In the past and the recent past, we- me and my family have fallen prey to all kinds of pollution and to those of you who have faced similar situations it may seem like I am making ‘much ado about nothing’.

The area in front and the side of our house is busy with construction activity, a boom in my neighborhood, one a training centre in computer skills, two apartments and one hi-tech commercial complex.

One must understand the way our house is situated to know why we are at the receiving end of all this activity. There is a private road from the main road that ends at the entrance to our house and the property adjacent to ours.

As we make our entrance from the main road, on the left is the training centre and on the right is about half an acre of plot which had in its midst a huge bungalow. As we drive in, on the back of the training centre is this vacant land whose owners purchased and forgot all about it.

This is the place of growth of wild vegetation from weeds, all kinds of wild shrubs to spurting growth from cut trees. Come monsoon and rains they become the haven for the most amazing collection of worms that on any particular day the white washed compound wall turns green with these creatures making their way into our small garden.

By noon we get to see some of them attempting to crawl into the house. This has however been the least of our problems as we have become used to this pattern every year for the last four years but has resulted in a few thousands down the drain in pesticides. After several phone calls to the owners, a bull dozer arrives one fine day and in a matter of hours the undergrowth razed to the ground….the growing cycle continues.

Fives years back the twenty two feet private road was broadened to thirty by our neighbours as a step towards profitable ventures in the future which meant all trees and shrubs lining one side of the road were brought down much to our chagrin in a matter of two days.

Two of them grew back with a vengeance- the Bilwa and teak tree, much to our delight. It seemed to us that a miracle had happened as the bilwa was at the far end of the private road just opposite to the entrance to our home and as a means to protecting it we built a short concrete platform around it.

All the land owners having access to this road raised a big hue and cry and threatened to remove the tree. We did not react and continued with lighting a lamp there every Friday. To this day no one has mustered the guts to touch the tree…. hehehe.

The teak tree also remains....

Work began in these sites all within a gap of a month or two from each other. I am sure we are aware of the noise pollution associated with construction. First the drone of the machines, cutting through thick lime mortar, day and night for more than a month at a stretch……soon it became music to our ears.

With the construction activity it’s the constant clanging of steel against steel and the continuous whirrs of the concrete mixers, day and night…marked between the roars of heavy vehicles trying to unload their stuff….

Then came the invasion of construction workers on all the sites. Built themselves lean to shacks against the compound walls, that too the one separating ours with the adjacent property.

One pleasant breezy morning when I stepped out at around 6.00 and made my way to the gate, peeped over the closed gate and I almost froze. One side of the road was lined by squatting figures all in place for completing their morning jobs.

This was when realization struck that the developers of these properties had 1.no care or compassion for their fellow beings to even get them a make shift toilet or two 2. they had no care of their surroundings …

.In the meanwhile one other strange irritant was the invasion of swarms of flies from the neighbouring shacks that made way to the small back yard and began creating a major nuisance within the house. As a measure to reduce this we had to use insect repellants and shortly turned murderers with a fly killing competition once in a while….and the battle is still on….

Our windows and doors have been shut for the past six months…Now where is the scope for ventilation or infusion of fresh air into the house when the plants and floors have a fine coating of dust and cement every day despite the showering of plants and sweeping, mopping of floors. I suppose our exhalations mixed with the existing oxygen are in a far better state to be inhaled and recycled….

Having protested to the first group’s misuse of the place the owner cum developer in the adjacent property took measures to make provisions immediately.

Next in toe was the construction gang of the most successful property developer of the city. Not only did they come out of that huge property (where a commercial and apartment complex are coming up) they even began storing the materials on the roadside above their own shit….Gross, to say the least.

A mass protest followed and this guy, the big boss who visits the site daily and even made way for his vehicles through this common road by breaking down a portion of the dividing wall rather than use the two direct accesses to the property, claims he had no idea of even the materials being stored on the common road. Can anyone beat that?

I almost forgot, when the training centre was being built we had these empty food packets being hurled into our compound at the end of every meal till the time we called those owners and complained.

One evening after seven, when we switched on the tv there was no transmission and the next day on investigating we found that it was cut by these morons who did not have the basic courtesy to inform us and we found the cable lying amidst the debris in their property. Our telephone lines have met with a similar fate half a dozen times.

A thing or two that perks us up while wading our way through all this nuisance - when the big boss’s group began to draw electricity stealthily from the neighbouring property and now there is a lot of friction going on between the two gangs…

Another unforgettable sight when we happened to peep from the window was these guys having their baths atop the sand hills pouring bucketsful of water over themselves……who knows…..this may make the foundation stronger…..And now we know all that goes into the making of a building…..Don’t know when we’re going to get the next breath of some fresher air with the pollution boom on…..