This Article is From Feb 08, 2016

How Mumbai's Toxic Gas Brought My Family Closer

Last weekend I had a beautiful, surreal experience. It's what you see happen in movies, but seldom in real life. Without a travel plan and without proper packing, I took off on a drive to Nashik along with my family members. To pray at Shani Shingnapur (the ladies stayed back in the car, in case you are wondering!) and then chill over some fine wine.

Since members of my family usually bicker and quarrel over trivial things, we don't do long drives together. But last weekend's spontaneous outing proved to be a blessing; it gave us a chance to communicate, share and bond. We discovered wonderful new things about each other, and the trip brought us closer, just as it happens in Zoya Akhtar's flicks. Now we plan to do this more often.

But who was the real star behind this filmy situation? The Bombay Municipal Corporation, of course. Because of their shoddy maintenance of the Deonar dump ground, we woke up on Friday morning to find our lungs choked with assorted poisonous gases, and the impromptu Nashik getaway happened to escape the possibility of methane running in our bloodstream, instead of good old oxygen. It wasn't a long weekend, but the Eastern highway was packed, I later discovered many of my Chembur neighbours had got the same idea. Hopefully they too bonded pleasantly as family, and I am certain they too must have dispatched flying kisses to the BMC.

Of course, the weekend off proved to be a temporary respite, because when we returned, the Deonar dump was still on fire, so it was back to inhaling toxic gases. What compound is formed when wine and methane combine in your blood? No idea, only laboratory technicians and edgy bartenders would know. But this cocktail doesn't really feel nice, I can tell you.

On a serious note, it is hard to believe we live in the country's financial capital, a legendary city envied and admired equally across the world by writers, artists, politicians, corporate czars, even terrorists. And a city where the enormously cash rich municipal corporation hasn't yet figured out how to safely dispose off the garbage, and whose trucks thoughtlessly spit out kachra every day, much as how some male citizens relieve themselves in public places. Open, spew and forget.

I saw citizens cough furiously, I saw children and elderly citizens gasping for breath, I saw people protest on the streets, I heard of local hospitals lined up with breathless patients, I saw pigeons vanish from the skies, I saw stray dogs yelp. And of course, we experienced the general apathy of the state government and the municipality, whose representatives were only doing what they know best: slug it out on TV channels.

Thanks to the media and Google map, the whole world has now heard of down-market Deonar, the gas discharge may have been local, but its residue has spread far and wide. We the residents of Chembur, Deonar and Govandi don't have much faith in the BMC's 'talents', but are hoping the courts will take suo moto action and order the closure of the poison spreading dump yard. That indeed is our only hope.  

However, credit must go where its due. Thanks to the BMC I now feel closer to my family members. I am planning to send their commissioner a bouquet of white roses. The flowers will smell of methane gas, but he will have to deal with this minor problem.

(Anil Thakraney is a senior journalist.)

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