The giant crane moves slowly, ever so slowly. The wind shakes it but it keeps steady on its concrete platform. The excavator does what it was created to do and bores deep into the ground.
Our life and our wellbeing are hugely improved thanks to what cranes, excavators and random developers have done to our country. Now we are rich. A rich country fast developing into a jungle with no soul, no heart.
We are rich and we are all proud of our achievements. We have allowed machines and our developers to build anywhere, everywhere, anyhow. We went sky-high and hell-deep to achieve prosperity.
In the process blood has been shed, pure innocent blood. Because greed oiled our economy and our developers knew no bounds or limitations. It took one of us, an innocent woman in the ‘safety’ of her home, to sacrifice her life before the politicians, the businessmen and the policymakers shed tears.
But beyond tears nothing much. Nobody resigns, nobody accepts responsibility. Nobody declares that there is a need for dramatic – not drastic – action.
Developers and contractors – not all because some still have a conscience – are like the gods of old. The gods who asked for human blood, who made unsound demands on humans in return for a better life – a better life for the living. Back then no blood shed made any difference. And while developers promise to improve our life, the very opposite happens.
Unplanned and uncontrolled development has ruined our country to the point of leaving little hope of saving it.
The death of Miriam Pace sees us all stopping in disbelief to mourn the death – the killing actually – of an innocent woman. She died in the most despicable of ways in the safety and comfort of her own home. We live in tragic times. These times, are alas, far from normal as someone in Castille said.
What will happen beyond the flood of words, of despair and of accusations? The words we utter – like mine here – are voluminous but ultimately, useless. We cannot get Miriam Pace back. We cannot give anything her husband and children what they truly deserve –a smiling, talking, active, living Miriam, back.
What an irony that her surname was Pace, Italian for peace, when her family have had their peace stolen way too early.
The crying and condemnation will as always come to nothing because, in the infamous words of the President of the Developers’ Association, “we cannot kill the goose that gives us our golden eggs”.
No change will happen beyond more words and more inane promises. The crane and excavator will go on toiling to the baton of our bloody gods of greed.
We, the living, can sigh with relief that so far we are safe and not crushed, buried and killed in our own abode. But, in and beyond our homes, what life are we leading? What horrors are we seeing and breathing?
Dust, traffic, tarmac, roads, tree-felling, congestion: is this really what we deserve?
How healthy is the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat? Do we – or should we – care if we really kill the goose that is laying all this mayhem with the blessing of our politicians?
What we are surely killing wantonly is the future of our children and of generations to come.
If the crane is our god and the god has turned into a monster who keeps asking for more and more blood, then we should make it a point to kill the crane, the goose and anything that goes on ruining our life.
If we care about society and about people, it is not just Miriam Pace that we should mourn but our way of life. Unless we revolutionise society, we are doomed. We owe it not just to Miriam Pace but to ourselves.