Syed Habib, Udaipur

In our country, when a wrongdoing turns five years old, it is often dipped in the syrup of “development” and “culture” and given the respectable title of a “Silver” or “Wooden Jubilee.” When a violation is fresh, a few dates are added to files and proceedings begin; but once it completes five years, trumpets are sounded, officials and courtiers sit on boats and applaud, and the whole episode is declared a “milestone.”

Something similar has happened at Udaipur’s Udai Sagar Lake, known for preserving water for centuries. A concrete palace—the Raffles Hotel—was built on the chest of the lake, allegedly trampling regulations and exploiting loopholes in the law. And now, with considerable pride, it has celebrated its fifth anniversary. According to the press note, the hotel calls its employees “Heartists” and, for a day, turned them into “guests,” taking them on a boat ride across the lake, ringing the bell at the Palladian Gate, and sitting at The Writers Bar, where they reminisced over cocktails.

What a touching, tear-jerking spectacle! For five years, the very hands that have served the privileged while bending their backs have now been rewarded with a day on a boat floating on the same water—as if the owners were saying, “Look, we have finally treated you like human beings.” When capitalism puts on the cloak of sentimentality to hide its harshness, this is what its “Heartists” look like.

But just behind this carefully staged celebration stands the thirsty public along the banks of Udai Sagar, for whom this spectacle is like salt rubbed into an open wound.

In Udaipur, if the clouds turn away for even one season, taps begin to hiss with nothing but air. In neighbourhoods, people fight over two buckets of water, while residents run behind municipal tankers as though chasing salvation. Yet the same city’s water is being held hostage by a luxury establishment that has allegedly damaged the lake’s ecosystem and aquatic life. The 137-room property and its private pools may have no shortage of water for those swimming in them; the shortage exists only in the lives of ordinary citizens, who are described in the books of democracy as the “owners” of the system.

There is great reverence for rules and laws in our country. Environmental regulations are made so flexible that if a poor man places two extra bricks on the boundary of his hut, the UIT bulldozer can arrive the very next morning with its siren blaring. But when an international luxury brand occupies an island in a historic lake and raises a concrete jungle upon it, the offices of the environmental authorities suddenly seem to develop cataracts. Files become so smooth that objections simply slip off them.

The hotel’s general manager says that “the five-year journey is a symbol of the memories and experiences that have been shared.” He is right, in a way. This journey is indeed a reminder of how nature’s neck can allegedly be twisted through collusion. It is a celebration of the experience that if you have deep pockets and influence, you can allegedly consume the existence of a historic lake and still laugh fearlessly five years later.

It is being said that the damage caused cannot be compensated even with a celebration a hundred years from now. But look at the irony: a century from now, when this lake may perhaps have been reduced to a dry pit, history may still record that while the city was thirsting for water, glasses were being raised at The Writers Bar on the island of Udai Sagar, while those in power watched the destruction with deaf eyes and smiled.

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