Trapped in the building boom

When I moved to Gurgaon 14 years ago, little did I realize that my decision to live in a bucolic rural retreat was going to deposit me smack in the middle of a desi Wall Street.
From my bedroom window I could see a Panchayati green belt and, beyond it, gently stretching fields ripe with crops of the seasons, wheat and mustard. Today, the green belt is a runway-wide road (How did this happen? Who sanctioned it? Ours not to reason why), filled with honking cars and cursing drivers, permeating the air with eloquent MC-BC language and fouling the ground with liberal outpourings of urine against the rear wall behind my house.
The road was built to facilitate the entry of trucks and other vehicles carrying construction materials for what appears to be an endless number of glass-faced towers that continue to come up all around the Media Centre where I live.
Speculation is rife among the residents of the Media Centre. How many towers will there eventually be surrounding us? The answer is usually anything between 12 and 21.
How long will they take to construct? Anything between six and ten years. Once they’re constructed, will the disgusting road go away and the Panchayati green belt return? Fat chance, no way!
What can one do in the face of this relentless ‘development’ but take evasive action? I’ve shelled out big bucks to have very expensive acoustic glass fitted in my bedroom window, the one that used to face the fields and now faces the honking cars, power-horned trucks and abusive drivers.
The fact that this glass cuts out the ventilation along with the noise, is a small price to pay for being able to sleep at night. Because these construction gangs, arguably the most industrious on earth, never seem to sleep. All day, every day, rain or shine, the boom-boom of construction continues without letup. Who says Indian workmen are lazy? These guys could get into the Guinness Book, easy.
Over the years, I’ve grown adept at interpreting the noises. The usual banging and hammering are, of course, commonplace.
The really interesting noise is the one that sounds like a collision of what could be twenty lorries full of steel construction bars.
It is super-loud and thrillingly grating and it goes on for a good ten minutes at a time. It is caused by the workmen on the 15th or 16th floor of the building under construction throwing — down a makeshift metal chute — all the collected malba of the day. Headlong it falls, clanging like thunder against the chute, taking its time to reach the ground — a time during which all conversation has to be suspended and fingers stuck into ears. My other favourite noise is the one that sounds like a gazillion flies buzzing (Spielberg could tape for it a great horror-effect) and which ends in an almighty bang that makes dogs bark and babies cry.
While trying to figure out exactly what this one signifies, I’m planning to make up an exciting party game for my friends when they visit: ‘Identify the noise’.
Is there an upside to this horrific scenario? Can there possibly be one? For a confirmed optimist like me, you bet there can. And I see it — and hear it — every day. Driven away from their natural habitats all over Gurgaon by the construction going on everywhere, it appears that all the birds of the region have flocked to the parks, gardens and trees contained within the 22 acres of the Media Centre.
Sitting outside in my patio now that the weather is fine, I see robins with their red breasts, I hear the call of the cuckoo, the lapwing and the koel, I spot the shining purple sunbirds drinking nectar from the madhu malti I’ve planted, and I listen happily as a pair of sparrows squabble over the best spot in my hedge to build a nest.
That’s the kind of construction activity I could take joy in forever.