Ahmedabad - The city of ???

It is summer time and Ahmedabad gets really hot these days, believe me. The

other day when I was riding on my bike through the concrete jungle, I felt like I had no respite from the scorching heat. Just then I felt a wave of soothing, cold wind blowing past me. How come that happened, I asked myself? And then I turned leftward and saw a whole bunch of trees bidding me adieu. I had an interesting thought process going on for the next fifteen minutes or so, which happens to be the leitmotif of this post.

Back in the school days we have studied a lot about the eccentricities of various cities like jaipur is the pink city and udaipur is the city of lakes and bengaluru is the city of gardens and who knows what.

This made me wonder about our city, Ahmedabad. It is the city of what?

In its heyday, people called it the Manchester of India.

These days with the "Ahmedabad - the world heritage city" drive being in the

news, some may want to call it a world heritage city as well.

The younger breed of the city may also want to call it the education hub(?) of India with the best B-school in asia and other renowned institutes sitting pretty.

I am sure everyone has an answer (when it comes to blowing our own trumpet, we are pretty much up there :)).

But you know what? I would like to call it the city of "greenhouse gases".

YES!

Ahmedabad - The city of "greenhouse gases"

With zillions of vehicles criss-crossing the roads night and day, no wonder we

are the city of greenhouse gases! And where have all those trees gone? Wherever my eyes take me, I can either see buildings made of cement and concrete or roads made of tar (not to mention

the potholes in them).

I know it doesn't sound good. We have a lot of affection towards this city and we can't stand anybody calling it anything. But much as we argue against it, the truth remains as it is. There is more vehicular pollution out here than is expected of a tier-two city in a third world country (whatever that means).

So what do we do???

In my opinion, the best answer that we have against pollution is planting trees,

many of 'em.

Perhaps a major tree plantation drive is due on part of the magicians.

Anup, are you listening?

"Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability"

But for the time being what we can atleast do is plant a tree in our backyard (or anywhere in our premises for that matter) and ensure that it grows along nicely, so that the next time anybody passes through your vicinity on his bike, he is greeted with a cool breeze :)

And it would be really nice if those of you reading this post (if at all there are any :P) actually let us know that you planted a tree (by writing in the comments section, ofcourse :)).