Please leave our beach alone
Please leave our beach alone
A place for recreation
It is
difficult to believe but the beach was lonely and quiet then. All sorts of
Vizagites went there during the day or night. Businessmen irked with the
pressures of work life rode their rickety Vespas to the beach road and parked
there for a while. Listening to the sounds of the waves they found some solace.
After puffing on a Charminar, they went back to work greatly refreshed. In the
late afternoons, young men and women, with raging hormones, sat on the sand
necking. As evening descended, a couple of beat constables set out on their bicycles
to cover their territory from RK Beach to Palm Beach. No fancy “beach police”
cooling their heels in jeeps like now. When they cycle cops chanced upon the
hapless young lovers they chastised the bashful lass and the necking lover boy,
they told him to put his neck back in his pants and go home ASAP. Even then PDA
was frowned upon but everyone had some space on the beach for some privacy.
Paradise on earth
On weekends,
young men with their girlfriends rode their noisy Jawa bikes to loneliest parts
of the beach with exotic names such as “Lawson’s Bay” or “Paradise Bay”. They
carried their cassette players, played Santana and The Beatles; frolicked in
the water and lay on the sand. They talked of profoundly wise things, and drank
their four rupees fifty paise bottle of “MBL” beer. When the sun was high in the sky, they took
shelter under the great clumps of Mogili plants that grew at the water’s edge and
formed room like shelters under the foliage. The sand stuck to their wet legs,
the sea breeze dried their salty wet hair, the wailing guitars of “Black magic
woman” wafted through the air. The sea gulls careened overhead arguing with each
other in Gullese. There was no one for miles on the beach. It was truly a
paradise on earth and life was … ah so good… but not for long.
The PPP period
The
“Pre-Plastic Period” (PPP) era ended in the mid-90s. Then disaster struck, no
not Hudhud, the city “developed”! People
now flood in from everywhere. They come to the beach in hordes. On buses,
bikes, cars, scooters and autos. The throngs fill every nook and cranny of the RK
beach road. They come from near and far. They come from Kolkata and diligently
check out the few tourist offerings we have. Others come from land-locked
states and gaze in wonderment at our mighty sea. Multitudes come with shaved
heads, carrying plastic bags; they pour out of busses, talk in a strange tongues
and wander around the beach in a daze.
Vizag’s own kumbh mela
In the
summers Vizagites come to take in some cool breeze and in winter they come to
feel the chill. Walkers of all types fill the beach road, diabetics, elderly,
young athletics that jog by so effortlessly and breathless plump folk with
headphones intent on losing weight. They came to shape up, cool down or fill up
on roasted corn, onion bajjis and egg noodles. Newly mobile youth come all
dressed up in their finest to see and be seen and do some socializing. They photograph
each other and talk endlessly on their smart phones. Every new car or bike
owner brings their vehicles, still festooned with ribbons and balloons to the
beach road and the entire family steps out and announces their arrival in life.
On most days the beach road looks like
the Maha Kumbh Mela has come to town! You can’t walk ten feet there without
bumping into a dozen people and tripping over 50 dogs.
We can’t take it anymore
RK beach has
become the epicentre of activity in Vizag. Every protest, solidarity walk,
political rally, meeting, gathering, assembly and congregation takes place
here. Religious heads talk up a storm from makeshift pulpits. A politician puts
10 million little plastic lamps at RK beach every Shivarathri to astound
Vizag’s beach going public. At every festival millions of Vizagites make their
way to the beach in trucks, trailing noisy generators on wheels, and massive
speaker blare out disco music till late into the night. Strangely last year’s
favourite blast was the 1994 vintage “Macarena”. They immerse their colourful P.O.P. Gods with assorted
decorations, coconuts, plastic bags and tons of rubbish into the sea. It is
said that the more the rubbish one throws on the beach, the shorter the path to
heaven.
Vizag’s rubbish destination
Every bit of
rubbish thrown into the geddas anywhere in the city makes its way to the beach
like a magic wormhole through space. Stephen Hawking is doing research on this
phenomenon. All the stuff eventually gets into the sea. Let’s face it, out of
ignorance, and negligence we have collectively made our beach and sea into
Vizag’s preferred destination for rubbish. Late into the night, after the
public has left, an army of cleaners, whose salaries are paid by us through our
taxes, work hard to clean the beach and the beach road. Next day the hordes are
back and the cleaning has to start again.
Then comes the Visakha Utsav
Just when we
thought that our beach road can’t take it anymore, along comes Visakha Utsav
2015. The logic of having the Utsav now when the state and city coffers are
empty is inexplicable. If it is a demonstration of confidence and hope that some
politicians are touting, it would be nice if they gave some of their personal
money to make the point. The city never has money to buy essential things like
a beach combing machine or re-surfacing a road but they are ready to cough up
crores on ephemeral activity like the Utsav to massage a few egos. The Utsav
will come, make a mess and go away. Vizagites would like to see some tangible and
permanent developments, like a good continuous footpath in Dabagardens, a
repaired AU road, a working Sewage Treatment Plant at Apu Ghar, or a new roof for
our historical 200 year old Queen Marys School in old town. This school has a
population of 1,300 girl students and no working toilets! So much for Swach
Bharat.
Leave our beach alone
It is time
to decongest the beach road and allow our sea to detoxify. As a first step we
must ban all large public events on the RK beach road for ever. No loudspeakers
allowed. No more idol immersion on the beach, build an artificial tank somewhere
else for it. If any small events are allowed the cost of cleaning up must be
charged at double the cost to the organisers. Why should you and I pay for
clearing someone else’s mess? In the short term a robust anti-littering attitude
must be demonstrated by GVMC. The beach police must be authorized to levy hefty
fines on litterbugs; the revenue from fines can help pay their salaries and
supplement GVMC’s income. In the long term we must deal with the rubbish
transported to the beach by our storm water geddas. We want our beach back. Let’s
get the message across to our administration … leave our beach alone!
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