectified, but surely there ought to be urgency and better preparedness with all upcoming urban planning and development.

Now would be a great time for the country's richest municipal corporation to take swift remedial measures to reassure its citizens of a new danger that has added to their endless list of monsoon woes. How many more wake-up calls are needed to remind the city's policymakers that climate change is well and truly here to stay, and that Mumbai isn't exactly equipped to face its fury?

It's been 21 years since the dreadful July when the city was pulverised and brought to its knees. Each passing year brings with it added concerns, and yet somehow lessons haven't been learnt. Landslides, clogged drains, regular flooding zones on our roads and rail networks continue to occur in a ‘world-class' city. My home suburb witnessed flooding this past week on certain roads for the first time; no surprise that those stretches witnessed maximum redevelopment in the pandemic years, where canopied tree covers have given way for swanky glass façade towers to soar into the skies, and where tree-lined footpaths have been destroyed to accommodate marble-topped driveways for SUVs or MPVs to enter these mansions in the sky.

One gets the feeling that our babus are aware that its citizens have an in-built mechanism to hit the road despite being broken and bruised, because in an unforgiving city, everyone's got to put food on the table and hence, focus on the goal.

That famous adage: Keep walking [but look upwards and downwards] holds beautifully for the monsoon-ravaged Mumbaikar.

mid-day's Features Editor Fiona Fernandez relishes the city's sights, sounds, smells and stones...wherever the ink and the inclination takes her. She tweets @bombayana
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.