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The Central Zoo Authority has turned down the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s grandiosely idiotic plan to spend Rs500-odd crore to redevelop the Mumbai zoo, affirming the decisions already made by the ministry of environments and forests as well as the various heritage and environment conservation experts of the city. Imagine the plight of the BMC.

Having worked so hard to come up with this daft plan, which included cutting down lots of old trees, making lots of concrete structures and creating some BMC version of an African safari park in the middle of Byculla, it now needs a new idea on which it can waste time and potentially, loads of money.

You or I cannot dare to suggest - as if we would - that we would like better roads or drains or water supply or stuff like that. Instead, it is now our duty as good citizens to come up with some more projects for the BMC’s enthusiastic officials to work on - preferably ideas which allow them (and our equally keen corporators) to make several trips to foreign countries in order to “research” these projects.

One must be sensitive here and keep the BMC’s artistic proclivities in mind. For instance, they love lots of concrete, adore paving blocks and absolutely abhor trees - look at Marine Drive and the Gateway of India. Also, any plan which is made must keep in mind the sensibilities of our builders and developers who must get good advantages from it. If you have any silly ideas, please mail them to me or drop them in at your local ward office.

The sea is a great opportunity to mess around with but the environment ministry keeps playing spoilsport with all this concern over mangroves and protecting the coastline. But surely it is possible to tinker around with it - and Adarsh proves how good we are at tinkering with rules.

Like reclaim from the sea to create an island off the Mumbai coast and build a giant amusement park. This will be completely undoable, cost a lot of money and require several trips to Orlando, Florida, to study Disneyland. You can also add Coney Island, Euro Disney, and anywhere else on earth that you might like.

For too long have we heard about Taraporewala Aquarium becoming uber-fancy so it can compete with the best without anything concrete being done about it. Why not make another set of trips to places - now available all over the world - where seals and dolphins perform for humans and you walk through water in glass corridors? The visits will cost a lot even if the plans come to nothing (sorry, we must have hope).

I have a simple and very workable idea as well. Since garbage collection has become relatively well organised by the BMC, we can also encourage some recycling. How about collecting all those used and hideous ‘happy birthday dear politician’ hoardings which the BMC is so eager to give permission to and putting them up on an open ground so that we the citizens can throw coconuts at them? This will certainly amuse us and not cost a lot of money even. Damn, I’ve just killed that idea well and good.