Dear Mr. Chief Minister,

"Shanghai's is simply one of the best cities...there is this pub which is is like several feet about the ground..so it gives you this ethereal feeling when you are on top of the world getting high!!"

so on and so forth boasted a friend's pilot boyfriend about his 'Shanghai' experience...

am sure he could give a lesson or two to R.R Patil..our honourable home minister who is taking a breather from moral policing in the city and is off to Shanghai to learn how to transform 'aamchi mumbai' to 'sexy shanghai'...he is learning pretty fast...a sartorial makeover is already in place...

Shanghai...will be built over the houses of just about 45,000 people (give or take a few from this approximate...it doesen't matter..we are just talking about nameless faceless people who live in the fringes of the city anyways..it's not like lke they make a difference...) it will be built over the spaces of (called 'homes' by) about 60 percent of the population which decided to make do with just about 18 percent of the available space in the city(this includes open drains..marshy lands, etc) ...'they' decided to wash our cars, clean our houses (both the insides and the outsides), walk the streets at night for us to keep us safe, and basically just be there at our every beck and call for a pittance so that 'we' have comfortable cushy lives...now that 'we' have become comfortable and our cars have gotten too big for our roads...'we' have decided that 'they' don't deserve to be here anymore coz our city is looking 'ugly'..(what with grimy pot bellied babies running across streets..and the tarpaulin sheets spoiling the 'beautiful' skyline replete with illuminated hoardings..) so now poverty is 'ugly'...but please to be noting...this is the land of 'beautiful' people...this is place where plane jane Jassi becomes Jessica...

all we need to do to get rid of the 'ugliness' of poverty is to get rid of the poor so that we can make space for more of our kinds...so that 'we'can walk freely, eat freely, and drive freely...it's that easy honey to get rid of 'ugliness', 'poverty' and 'guilt' all in one stroke!! (boy! have we have mastered the skill of killing three birds with one stone or what!!)

anyways that's what the state does everytime it begins to feel guilty about it's shortcomings...( in the Emergency it was "let's sterilise the poor coz we can't provide for all the people..so let's do away with the 'ugly poor')
(as for the dance bar ban..the state said, "We can't look at our women making an exhibition of themselves...of course we have failed to give them a better way of living...but what can we do now..oh yeah..we can just ban them..so that we don't have to live with the guilt of looking at their plight anymore...) and the Shobha Des of the city will hail us for doing so...so that they can continue to party without guilt and create a 'happier, prettier and safer city for all of us!' and when we drive back home we don't have to worry about running over those things called 'people' who sleep on the roads

after all nothing is comparable with the feeling of getting 'high 'several feet above ground level...

Yours sincerely

Post Script:
Shobha De (the supposed journalist who calls herself a 'social demographer' because she documents the 'stardustization' of India and is all for the Shanghaization of Mumbai) sarcastically remarked that maybe she should park herself in the governor's garden considering that everyone who was migrating to the city was comfortably settling down all over the place...I say, not a bad idea Ms. De...maybe a little time out in the sun spent gardening would do you some good!! maybe your flat that has been built over reclaimed land (hence over mangroves, which makes it liable for demolition if we were to implement Coastal Regulatory Zone norms in all earnesty) could be demolished and the land returned to the original inhabitants of the city...