If Only in Name

You see, even though everyone was angry with the politicians, they were still attached to the dream of the fantabulous city. They still believed that that someone else could build this for them, properly. Many of the young hotshots, flush with venture capital funding, posted hot-takes and opinions on social media. Their elders chimed in with their own cantankerous opinions circulated via online messaging groups. A new crop of politician-businessmen arose, with new ways of building the city of everyone's dreams.

This new phase began with the statues. The logic was simple -- the city had forgotten its pristine past. In order to restore the City Once Beautiful, it was important for the people to remember the past. The best way to do this was to build statues. They began modestly. A playground here. A convention hall there. Statues of local figures, known only to white-haired ajjas and thathas who vaguely remembered them. However, it wasn't long before the statues began to grow in size and prominence.

The first big statues took over the remaining open grounds, but there were still new ones to be built. Older buildings were torn down to make way. One statue was assembled 200 kilometres away, and shipped, prone on its back, by lorry into the city. It was so huge that its shoulders grazed the sides of buildings and demolished street lamps. Yet, the new leaders were hungry for more. Eager to build higher and higher statues, they diverted city funds away from the road projects and waste collection towards the colossuses. The last roads began to break down. The last functioning sewage pipes began to crack. Garbage began to pile up on the streets.

As traffic continued to increase and the stench began to permeate the streets, the leaders found new ways to sell dreams. Choking in smog and stink? No problem. Let's build cable cars onto the biggest statues and get people up to the skies. Let's give them a few moments in the sun before they have to come back down to the drudgery of their lives. People so sick of their lives that they're contemplating moving out of the city? No issues! Let's build new statues in the periphery of the city, so that those who move outside are never far away from modernity.

Before long, the madness for statues mutated into a madness for anything spectacular. The richer politicians and businessmen pushed their money into grandiose malls and skyscrapers, named after older politicians or legendary rulers. The lesser leaders fought with each other to rename roads, car parks, railway stations, airports, schools, and hospitals. Everything could be redrawn and remade, if only in name. Everything had to be redrawn and remade, if only in name.

It wasn't long before the city began to collapse completely.