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Yes this is the careless city. It does not care about you, neither about me. Though I am an Architecture student and study all about the buildings and the city all the time, it never cares. It never cared. Even it is a dream city for all of them who never stepped here until they step here. It was also a dream city for me until I waked up. This is the city of Kathmandu.

Some days ago, I was in a tempo, with my two other friends, going to the Hyatt hotel from Pulchowk Campus for case study of a five star hotel. The tempo was stopped for a while to take, on, the passengers. I saw a beautiful lady outside on the crowded road, really beautiful, carrying a pink purse on her back as a side bag. A boy was following her at the distance of about one foot apart from her, a tall boy with earrings and hairs both longer than that of a girl. I was just staring both of them from apart, murmuring. A boy slowly put his hands on her back purse and took out a small purse, may be full of money, and ran quickly to the another side of the road. As she realized, he was away from her, may be for always. A tempo that I was in just started moving and I was still staring at her.

I was not responsible for this. Neither has to worry about it. I didn’t help her and neither others do. So why do I worry about it? All of us, eyewitnesses, might have thought the same. I integrated this to the limit of the entire city and concluded that this is the careless city.

A city is a place where there is a complex socioeconomic system and all types of facilities are available, I studied. Yes, here is a complex system. So many people live here, I know all of us are living. The tall buildings and blacktop roads are here. It meets the terms and conditions of being a city. But without a soul, a soul of a city has been lost into the deep ocean of non-died people. The essence of a city is in holding the overall system in a balance way. That’s what is lost in this city.

As an architecture student, I can claim that, a city needs to be a healthy, convenient and beautiful environment, at least, to call a hygienic city. But the hills of garbage at the sides of a road resulting to the innumerable kind of diseases remind me the status of healthy environment. The Bagmati remind me the holiness of the god inside the pagodas of Pashupatinath. The traffic jaams and compacted passengers in the vehicles remind me the convenience of the city. A lady walking on the roads at mid-day grabbed by a thief reminds me the security system of the city. Squatter settlements at the middle of this city reflect our socioeconomic greatness. Yes, the city may be seen beautiful, though I have never seen it more than fifty feet due to the dust and smoke floating into the deep sky.

Once my physics teacher said, while I was at college, “you have to believe in the formulas derived by the scientists without thinking more about them and searching about their derivations” – I often say this as a scientific blind belief. So, in this city, there are so many school and college, and they are like robot production factories, where innocent faces are weighed with the bundles of money in the name of better education. A child carry the books more than he weights, the guardians have deep faith that he is carrying the load of knowledge, as they see their children bowing with overload. They think their duty has been completed with making him to carry a bag with tie and suite, without caring of his ability to carry.

No, don’t wake up the government officer at his duty to work for you. Wait till you fatigue and the officer will wake up and tell you to come tomorrow. Don’t cross the road because someone named very important person is coming after an hour. You will be treated as you are a terrorist. If not, there is no reason for you to wait to cross a road so long for unknown. Nobody cares how hurry you are in. if you are really in hurry then you even don’t care of traffic. That’s why this is a city of rich and powerful people or either a city of careless.

This city is the corridor for the brain drain. This city engulfs you like an anaconda and leaks you into the far deserts of unknown lands. You are supposed to balance the national economy through remittance. Whether you are ill or even you die no one is there to take care of you because no one cares here of you. Unlimited mysteries of the city are scattered at each and every junction of the city.

Once I realized, of being a citizen of this city, and think of it. I finally concluded that the city will never care of you until you care. The city will never change until you change. The city is dirty because I make it dirty. The thief grabs, because I just stare. Until or unless we think of being a responsible citizen, there will be nothing to do with this dead city. The day we start caring of each other, I start caring of you and you start caring of me the city will automatically start caring of us.  

 (published in The Himalayan Times on 12/09/2013)