Monday, September 24, 2007

Mobile N Home

One fine morning I got up and affirmed my decision to shift kolkata to be precise Ichapur, a small town in the outskirts of the city which is now a days been seen as one of the destinations for growing telecom services as the autorickshawalla to the guy selling Puchka “junk food” on the street corner everyone is a proud owner of a Tata Indicom handset which surely has the free 2 year talktime scheme and I really wonder what would happen when these customers would reach the deadline I have seen many a people who have only one rupee in there cell but it’s the scheme which is letting them talk to there girlfriends/boyfriends, friends, siblings, cousins and all the other networking individuals. What essentially was seen as a mode of communication has outgrown to be a mode of time pass. People suffer from diseases like ringxiety, a type of anxiety where an individual thinks that his cello phone is ringing whereas it doesn’t even blink its various colours. When I read the article on ringxiety I realised I am one of the victims of this new found disease. When one passes by the main street or lanes small shops adorn the posters of Tata Indicom, Reliance, Spice, Hutch and Airtel boxes, cartons, glass shields even the lamppost is not spared from the posters. The propinquity of the dealer with his customers is also noteworthy, the dealer tries to sell the network which gives him the maximum profit (usual selling method) but the way he sells it is something to lookout for, he would present such beautiful excuses that even you will start thinking about the consequences in case you don’t purchase that scheme (even in your heart you know he is trying to cheat you somewhere!!) and then the consumer ends up buying what the dealer had spoken; the memorised virtues of the scheme and there the customer goes happily boasting about the offer he validated and the dealer laughs how playfully he fooled another god damn fool!!
I wonder what would be the repercussions when these people who flaunt these gadgets would see the day when they would need to pay for the services? As town like Ichapur would be flooded with handsets which would not work with normal simcards and also they are financially not stable that they could pay for each recharges.
This situation supports another aspect of life which I am gravely concerned about- building homes for the future than as need of the hour. The constructions that meddle up in the midst of any empty space is startling, people don’t protest and the builder in these towns aren’t architects who design buildings, the contractors design and operate the structures which fetch them a huge amount of money and perhaps the buyers also know inside there unspoken heart that these buildings would fade there colours in next three years, the corners would rake rain water by the first monsoon and fungus would playfully feature itself as part of the interiors and to add the falling distemper. The burgeoning need is of understanding that building a structures costs money even more energy and emission of GHG’s (green house gases) which in turn combines to aggravate the climate change circle. Once a small contractor pin pointed me that he builds small buildings and apartments and it doesn’t add much but he forgot that as the population is exploding in India and there are lakhs of contractors and small time builders like him and thousands of big realtors who are constructing beautiful figures without considering any parameters. The building costs of these constructions might be higher but if seen they turn out to be only the initial investments and the maintenance cost is way less than what buyers end up paying. Architects like Laurie Baker, Dr.B.V.Doshi who have spent there life practising wonderful local architecture with global norms have exemplary art in there pockets which others feel difficult to manoeuvre.

MY INSPECTION:
Think for the future (years to come) than for the immediate present and future because money doesn’t come easily it has been earned by wiping our own sweat then why put it in those sources which would not yield results and of course the need of the hour is to GO GREEN!! So tell your architect you want a green building and manifold those happier times in your kitty!!!! Cheers!

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