Santa stops and points with awe at a building taking shape on the precipitous slope below them.
A complex, almost spider-like web of concrete pillars and beams is rising from deep down the hillside, climbing perhaps four or five stories just to meet the road level.
On top of this latticework, the actual ground floor of the guesthouse is being laid.
“Banta, look at the marvels of modern times!” Santa exclaims, his voice full of admiration.
“Just a few years ago, this was an unusable, steep slope.”
“Now, look!”
“Our local Thekedar has built a brand-new Zameen in the air itself!”
“He has defied the very gradient of the mountain!”
“Now the owner can have a big shop and guesthouse right on the road, with tourists stopping by all the time.”
“What a brilliant business idea!”
Banta looks at the spindly columns, the haphazardly tied reinforcement bars visible from a distance, and the deep, unstable slope it is built on.
He doesn’t see a marvel; he sees a tragedy waiting to happen.
“Santa,” Banta says grimly, “what you call defying the gradient, I fear is defying all common sense.”
“That is not a house with a foundation.”
“That is a heavy house perched on a dozen long, wobbly toothpicks.”
“In our village tales, we have Bhoot-Pret with feet pointing backwards.”
“This house has no feet at all!”
Santa laughs.
“No feet, Banta?”
“Such a storyteller you are!”
“Those are strong concrete columns!”
“Are they, Santa?” Banta challenges gently.
“Who designed this intricate network of stilts?”
“A qualified structural engineer who studied the slope’s stability?”
“Or a self-taught mason who is adding columns as he goes along?”
“How many stories is this building, really?”
“The owner will say it’s a two-story guesthouse, counting only from the road level.”
“But the mountain, Santa, the mountain counts all the stories, right from the bottom-most pillar deep down the slope.”
“And in an earthquake, the shaking will start from the real ground level, not from the road!”
He paints a vivid picture.
“Imagine the tremor.”
“Those long, unbraced, probably ill-reinforced stilts will whip back and forth like bamboo in a storm.”
“They have no shear walls to support them, no solid ground to brace them sideways.”
“The entire shop and guesthouse, with all the people inside, could come crashing down the hillside like a castle made of playing cards.”
“This isn’t progress, Santa; it’s a gamble against gravity and the earth‘s power, all for the convenience of being road-facing.”
Santa’s enthusiasm evaporates, replaced by a look of horror as he visualises Banta’s description.
“A house on wobbly toothpicks…”
“But everyone is doing it now to open shops on the main roads!”
“And that, Santa, is how vulnerability spreads like a disease,” Banta says sadly.
“One person takes a huge risk for commercial gain, and others, driven by the same desire or a fear of being left behind, copy the dangerous design.”
“And with each new house built like this, we add more wastewater into the already fragile slope, making the ground soggier and the foundation of those very toothpicks weaker.”
“It is the story of Joshimath being written in small chapters all across our hills.”
Banta looks at the structure again.
“The race to the road is understandable, but when we take such dangerous shortcuts, we might just be building a highway to disaster.”
Santa watches the construction with new eyes, no longer seeing a marvel of engineering, but a monument to reckless ambition.
“Banta, your words are scarier than any Bhoot-Pret story.”
संता – बंता की इस जुगलबन्दी से आज हमने क्या सीखा:-
- बिना किसी तकनीकी परामर्श के बेतरतीब बीम-कॉलम के मकड़जाल के बल पर सड़क के स्तर तक पहुँचने की होड़ हर बीतते दिन के साथ हमारा भूकम्प का जोखिम बड़ा रही है / The practice of constructing multi-story, non-engineered stilts on steep slopes to reach road level is extremely hazardous and creates buildings with immense seismic vulnerability.
- भूकम्प की स्थिति में संरचना की प्रतिक्रिया उसकी बुनियाद से ले कर ऊपरी स्तर तक की भौतिक व संरचनात्मक दृढ़ता पर निर्भर करेगी और भूकम्प सड़क के स्तर के आधार पर कोई भेदभाव नहीं करेगा / The actual height of the building and its seismic response must be calculated from the lowest foundation level, not from the road level.
- बेतरतीब बीम-कॉलम के मकड़जाल के आधार पर बनी संरचनाये ढाल को असंतुलित करने के साथ ही असुरक्षित क्षेत्र में मानवीय हस्तक्षेप को बढ़ावा देती है और संरचनात्मक सुरक्षा के मूलभूत नियमो का उल्लंघन करती है / Such construction destabilises slopes, encroaches on hazardous zones, and ignores fundamental principles of structural engineering and soil mechanics.
- इस आत्मघाती प्रवत्ति पर लगाम लगाने के लिये सख्त नियम-कानून तथा अनुपालन व दंडात्मक व्यवस्था के साथ ही जन-जागरूकता जरूरी है। ऐसी सांरचनाओ को विकास के विपरीत विनाश के प्रतीक के रूप में प्रचारित किया जाना चाहिये / Urgent regulatory intervention, strict compliance checks by qualified engineers, and mass awareness are needed to halt this dangerous trend. The visual of these structures should be a red flag, not a symbol of progress.
संता – बंता की यह जुगलबन्दी आपको कैसी लगी, कृपया हमें जरुर बताये
व
इस जुगलबन्दी को बेहतर बनाने के लिये अपने सुझाव अवश्य दें।
हमें हमेशा की तरह आपके सुझावों, प्रतिक्रियाओं व कटाक्षो का बेसब्री से इंतजार रहता हैं और सच मानिये इसी के आधार पर हम अपने आप में, अपनी सोच व रचनात्मकता में सुधार करने को प्रेरित होते हैं।
सो अच्छा – बुरा जैसा आपको महसूस हुवा हो, कमेंट जरुर करते रहें।
Leave a Reply