There is a peculiar kind of heartbreak that comes with nostalgia, a feeling as bittersweet as it is relentless. Recently, while inching along Islamabad Highway with the sun slanting through the haze, I watched construction crews gnaw away at what was once a fresh green belt in H-8. The sight was terrible. Another chunk of the city’s old spirit, about to be buried under steel and stone. God knows what new monstrosity will squat there next, devouring a patch that once belonged to trees, grass, and the city’s 

long-vanished tranquillity.

For those of us who grew up here, Islamabad was a city that used to exhale. Evenings arrived gently. The streets would empty out with the fading light. In those days, the city felt more like an extended garden than a capital. Ten minutes was all it took to drive from one corner to another. Traffic jams belonged in distant cities. The idea of bumper-to-bumper gridlock was laughable.

German backed DFLT programme launched in Sindh

That memory now feels like a fairy tale. These days, Islamabad feels perpetually gridlocked. The rhythm of the city is set by car horns, smog, and the rattle of construction machines eating their way through what remains of the city’s lungs. The transformation is so complete that sometimes I wonder if those who inherited this city ever understood what they had. The rows of stately pines and lush green belts that lined Margalla Avenue and every street from F-6 to G-10 were no accident. They were the gift of planners who dreamed big and had the good sense to plant trees for generations they would never meet.

In place of that vision, we are left with bureaucratic vandalism dressed up as progress. Trees have been felled at a pace that borders on the criminal. The plantation drives of the last fifteen years have been little more than public relations exercises. Saplings that cannot survive in Islamabad’s climate get shoved into the ground, only to shrivel up,........

© The Nation