Reading Oscar Wilde the other day, I realised how horrified he would have been by the idea of city people choosing to live in a village. Wilde was an aesthete who devoted his life to the beautiful and the sublime. Naturally he simply loathed the countryside. It is only in the city, he asserted, that a man can indulge in civilised pursuits (those being the Only Worthwhile pursuits, of course).
But Wilde would most certainly have been horrified by what passes for a city in modern India. I imagine him in dirty, crowded Bombay looking "With such a wistful eye/Upon that little tent of blue/Which prisoners call the sky". Reading Gaol all over again. The very word civilised - which suggests elegance, refinement, culture – is rooted in a word that means city. But what, I wonder, is civilised about our cities?
Granted, you will find theatres, art galleries, bookshops, libraries, seminars, intelligent conversation, cultivated people. But what about life and living? "My art I put into my work, but my genius I put into my life." Wilde again. Are not all the civilised pursuits a sham of sorts when the quality of living itself is so thoroughly uncivilized?
Call my rant sour grapes (I yearn sometimes for civilised diversions).
But I really do believe that the rot seems to have set in cities, and there must come a time when a better alternative is available to those who want it. Getting out is an option. But why should that mean going backwards in time? Why can't one take along all the nice bits of civilisation?
Whenever I drive along the Konkan coast or in the hills of the Western Ghats, I see all around me miles and miles of beautiful empty land. Beautiful and quite uninhabited. I see spectacular views of rolling hills and of the glittering silver sea. And I imagine people fleeing the city and settling down in this idyllic landscape; living in cottages (no skyscrapers) amid trees and gardens. I imagine children running free, learning how to climb trees and recognise flowers and fish, shells and birds. Naturally, as in all idylls, the state is only to happy to provide electricity and water.
What next? The way I see it, people don't have to have homes in the same place they have offices and markets and leisure activities. This is how it is in cities today, and the result is mass chaos. Instead, everything should be neatly compartmentalised. There would be clusters of just cottages, each cluster like a little village. And each cluster would be connected by a world-class motorable road to a "facility", also set in this idyllic landscape. One such facility could be a centre of art and culture. Another could house offices and places of work. Yet another could have shopping malls and restaurants and skating rinks and bowling alleys. There would be no overcrowding, filth, pollution. There would be no need for rural development, since the rural would naturally get developed with only a little help from the powers that be.
It's not as wild as it sounds.
And surely such an arrangement would be good for the soul, and for the body and mind: offering everyone a chance to lead a rich and beautiful life?
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