The weather is absolutely mesmerizing outside. The rains are poring and the breeze is blowing. The trees are swaying and wires are waving. Vinu and I could just not resist ourselves and we ran outside of our rooms to the terrace of our “Form Ke Pathshala” - as Sorabh calls it - to get completely drenched in seconds. Soon we were in confrontation with the breeze which tore off our thin cotton shirts with ease. What a pleasure it was! I would never regret even loosing my most precious cotton in such a tussle. At the same moment when I was at heaven on the terrace of SPA hostel, a person on the street, with a bag full of vegetables was navigating desperately through the sea of parked cars on the footpath. He was trying to find a place to protect him form the breeze, dust and rains. Being on the footpath with the compound wall twice his height on one side, negotiating innumerable hurdles of parked cars, potted plants and garbage bins would have been like being in hell for him at this moment.
So inhuman we have become in the name of security I thought. Our design of just a twenty meter long compound wall of each house along the street had created hundreds of meters of hell for this person walking on the street in this beautiful weather.
How difficult would it be to convert these twenty meters of individually created hells into twenty meters of pleasure?
What if the wall had a tree having a sheltering canopy, instead of an exotic species, under which one could momentarily feel protected from the sun and the rain. A small niche or a bench carved out in the same wall where one could take a momentarily pause. The Entry gate recessed, with a few flowering plants with fragrance, forming a canopy over the entry giving instant relief to the person standing outside till he is welcomed in the house. Neatly parked BMW’s and Lancers and the entire exotic cars one could dream, framed within the plot freeing the footpath.
It would be a different experience to have uncles and aunties on their morning walks plucking flowers planted along the compound wall for their morning puja, greeting the owner in gratitude. School kids sitting on the bench built in the compound waiting for the rickshaw to come. Girlfriends waiting for their boyfriends under the corner tree their favorite landmark.
In today’s rapidly changing world if the vegetable vendors and doodwalas have gone, the courier person, the delivery boy, and the internet service provider have come. At least one of them visits us every day.
A hundred architects, engineers, and contractors can create two thousand meters of pleasure for all of us. That’s a whole two kilometers. Can we take responsibility to create these pleasures? Could this be a new urban experience which allows us to enjoy the rains, the sun and the breeze whenever it comes in whatever situation?
