A single focus is useful to win a point. The preservation of the Brigade Parade Grounds? green heritage has been due to this. But the media?s tunnel vision excludes many other parts of the Calcutta Maidan around Fort William and some of the fine parks and green areas left by our pre-independence rulers. Their vision does not include the sorry state of the areas around Calcutta?s lakes, the Ballygunge Maidan (now a jungle of a high rise army cantonment) or the Zoological Gardens: not to speak of open areas in Howrah and the north.

Let us start with the same focus on the Zoological Gardens. One angle is from across the road, which runs by its side. If we try to peer from the carpeted luxury of the Taj Bengal, we will see only a dense cover of trees, grey in winter?s pollution. The same view would be available from the ivory tower of the tenth floor of the Calcutta University?s Alipore campus. This will not tell us what the situation is like in a zoo which has ? during vacations or after a political rally, or at the time of festivals like the Sagar Mela ? several hundred times more visitors than there are caged animals.

Fifty years ago, if one were reading in the National Library during dusk, one could hear the lions growling for their food. Even in the Sixties, we would make appointments in the pretty cafeteria next to the gates for coffee and pastries while discussing current academic projects. Nowadays, it is difficult to know whether any lions remain in the houses built for them. The cafeteria lawn, a few weeks ago when we went there with our grandsons, was a jumbled mass of litter and humanity.

What we saw that day was shocking. The steely winter sun lit up a grey mess of people sprawled over every patch of open ground, some reclining on old blankets, with the remains of food strewn around them, and a few playing badminton or football in the little patches they had been able to capture.

The litterbins and pathways were overflowing, with what they had thrown out. Not too many went near Gubbay House or Burdwan House since there seem to be not more than one or two monkeys and an odd sleeping tiger behind the bars. A tiger in the open had its ribs sticking out. One rhino slept in the distance. A giant tortoise was confined in a cage on an island. Several people from whom we asked the way to the Snake House said derisively that there was nothing there. Persisting, we found a python in one glass chamber in an array of these, and our grandsons had to be satisfied with that. Of course crocodiles, deer and certain types of birds were aplenty. There were no elephants to be seen.

The zoo has long become obsolete. The culture of throwing nuts to the monkeys, gaping at snakes confined in tubs or exclaiming at the tigers went out with the surge of increasing crowds from the villages. For a long time, the virtue of having animals move about in the open air without total confinement, has been advocated. One hears of plans to shift the animals elsewhere. Before that happens, and even in a period of transition, surely, more information should be publicly available about the dismal condition of the present Zoological Gardens. The enhanced rate of entry is quite substantial for the lower middle class and the poor people who crowd in dense masses, if not to look at confined animals, then just to bask in the sun that does not enter their narrow lanes.

The authorities could at least try to segregate picnic spots (perhaps by charging additionally for groups), post more guards to dissuade encroachment or littering the grass (which has practically disappeared from many spots) and have a more visible system of signposts directing visitors (the large biscuit advertisements are very deceptive). Above all, let the authorities remove the animals, once and for all, to safety from the gaping crowds. Let them take some firm decisions, in whatever governing body or ministerial control that they have, about the future of these gardens.

Among the educated people we know, the same experiences have made the younger generation ashamed of calling the place, ?the zoo? they knew. This class has stopped going there and regrets bitterly the lack of uncrowded space to take their children to (I exclude, of course, the well-heeled members of clubs with private lawns). Some go to the Science City for its pleasant play areas and educative recreation. We had the same experience there a day or two later, with similar surging masses of humanity squatting over the greenery. What the city needs badly is the preservation of space for fresh air for our lungs. Merely keeping political rallies or exhibitions off the Brigade Parade Grounds will not solve this problem.

What is immediately required is to leave the zoo to the grass, the trees and their birds. The place was known in my childhood as the ?Chiriakhana?, the place of birds. The jheel attracted Siberian cranes and many exotic birds. They do not choose to come anymore. There should be strict interdiction against trespassing on the grass, except in a permitted picnic area ? perhaps the stretch to the southwest towards Sterndale Road ? and, starting this year, much better gardening and cleaning of the jheel and other water bodies.

There are several small brick buildings, donated by the Burdwan Raj family and other magnates, which are becoming decrepit. The zoo should be treated as having full heritage status and the heritage buildings should be restored and treated as play areas or zoological exhibitions for toddlers.

Dark rumours have been heard about plans being hatched to allow the Gardens as well as the Alipore courts further south to become decrepit, and then hand them over to promoters in the way that Bombay?s central mill district (Girangaon) was left to the mercy of pool parlour owners and apartment builders. This should be prevented by immediate action. Build an open air zoo and also send the advocates to Baruipur?s new district headquarters if you want, but at least preserve the heritage character of Alipore?s gardens, greenery and buildings around the walls of Belvedere ? which is what the National Library premises used to be called even a generation ago.

As children, we were fortunate enough to live in a less populated, and perhaps therefore, more gracious city. An outing in the zoo is a memory that even our children treasure. To permit their children to treasure similar memories is a tradition, a sense of parampara that is worth striving for, and perhaps a duty that even a much- changed and sadly defaced city?s heritage planners owe to Calcutta?s future. Which public action group will take up this cause?