The Harmony of Three City

The city’s rhythmic harmony - a three layered harmony - has become a constant part of our lives. In its absence one feels a void - an ear shaped void. It wasn’t so at the start but eventually it grew on all of us - an acquired taste like alcohol.

At the bottom is the grrrrr… grrrrr… of auto rickshaws, taxis and buses. A streak of yellow and black like the Reverse Flash as if out to prove Schrödinger's cat (the thought experiment).

In the middle is the electric screeching tsh…tsh… (but flattish) but soothing noise of the metro. It’s as if the Schrödinger's cat has materialized at the higher plane. Stealthy like a cat.

At the top is the vroom…vroom… of the private cars. It’s as if the Schrodinger’s cat has evolved into a lion that roams freely and pees to mark its territory.

Think of it - grrrrr… grrrrr…tsh…tsh…(but flattish)…vroom…vroom…

The irony here is that the arrangement is by design and mimics the metaphorical cat and lion used above to describe them.

At the bottom i.e. on the plain roads using the auto rickshaws, taxis and the buses we have the poor. In the middle, using the metro we have the lower middle class. And, finally, at the top, using the flyovers are the upper middle class and the rich.

Such a segregation was not intentional at first. But the crazy influx into the city which resulted into the clogging of the plain roads led to a flyover fervour. Once the city was clustered with work-in-progress flyovers, a wise person had an epiphany - segregation. At the outset, it was considered a hara-kiri and people were against it but eventually the person won them over by a moving satirical reading of Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout” all across the country. And over the next few decades, the layering was built pillar by pillar - first for the metros and then for the flyovers.

It's been a half-a-century since the completion and things have never been better. To begin with the housing problem of the city has been solved. Now the skyscrapers have space for the poor, middle class and rich altogether. Segregated of course. Ground floor belongs to the poor. Floors 1 - N belongs to the lower middle class. And the above floors to the rich. Albeit the skyscrapers are now more Eiffel Tower-esque. Further, the contentment has gone up. With segregation, it’s been far easier to hide what cannot be made available to different sections of people respectively without compromising on the consumerist growth. And these are just the tip of the iceberg.  

Today, we have religious institutions cutting across all religions dedicated to the wise-person.