Rule o flaw — part I
This building right opposite my apartment was locked in a legal dispute for years. That must have ended a month ago (in October) because since then a bunch of workers have been toiling nine hours a day, six days a week to take it apart piece by piece. The contractor the building’s owner hired brought along a large excavator to push the walls of the four-storey structure down and it was done with most of the walls and one floor in a few days. But then trouble struck.
The next day the contractor had the excavator driven away and replaced it with a pair of pneumatic jackhammers driven by compressed air. These were, and are, very loud machines. The pumps for the compressors were driven by the engines of two tractors parked downstairs. The jackhammers were loud as well, and workers had to hold them as they chipped away at the walls and floors piece by small piece. Why didn’t the contractor persist with the excavator? My father went over to have a chat with him and discovered the reason.
About three buildings down from the one being torn down is the two-storey house of some Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) bigwig. When the excavator was working, mechanical vibrations passed into the ground and rattled the walls of that guy’s house. And as a bigwig, the guy pulled some strings and got a senior police officer to intervene on his behalf, preventing the contractor from using the excavator. Funny thing is that the vibrations from the excavator’s demolition didn’t affect the three buildings before the bigwig’s house or the building housing my and five other apartments, nor various other houses on either side.
The bigwig had built his house on a weaker foundation and was worried it would collapse and he believed it was okay to risk the peace of everyone else in the neighbourhood than risk that possibility — or, better yet, remedy that actual problem. I’m more sensitive than most to loud sounds and to the possibility that India’s Noise Pollution Rules are among the least invoked vis-à-vis complaints of public nuisance. But acting in such terribly bad faith, with no regard for one’s neighbours or the workers (although that’s on the contractor too), is sickening.
