A few weeks ago, my niece and nephew from Mumbai came visiting us. They are a bubbly pair of school kids who have spent all their lives behind the closed doors of an apartment in Mumbai. This was the first time they ever came down to our house in Vidyaranyapura, Bangalore. They enjoyed their stay in and out, and they just didn’t want to go back. And for good reason. But throughout their stay, they reminded me of Asimov, and his stories of the fallouts of mindless urbanization.
Their joy burst forth the moment they saw my house. They had expected me to live in an apartment just like the herd of people does in Mumbai. Fortunately Bangalore isn’t so ‘apartmentalized’ yet, although that statement is fast becoming obsolete. Anyway, they just didn’t tire of running in and out of our small bungalow on the outskirts of Bangalore.
Ok, Vidyaranyapura was like paradise for them. They never thought one could grow vegetables in his own house. They just assumed everyone on earth bought vegetables from a shop! They never thought the chirping of birds and cooing of cuckoos could actually wake you up from sleep in the morning. They never thought that a jasmine creeper or a champaka tree could be more fragrant than their perfume-bottle counterparts. They never saw the shine of dew drops on the tips of the tiny velvet fur coat of rose leaves. They never thought the early morning fog could come down so low and thick that you could not see the other side of the road.
It all started one morning when my nephew woke me up, all excited saying, “Kaka, come quick, there is a cuckoo in the garden.” I was overawed that they had distanced themselves from nature so much that hearing a cuckoo was so exciting to them. The same evening there was a slight drizzle, and a beautiful rainbow sprang up on the horizon opposite to the setting sun. The moment my niece noticed it, she and her sibling scampered onto the terrace and gazed at it with mystified eyes. It was so awesome for them to actually witness an event about which they had just read in their text books. It’s not that rainbows don’t happen in Mumbai, but I suspect most people just can’t see them with all those tall buildings around.
The night was even better. In Mumbai, they never got to see the night sky except from the beach, and even then hardly any stars were visible, thanks to all the light pollution. The stars twinkling like pearls on a jet black canvas was a real treat for them. They spent hours on the terrace, feasting their eyes through the binoculars.
This set me thinking. I was overwhelmed with a feeling that Asimov’s prophecies are really coming true. That reminds me of another incident that my friend told me about, a few days ago. He had just returned from New York. While he was enamored by the grandeur of the mega city, he was stumped at the fact that you just cannot get around the city without a car. You need a car to commute from anywhere to anywhere even if the two anywheres were within walking distance. People can’t walk. Instead, they buy treadmills and burn their calories and time in such a silly manner. What the?
Also, while he was there, he had once been to an amusement park, where a typical model village had been recreated. He couldn’t believe that people were actually paying money to see what the rural landscape looked like! It sounds absurd, at least to us Indians! What’s more, even when inside, people were not watching it directly, but through the camcorder’s display screen. He was appalled that people there are quagmired in so many levels of artificiality. They actually pay money to enter an artificial village, spend all their time walking around looking at electro-mechanical animals through a tiny camcorder viewer, then go home and replay it on their television screens and feel happy that they experienced something beyond city life. Aaargghh! Asimov, thou art the God!
