Flowers bloom, but butterflies die.
That’s the sad story of the Pune-Mumbai Expressway stretch where the divider that separates the Pune and Mumbai lanes is ablaze with thousands of flowers.
The heart wrenching story is of butterflies, who, in dozens, are knocked down by speeding vehicles, probably even before they can suck the nectar.
Lying unsung and dead, they can only attract the fleeting and futile sympathy of thousands of commuters.
‘‘I travel on the Expressway at least thrice a week and since the past few weeks I have often had butterflies dashing against the windscreen of my car and falling down. One feels bad, but there is nothing one can do about it while travelling. This happens especially during early morning and afternoons, particularly in the stretch between Lonavala and Kamshet,’’ said Sunder Iyer, public relations consultant.
Brigadier (retd) Mahesh Eranna, CEO Delta Force has also witnessed this sorry sight.
“This has been happening since early November and will perhaps last another fortnight. Once the morning mist of winter arrives, the number of butterflies flocking here will decrease.”
With vehicles passing you at 80 km per hour, there is nothing one can do, except feel bad,” he adds.
A sentiment echoed by PK Ghanekar, head of the Botany department at Garware College (Pune), “Whenever new roads are constructed in the Ghat region, the animal and insect worlds suffer, because till then that area used to be their rightful domain and thoroughfare.’’
He adds, ‘‘In this case though, the butterflies are coming here because there has been food created for them. One way to look at it, is that, if they didn’t have this food, they would die anyway. So, maybe, the surviving few are getting nourishment.’’
Adds Vishal Kadarkar, deputy project manager, Eslamex-Shinde, “Till now, we only had moths coming to the rice fields, on the side of the Expressway, during harvesting time and then dashing against cars and falling dead. Now there are butterflies too—though their number is less compared to the moths.’’
If you thought only human beings lived a charmed life on the Expressway, you now have another think coming.
sunandamehta@expressindia.com