FUTURE CITY: VISIONS AND BEYOND

FUTURE CITY SERIES: PART 9

A CITY HIDDEN IN FUTURE

MARIO AND THE PAINTBRUSH....

BY

SHINJINI BHATTACHARJEE

Beneath an opaque sky,

Beside the river running by,

Nestled in the lap of hills

As high as dreams

There lies a city…

It glistens in the day,

Glitters at night.

Beyond the fields of hope

Thrives the little city…

As time wears it down

And the Heavens all frown,

Down the waters of sorrow

Drowns the lone city!

But as the times turn,

The morning birds greet the Sun…

In a faraway land

Is born a new city…

Mario stood in his studio, facing his canvas. The sunlight streaming in from the glass windows; drew patterns on the white expanse in front of him. He held his newly acquired possession in his grip and marvelled at it. It was a paint brush to die for. Never before, in his career as a painter, had he come across a brush as handsome as this one. It was a definite eye catcher. The light slipping off its handsome mahogany body made it glitter brilliantly. He was happy. Ecstatic.

It was no normal paintbrush.  The famous magician Longwood had passed away last week and his belongings were to be auctioned. Mario, who never missed such opportunities of bagging exclusive antiques and artifacts, paid his customary visit. He did not know how that paintbrush came to be a part of Longwood’s collection. All he knew at the very first instant of looking at it was, that it was meant to be his.

Mario had it all decided. He wanted to create an artwork on a city set in the future. This had been his dream since long and he was about to realize it soon. His excitement knew no bounds. Hence, he began, every bit of his concentration focused on the canvas, the source of his confidence gripped tightly in his hand. He started creating magic with his paintbrush, as the cityscape slowly started taking shape on the blank sheet of paper.

As was quite often the case with Mario, he lost track of time as the hours ticked by and the bold sweeps of his brush made the mystery of the city of his dreams unfold before his eyes. Before he knew it, he lay asleep on his bean bag in front of the canvas as the clock on the mantelpiece showed half past midnight.

Mario

Mario in the Land of the Unknown

Mario woke up with a stinging feeling near his left ankle. He opened his eyes slowly and felt his insides contracting. He pinched himself, once---twice, to make sure he was dreaming. He sat up with a start and felt like yelling his lungs out, only to find that his voice was lost.

Mario found himself lying on a huge stretch of glass panel. Wherever he looked about himself, it was just a long linear expanse of transparent, crystal clear glass. He was suddenly aware of the pain in his ankle and he turned to find that a piece of shattered glass was stuck in there. He picked it out and stood up. It was then, that it struck him. The landscape all around him was a replica of the painting he was working on, before he drifted off to sleep.

He was a part of his painting. He felt sick out of fright. He had been sucked into the painting and he did not have the faintest idea about how or when it had happened. He was too caught up in these thoughts when he realized that there was something in the right pocket of his pyjamas. He shoved his hand into his pocket and found the paintbrush. Now, that was something. He tried to remember hard and was almost convinced that he had kept the brush back in its place before lying down on the couch to rest for some time. 

He was overtly careful with the brush and it did not seem likely to him that he would put it in his pocket. He wouldn’t manhandle it. Not this brush. He held the brush in his grip and felt certain of one thing, in his current state of uncertainty and helplessness.

He knew it was a magic paintbrush. He knew that it was because of the brush that he was a part of a city of his imagination. Lastly, he knew not how, but he was determined to get out. Hence he put his only belonging back into his pocket and made up his mind to explore the city and find a way out of it. Only one thing boosted him up and gave him confidence. That after all, it was HIS creation, the city. Nobody knew it better than he himself. Therefore, if anyone could explore its limits and get away from it, it was none other than him.

The Glass Road

Mario and the “ Hidden City”

Mario was about to start walking along the glass road, when something caught his eye. The moment he took his first step on the glass, letters started forming beneath the glass façade, the way they did in digital devices. Mario saw that it was actually indicative of his position in the city. “Hidden Lane”, it read. Then, as he started walking further, arrows stemmed out in different directions beneath the glass screen, showing him where the road went. Mario followed the arrow that said “ Way to Hidden City”. He was quite amazed to find that he did not face any difficulty in walking over glass. Perhaps it was made in such a way. After walking for some time, Mario reached a point, where he saw a glass staircase leading him far below, beneath the glass layer.

Seeing no other way, Mario took the staircase. On reaching the last stair, Mario looked up to find himself standing at the foot of a giant vertical tower, the tip of which; was not visible to him. The tower housed multiple floors. Mario got inside the tower. It was as big as Times Square and was just as crowded with buildings and people. Mario went up to a group of men in order to let them know of his situation, only to discover to his utter disappointment that he was as good as thin air to these people. Distraught, he began taking rounds of the place, in the hope of finding some way that would take him back where he belonged.

The City Tower

The ways of the “ Hidden City”

In the process of doing this, he made observations about the place, that gave him an insight about the city and its various aspects.

