"No man is an island" is how John Donne started one of his most famous verses, centuries ago. But then he had not lived in the Millenium City.
As I spend more and more days in Gurgaon, I continue to get amazed by how the city functions - in fact even how it exists. There is no electricity: where I live electricity switches between the mains and generator power about 25 times a day, and for more than half the day we are on the 'backup'. There are no roads worth speaking of, except the highway which too continues to kill an average of at least one person a day! There is no water - the water table chart of India shows Gurgaon to be among the deepest red. The landscape reminds me of some of the old Western movies, or of some of those sci fi fantasies - deep red sun, dust clouds swirling around carrying with them the flotsam of human existence, a permanent dusty haze with not a tree in sight. Corpses of stray dogs and other animals brought down by speeding vehicles and their manic drivers following no rules litter the streets. And dotting this soul less landscape you see two signs of human existence - hundreds of tall, monolithic buildings, punctuated every now and then by a ramshackle liquor shop.
It is these buildings which interest me, and the vehicles. Because what is happening in Gurgaon is the exact reverse of what is happening in every other city in the world. Every large city is all about 'distributed facilities'. It is much like what is happening in computing. Earlier there used to be these big heavy computers, with all the processing power and intelligence lying in that box. The internet and the high speed fibre networks changed all that. Now computing power is distributed all across the world - in every intelligent device and in the vast data centres dotting the globe. What we have in every office and home is a node, connected to the vast web of intelligence or the World Wide Web.
The same thing is happening in infrastructure. Before Edison came along, each building and factory had its own powerplant - its own source of power. Edison changed all that, and created the first grid. So there were centralised power plants, and houses and offices and factories connected to them as nodes to draw their energy from. Power utilities were born, Edison's being the first (now we know it as GE). The same was true of water - each village or cluster had its own pond, until piped water came along. The same for cooking gas. And ad infintum
This is how even traffic runs now. Earlier each vehicle was on its own - no street lighting, non-existent roads, no signals. Today in most busy roads in city centres, car lights are a safety feature more for others to see you rather than for you to see others. The street lighting is so good that night transforms to day, and the traffic signals, rules and processes guide your cars so well that an algorithm can drive them (as Google has demonstrated).
But the reverse is happening in the Millenium City. Each house and each cluster of houses runs its own power, there are mini power plants running in every 'gated community'. 'Backup' power (though now the state electricity grid, such that it may, is the backup power; the generator are the mains) is a must for a house to be bought. Each house - gated or otherwise - now needs its own 'pond' or water storage. Pesky little five thousand litre tankers (mobile ponds) rumble along the unpaved roads from house to house, selling a commodity for which citizens have already paid taxes for. And now most gated complexes, including mine, have cooking gas storage too.
The same thing is happening to traffic. Each car has become an island, generating its own illumination, responsible for its own safety and for finding the best path it can drive on. Street lights exist only as road dividing pillars, for vehicles with no lights to crash into. Each car is a fortress, with its own illumination, alarm, baseball bat and lumpen driver.
And yet the city continues to thrive - property prices double every 3 years while all other facilities halve in the same time. What worries me is how long this can continue. How long will we continue going in the path opposite to what every other city has chosen - not by choice, but by necessity. The bell is tolling, and as John Donne closes the same poem:
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
As I spend more and more days in Gurgaon, I continue to get amazed by how the city functions - in fact even how it exists. There is no electricity: where I live electricity switches between the mains and generator power about 25 times a day, and for more than half the day we are on the 'backup'. There are no roads worth speaking of, except the highway which too continues to kill an average of at least one person a day! There is no water - the water table chart of India shows Gurgaon to be among the deepest red. The landscape reminds me of some of the old Western movies, or of some of those sci fi fantasies - deep red sun, dust clouds swirling around carrying with them the flotsam of human existence, a permanent dusty haze with not a tree in sight. Corpses of stray dogs and other animals brought down by speeding vehicles and their manic drivers following no rules litter the streets. And dotting this soul less landscape you see two signs of human existence - hundreds of tall, monolithic buildings, punctuated every now and then by a ramshackle liquor shop.
It is these buildings which interest me, and the vehicles. Because what is happening in Gurgaon is the exact reverse of what is happening in every other city in the world. Every large city is all about 'distributed facilities'. It is much like what is happening in computing. Earlier there used to be these big heavy computers, with all the processing power and intelligence lying in that box. The internet and the high speed fibre networks changed all that. Now computing power is distributed all across the world - in every intelligent device and in the vast data centres dotting the globe. What we have in every office and home is a node, connected to the vast web of intelligence or the World Wide Web.
The same thing is happening in infrastructure. Before Edison came along, each building and factory had its own powerplant - its own source of power. Edison changed all that, and created the first grid. So there were centralised power plants, and houses and offices and factories connected to them as nodes to draw their energy from. Power utilities were born, Edison's being the first (now we know it as GE). The same was true of water - each village or cluster had its own pond, until piped water came along. The same for cooking gas. And ad infintum
This is how even traffic runs now. Earlier each vehicle was on its own - no street lighting, non-existent roads, no signals. Today in most busy roads in city centres, car lights are a safety feature more for others to see you rather than for you to see others. The street lighting is so good that night transforms to day, and the traffic signals, rules and processes guide your cars so well that an algorithm can drive them (as Google has demonstrated).
But the reverse is happening in the Millenium City. Each house and each cluster of houses runs its own power, there are mini power plants running in every 'gated community'. 'Backup' power (though now the state electricity grid, such that it may, is the backup power; the generator are the mains) is a must for a house to be bought. Each house - gated or otherwise - now needs its own 'pond' or water storage. Pesky little five thousand litre tankers (mobile ponds) rumble along the unpaved roads from house to house, selling a commodity for which citizens have already paid taxes for. And now most gated complexes, including mine, have cooking gas storage too.
The same thing is happening to traffic. Each car has become an island, generating its own illumination, responsible for its own safety and for finding the best path it can drive on. Street lights exist only as road dividing pillars, for vehicles with no lights to crash into. Each car is a fortress, with its own illumination, alarm, baseball bat and lumpen driver.
And yet the city continues to thrive - property prices double every 3 years while all other facilities halve in the same time. What worries me is how long this can continue. How long will we continue going in the path opposite to what every other city has chosen - not by choice, but by necessity. The bell is tolling, and as John Donne closes the same poem:
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
No comments:
Post a Comment