My Tryst with a Park

And why it is my entitlement, and not a privilege, to have a park in my locality

Morning fitness regime (Clicked by me, Sep 22, 2017)

My day starts slow. To escape the lure of the messy morning bed has never been easy for me; and now that two plump little hands hug me even in sleep, getting up is harder than ever. Life, however, always conspires of ways to pull me out of the bed, and this time it has placed a decent BBMP corporator (i.e. member of city council) in my ward and a great park in my vicinity.

The park, known as the BTM 4th Stage Park, is one you can’t overlook; for it sits, flaunting an excellent outdoor gym and brightly hued playground equipment, right in the heart of the locality. Visit early enough, and you’ll see this big group of grey haired citizens booting out their age with the roar of laughter and claps. Late mornings and early evenings resound with the joyous shrieks of kids of all ages. Joggers, walkers, oxygen-and-nature lovers, laptop-lovers occasionally tired of their gadget-spouse — there’s something for everybody. And the upkeep is excellent. For a person like me who is struggling to get back in touch with her battered creativity, a daily dose of this effervescent freshness is almost therapeutic. I can’t have enough of my morning walks these days; they restore in me the vitality that the last few years of multi-pronged stress had wrung away.

Outdoor gym in full use even as park is renovated (Clicked by me on Sep 22 )

Outdoor gym -a closer look (Clicked by me on Sep 15)

These walks, in a way, have also been an eye-opener for me. Allow me to explain.

I spent the first decade of life on the banks of the river Ganges, within the premises of a large, beautifully planned residential area accompanying a water treatment plant in a town called Barrackpore. My father worked in the plant in the capacity of an engineer. My mother was (and still is) an outstanding homemaker. Our first floor apartment had this balcony that offered the view of a large sky with many constellations arching over the river where dolphins could be spotted in the monsoon afternoons. It also overlooked the grass lawn where I played all evening with a bunch of other kids. Cows grazed. Sunflowers bloomed. Touch-me-nots drooped. Mangoes ripened. Red shimul flowers burst open in early May and silk-cotton floated in the air.

When we shifted to our second home in a more practical part of the town, I accepted the behind-closed-door life of our new locality as a normal inevitability. The first decade was a privilege I was fortunate to enjoy. Normal mortals had to satisfy themselves with a tinier view of the sky, potted plants, board games and constant honks on impatient roads, I told myself. It was only natural that locality ponds should get filled up by promoters and sold off as lucrative lands; that the rare open ground should be dominated by jobless no-gooders for most part of the day; that morose senior citizens should resign themselves to the idiot box churning out stale melodrama year after year.

Children's playground equipment (Clicked by me on Sep 19, 2017)

Children's playground equipment (Clicked by me on Sep 25, 2017)

It was in the third decade of life that I shifted to Bangalore, my present city of stay. This city, once recognized for its green cover and all year round pleasant weather, has been struggling under the pressure of oversaturation. Doomsayers often call it a dying city. And yet, the focus of its civic authority on restoring to the citizens their lost breathing space demands nothing short of whole-hearted appreciation and support.

My ongoing tryst with the BTM 4th Stage Park has jolted me into a keen awareness of how much humans benefit from the proximity of nature and open space, and why it is absolutely unacceptable when civic authorities fail to factor this in during city or town planning.

Yes, these are the surroundings amid which I picture my little boy growing up — playing, running, slipping in the puddle and laughing all his way into a healthy adulthood.

Originally published in Written Tales.

Some more photos of the park:

Group laughter therapy for senior citizens (Clicked by me on Sep 22, 2017)

Plants and saplings collected as part of renovation (Clicked by me on Sep 15, 2017)

Saplings planted as part of renovation (Clicked by me on Sep 18, 2017)

My 22-month old son (Clicked by me on Sep 22, 2017)