Inside Indus

Every time I look at the apathy that surrounds the architectural sights of this Glorious ‘City of the Seven Islands’ of mine, I cannot help but wonder whatever went wrong down line. Is it the incessant flow of migrants to the city or just the pressure being built up day in and day out playing the role of the financial capital to businesses all around the world? One can never know for sure…but a walk down the lanes and interiors of Mumbai would reveal how shortsighted we turned out to be with a lack of planning ordinance whatsoever!
No pun intended here nor any intentional condescension directed to anyone; but it is simply unbelievable how the Development guys failed to notice miniscule rising demands which were evidently on the fast-track chart.

This takes me back to a time when a few handful people planned a city for themselves which was way ahead of their life and times. The remains of the same we still marvel at and have had curious visitors and archeologists from across the world making a beeline for it.
Circa 3300 BCE to 1600 BCE of the Latin Ante Christum, the Indus Valley Civilization or what we call as the Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro settlements were the pioneers when it came to building and planning their cities in accordance with their times. The Indus Valley civilization was entirely unknown until 1921, when excavations in what would become Pakistan revealed the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.
This mysterious culture emerged nearly 4,500 years ago and thrived for a thousand years, profiting from the highly fertile lands of the Indus River floodplain and trade with the civilizations of nearby Mesopotamia.

If there is one thing that lets me be baffled about this township, it would have to be the fact that despite a population of 40,000 (which is quite a number for the BC times!!); the city was planned and executed in the most ordained manner.
Sometimes I nurture a secret desire to have been in a lesser hassle-free world where drainage was not a problem and railway tracks did not seem to accommodate makeshift cloak rooms.
But then again I can only wish…!!!