I was brought up in the city of Surat from age 3 to 16, being a child in a middle class family signed me up for a privileged residential life in a township of 11 floored buildings built by the industrialist employers of the town. I have always seen this city neatly planned for the human civilisation to operate harmoniously even through occasional disasters it has faced from the great plague to the 2001 earthquakes to a city submerging flood of 2006. The recovery hasn’t been stronger by its (and I count myself in as the most belonged) citizens. But Surat has also been a victim of super-development in Gujarat, ages before the nation could catch up. From 6 lanes running across the city to being awarded the greenest and cleanest in the country multiple times, the accolades of development are uncountable, and so are the given names like silk city, diamond city. A city of fairly rich people have ensured the carnivorous concrete eats up the greens this city has alongside a lovely wide river of Tapi bounded by the Arabian sea on one side, but the other sides and stretched out by farms, on one such outskirt, is where I currently live after shifting from the township that was in the heart of the city, with beautiful sculptures across the road and parks placed like sots on a leopard. These outskirts have exposed me to a no man’s land between the growing borders of urbanisation and wide green farms.
