The more things change, the more they remain the same.
This aphorism does not apply to Vasant Vihar. In no way. When I came to live in Vasant Vihar in the 1990s from a flat in a high rise building in Mumbai, the charm of the colony was the laid back life style of tree lined avenues, alongside which snuggled low lying sedate bungalows with plenty of green cover, with a small veggie patch in a corner where one grew lettuce or some special green, the flavour of the season.
These houses resembled government bungalows on Tughlak Road and Lodhi Estate, houses occupied by bureaucrats in the fifties and sixties. For Vasant Vihar was a bureaucrats’ colony, and bureaucrats developed similar accommodation for themselves when they first started living in Vasant Vihar during the mid- seventies.
At the time the colony was a wilderness located as it was next to the south-central Ridge. During the early morning walks, my father would tell me of the peacocks and rabbits he would encounter. Occasionally he would come across a fox or a nilgai [deer family] especially near the Ridge, part of which has since been developed into a biodiversity park. And then from under his foot with a wild flutter a partridge would take flight; from another corner in a rush his mate would follow after. In fact, I experienced that on the Ridge myself and my mind was transported to our days in Chandigarh when my father was serving as home secretary under Pratap Singh Kairon. Every Sunday morning along with Justice Mahajan, my father and a couple of other friends would go out on partridge shoots. At that time, along with other boys I was assigned the task of “beater “, walking through sugar cane fields to frighten the partridge out from their hiding spots. As soon as I finished from Doon I was given the 12 bore with which I bagged my first partridge. I still remember the thrill of it all, and the other shooting escapades which followed later. I have since become a conservationist. No more shoots. Conservation of animals in the wild and their surroundings is the goal of our NGO and others associated with us.
My parents living in Vasant Vihar, would recall with pleasure listening to the sound of children reciting tables emanating each morning from a nearby building as they sat sipping their morning cup of tea. Later most government officials were constructing a second residence on their plot to rent out. My parents did the same and so a large part of the premises that would have formed a lawn was diverted to concrete and steel, unlike the Tughlak Road and Lodhi Estate houses on whose capacious lawns I learnt to play cricket (which many years later enabled me to win my school cricket colors!)
Talking of schools, for some reason the authorities decided that Vasant Vihar would be a good place for setting up schools. So many of them have been given land at concessional rates to set up shop that Vasant Vihar is often referred to as ‘School Vihar’. Each morning the buses and cars ferrying school children, cause traffic jams much to the consternation of residents. I remember when I became President of the colony’s Welfare Association, one of the challenges I had to attend to was dealing with school managements to ensure that residents were not imposed upon. This continued to be an issue even during my second term as President a decade later. The situation had deteriorated further because of the truncated flyover: it had not been constructed from Munirka right across Vasant Vihar, adding to the traffic woes of the colony and its surroundings.
Water, the lack of it, was another issue during my first tenure, but had been addressed to a large extent by the second term. Nevertheless, as population continues to grow in urban centres, shortage of water will be a constant threat, not just in Delhi but in all major cities. It was a problem in my building in Colaba, Mumbai and as Secretary of the Sangam Bhavan Co-op Society, my task was to ensure that our needs were met by an adequate number of tankers each day, as I was tasked to do for VV later. With declining flow in rivers and water table levels, securing adequate water to meet the increasing demand will remain the central dilemma for authorities.
Vasant Vihar will face this problem as its population continues to grow. The bungalows have been replaced by multi- storied buildings…that is the great change in the colony. The change in its skyline. When I came to reside here only a handful of bungalows had given way to four story buildings. Now almost all bungalows have disappeared and multi – storied apartments dominate. Since this has increased not just the number of residents but the number of cars, the pavements have become the parking space.
I have had to give up my morning walks as there is no space on the pavements. And one dare not walk on the colony roads as the traffic on them has become a menace. The lovely parks — VV has some of the most beautiful and well maintained ones in the city — have too many people taking there morning constitutional. So for 40 minutes each day I take a brisk walk up and down my flat.
Change and adapt.
Vasant Vihar is the microcosm of the macrocosm [Delhi]. It reflects the good and the not so good changes taking place not just in the capital but the country at large. The fallout from Delhi’s development that Jagmohan (former DDA chairman) highlighted during a discussion of his book (‘The Ninth Delhi’) at the Vasant Vihar Club, is a reality. Delhi has the most polluted air in the world and Vasant Vihari’s are breathing it with severe consequences to their health. New viruses are claiming victims and many of us in Vasant Vihar have been stricken by Chikungunia.
So while the residents of Vasant Vihar have become more affluent — they live better, have more and bigger cars and visit Europe regularly — they are not immune to the negative fallout of affluence.
They have the solution: Change and adapt.
By GAUTAM VOHRA
75, Paschimi Marg, Vasant Vihar