The Odyssey of Vizag's beach

Having been out of station for a few months, I eagerly looked forward to checking out the saplings that were planted in the city, especially on the beach, in the aftermath of Cyclone Hudhud. True, the much promised tree guards came late, and most of the saplings perished due to neglect and freely wandering cattle. Those on the beach, however, fared better.The reason: it is a place much frequented by the (so called) VIPs; hence the administration lavished much care on them; the best tree guards went to them and the sapling were watered liberally through the torrid summer months even as the city struggled to get drinking water.
Thanks to their efforts, the trees grew to considerable height and showed tremendous promise. As the city received copious rains in the intervening months, I was confident the trees would have put out healthy crowns by now. It was with such happy thoughts that we drove to the beach.
Imagine my dismay when I found the beach devoid of all greenery. The healthy saplings I expected to see were missing. Instead, all we saw were a few skeletal plants, stuck in large cement tubs. Moreover, the sundry plants and lawn on the dividers were gone! The beach was dug up everywhere and was in shambles. In a matter of one year, we had uprooted what we planted less than a year ago. Effortlessly we put the clock back by a year, taking us to where we started in October last.
Enquiries revealed that the beach was going through yet another makeover, for the International Fleet Review this time, apart from cable laying by a private company, all of which could have been anticipated well in advance. The process of beautifying and re-beautifying our beach reminds me of the mythological character, Penelope, of the Greek epic Odyssey.
Penelope was the wife of King Odysseus of Ithaca. When the king was away for 20 years, his faithful and beautiful wife, Penelope was seized by a host of suitors, who camped at her door, pressuring her to marry one of them, since her husband was considered dead. To keep aggressive suitors at bay and await the return of her beloved husband, Penelope devised a brilliant ploy. She told the men that she would marry one of them as soon as she finished weaving the shroud she was working on. As the naïve suitors watched her in a drunken stupor, she weaved the shroud every day in their presence and each night undid what she wove during the day. Her intention was to never complete the shroud; it was just a trick to mislead and put off the suitors till her husband came home.
Vizag's beach reminds one of Penelope's trick -- to mislead the naïve citizens into thinking that the work of beautifying the beach will end one day. It is not the intention of the authorities to end the process, ever. Elements of beautification will be introduced one year only to be ripped apart the next year. There is a vital difference between Penelope and Vizag's beaches, though. Penelope had a timeframe in mind. She intended to weave and un-weave the shroud only till her husband came home.
Not so for our beaches. Ours is an endless process that will go on for an eternity. Some of us who walk on the beach are regularly witness to this phenomenon. If there is one place in the city that attracts the attention of our political and bureaucratic masters, it is our beach. So smitten are they by our beauteous beach (like beautiful Penelope) that each one of them wants to have a hand in beautifying it. What one worthy does is not acceptable to the other. Even before the finishing touches are given to the previous set of decorations, the next set of adornments are readied. So the spiel goes on. The result? Our beach will remain in a permanent state of beatification, with no end in sight.
Some 11 years ago, when we arrived in the city, there were wooden benches and old fashioned lamp posts all along the beach. The parapet was painted a dull blue and decorated with blue and white wavy lines. The beach looked OK, not great, but there was nothing to complain about. Soon we noticed that the benches along the waterfront were torn apart and carried away. Then whole benches vanished, leaving holes in the cement paving from where they were rudely gouged. We watched with lively interest as all the benches disappeared, leaving a stray iron leg here or a twisted handle there.
Be that as it may. The parapet walls served as seats, albeit without back rests. Imagine our surprise and consternation when, in the next six months, the beach came to be bestowed with, hold your breath, chromium plated benches!! If wood and iron could be wrenched out of cemented paving, would the chromium coated metallic benches survive?
We kept a close academic eye on the benches and as expected, one by one the glistening benches disappeared. Where they did survive, the salt breeze got to them! They turned a dirty brown within days and wary citizens avoided sitting on them. While that soap opera was unfolding with all its twists and turns, in a flash of stunning brilliance, someone in GVMC hit upon the novel idea of providing our lucky beach with chromium tinted dustbins! The flashy dustbins either vanished, or turned a turbid brown, and stand defiantly today, painted green! Same is the case with the lamp posts on the beach. There were a reasonably good set of lamps standing in the middle of the road, only to be replaced by those on the sides. Even as we were trying to figure out the mystery of the 'shifting lamps,' a brand new set arrived to stand in the middle of the road! I expect that all the present lamp posts will be tossed aside very soon to be replaced by yet another set!!
Cash rich cities like New York and Paris go for old fashioned and serviceable lamps while we, the lucky ones, get state-of-the-art lamp posts! It is a different matter that the lights are regularly switched off when the beach is thick with walkers and the beach is undergoing heavy renovation. The story repeats itself with greenery, cement concrete decorations, sculptures, pavements, the list goes on. If all the efforts to beautify the beach were done in a focused and systematic manner and money spent prudently, we would have had a showpiece of a beach by now. Instead we are stuck with a jumble of wild animals with their paint peeling, sculptures dwarfed between oversized buildings, babies and toddlers in rompers jutting out of the most unlikely spaces and dinosaurs and mermaids jostling for space, as relics of the half-baked beautification projects gone awfully awry.
The process is not complete. New and exotic plants continue to be planted as the beach is in for yet another makeover in the name of IFR, only to be overturned six months later when yet another event overtakes us! Penelope did what she did on her own strength. Our beach is prettied up at the tax payer's expense. The poor woman, however, could have learnt a thing or two from us, in never completing a job, that is.
(The writer is a heritage and environmental activist. She can be reached at ranisarma2010@gmail.com)