Morning Walkers Miss Their Green Lungs As Bhubaneswar Parks Get Denuded Due To Fani

Bhubaneswar: Morning walkers and lovebirds who frequent the capital city’s parks will possibly have to wait for long before their favourite green spaces recover from the battering wrought by Cyclone Fani.

The parks, which serve as lungs in the concrete jungle that Bhubaneswar is gradually becoming, used to be thronged with thousands of people in the early morning hours and evenings, providing them the much-needed respite from routine chores.

However, with the May 3 calamity destroying the green foliage and the parks suffering a lot of damage, the denizens are left with no choice but to wait till normalcy is restored. “It is really sad to see the parks get denuded. It will take a lot of time to get the greenery back. I seriously miss my morning walks,” rued Pradyumna Mohanty, a regular at Biju Patnaik Park aka Forest Park, one of the most beautiful parks here.

Among the major parks, Forest Park is one of the worst-hit. Indira Gandhi Park, which is opposite the State Secretariat, Buddha Jayanti Park and Madhusudan Das Park have also suffered extensively. “The sad part is the parks used to provide relief from the claustrophobic concrete structures that have come up everywhere. With the decades-old trees gone, it will never be the same again,” pointed out Diptiranjan Acharya of the NGO, Save The Earth Foundation.

Cyclone Fani has not only uprooted and broken the trees, it has also damaged boundary walls and other infrastructure in around 120 parks, including the ten major ones that are spread over five acres each. It has also shattered swings used by children to play and recreate, official sources said. Of these parks, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation manages 63 while the Bhubaneswar Development Authority looks after the rest.

BDA sources said work is on to assess the damages. “We have started clearing the broken trees and debris. We are trying to expedite the process for whatever restoration is possible,” a senior BDA officer said.

Sources said BMC has also begun work to reopen the parks at the earliest. “We are trying to repair and restore the physical infrastructure fast. But plantation and nurturing of trees will take time,” added an officer of BMC.