It was recently reported that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had floated a proposal to convert the famous Mehboob Studios in Mumbai’s Bandra suburb into a 1000-bed quarantine facility to accommodate the growing number of Covid-19 patients in the city. BMC’s plan has sent alarm bells ringing amongst most of the residents in Bandra who live near Mehboob Studios.
According to a report in a popular Mumbai daily, the plan is being met with stiff opposition from Bandra residents who fear that the move will “expose them to pathogen risk, especially with the monsoon round the corner”. Some residents believe the common stormwater drain can bring the coronavirus into their homes during the monsoon, affecting older residents and children in the area.
However, one prominent Bandra resident has called out the hypocrisy of those opposing the BMC plan. Actor Pooja Bhatt, who has been living in Bandra ever since she was 17, says, “I think this is extremely selfish and very inhumane of the people mentioned in the article. Most of these are people who do not hesitate to litter around their buildings through the year. I am saying this with authority as I have personally gotten garbage that these educated citizens randomly dispose through the year lifted with help from the BMC.”
Bhatt argues that the same citizens don’t care about the drains getting choked year after year due to their own apathy are now making selfish and insensitive remarks when the city needs all the space it can get to COVID-19 war together.
Sharing pictures of the area around her apartment in Bandra, the actor and filmmaker says, “I live on Rebello Road, the pavement outside my building is permanently full of garbage that these citizens who are now complaining throw out indiscriminately.”
“Please make a visit to Flamingo apartments behind my building, there has been garbage rotting on the terrace of a garage in that building for almost a year,” she adds. After sharing pictures of certain places on Veronica Road that’s piled with garbage, Bhatt asks, “This is the situation on most days of the year behind Mehboob Studios. What happens to the residents civic sense then?”
Bhatt explains that she usually brings up the matter with BMC officials Prakash Gohil and Sharad Ughade, who then get it cleaned up. “How much can the BMC do? Isn’t it our job to help them to help us? The residents of these buildings around Rebello and Veronica road refuse to consider this their duty. They hire cleaners for a pittance and instruct the gardener to throw all debris over the wall. And now, when I read an article about them opposing the quarantine space proposed at Mehboob Studios, I am amazed by the sheer hypocrisy of the people who suddenly claim civic sense,” says the actor.
The actor, who is in Raigad since a month, arranging ration and other necessities for a village that she has a home next to, is worried for her 71-year-old mother Kiran, who has been feeding stray cats outside their apartment for over a decade despite protests from their building residents. “Love thy neighbor as thy self does not seem to apply to a lot of members of Sebastian colony,” she says.
“My point is, while the residents talk about waste from Mehboob like paper cups etc clogging their drains, what about their own garbage that they indiscriminately dispose of? Why blame Mehboob studios only? This is our collective shame,” Bhatt ends.
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