He noticed that the ground floor housed humble buildings. The houses were barely anything apart from being single storeyed. It was not a very well planned space, as Mario noted. The housing areas were interspersed with the market areas. The people also caught Mario’s attention. They were uniform in their humble appearances. They seemed to belong to the lower strata of the society. Mario took trips of all the subsequent floors of the tower.

There were airborne flying saucers, which hung in midair, not very far above the ground, thereby defying gravity. The machines were self-controlled. Mario climbed up into one of them and saw that it had buttons for the specific floors. Thus, he took a trip of the city at its different levels in one of the flying saucers, which were called as “Levitators”.

As Mario visited each floor of the tower, he observed that there was a definite hierarchy. The residential areas as well as the people were symbolic of affluence as the levels rose. Even the cityscape was planned in a much better way as one went up from the lower levels to the higher ones. Thus, the city had been planned so as to classify it vertically into segments of varying levels of development. The topmost floor was representative of luxury, while the ground floor reflected deprivation. 

On his detour, Mario came across a digital billboard which said that the year he had been transported into was 2200! He was amazed to find how, it was a vertical urban sprawl that had replaced the horizontal expansion of cities of the present. Also, it struck him that some apocalyptic event must have occurred and dramatically brought down the human population. Otherwise, no city, in its entirety, anywhere in the world would have fit into this columnar structure.

As Mario delved into the various other aspects of the city, he discovered new things about its economy, polity, society and geography.

Every citizen of Hidden City was allotted portions of land in the area surrounding the glass tower. They were to grow the food items of their need for themselves. The affluent people tended to employ workers from the lower classes to do it on behalf of them, while others did it on their own.

The forces of production were all owned by the Government and there were no profit-seeking private players in the market to bring about a glaring divide between the rich and the poor. Based on their abilities, the citizens engaged in Government jobs of varying ranks. The educational institutions groomed the citizens accordingly. The Government policy was structured in such a manner that the concept of illiteracy did not prevail, nor did that of unemployment. Also, the small size of population made that possible to a large extent.

The transport system was restricted solely to the airways and the flying vehicles used non-polluting eco-friendly fuel. Air traffic congestion was a non-existent concept. This is because, the vehicles were all owned by the Government and no allowance was made for private ownership of the same. As a result, there was a stipulated number of vehicles that were present in and around the city. This kept the question of congestion and pollution at bay.

Keeping in mind the ecological balance of the city, the Government had also made it mandatory for the citizens to plant trees outside their respective houses, as a way of keeping the city green.

Another intriguing and peculiar fact about the city was that, the glass cover surrounding the city was built in such a way, that it kept the city insulated from the actual weather conditions, outside of the glass cover.

Outside the city, an artificial lake had been created which had plenty of mushroom shaped stations mounted on it, with closed circuit cameras and monitoring devices for constant surveillance and better administration.

The social life of the city attracted Mario the most. Since the population size was more or less small, social interaction took place at a great pace and the individual neighbourhoods were like extended families. Mario came across a particular street in one of the floors of the city tower, named as “Leisure Street”, which housed the places of entertainment in the city. The old tradition of socializing in-person had taken over the online world of communication and interaction. None of the Government offices were open after 5 in the evening. The city folks, therefore, got enough time after work to spend with their families and friends. Leisure Street boomed with life, once the Sun went down the horizon.

Hidden City, as Mario noticed, was marked by a clustering of similar kinds of activities.

The roads inside the city were automated in such a way, so that they could move on their own, such that the commuters did not have to walk  by themselves. The roads were used to travel only short distances, while the airways were the only mode of transportation for traversing longer routes. The distance between adjacent cities was tremendous and was nothing like what it was in the world where Mario belonged.

Mario also came across another interesting characteristic feature of the city. The citizens kept pets, which were essentially robots. They were put to use for doing household chores. Keeping humans as household aids was a foreign concept. Nor were there any provision for keeping pet animals at home.

Mario had a feeling that the conventional sources of energy had already been exhausted in the years that had passed in the meantime. The city was entirely based on hydel and wind power sources. Windmills were stationed at frequent intervals all around the city.

It was a self-sufficient city. It was an empire in itself, which was aptly named, since it was obscured from view by the overlying glass cover. It seemed like the only city existent in the world.

Leisure Street

Back he comes

Mario, incapable of finding a way out of the city, followed his way back to the point from where the stairs had begun. Exhausted from his efforts which were all in vain, he lay down on the glass floor, beneath a starless sky. As soon as he hit the floor, his body gave way to sleep.

Mario woke up with the sunlight tickling his eyelids. He opened his eyes, sure enough to find himself on the hard glass. However, he could not believe his eyes when he saw the familiarity of his studio. He sat up and searched his pocket. The paint brush was still there. Mario checked his left ankle. The cut from the glass had almost healed, but it was there, all the same.

Mario looked up at the incomplete painting and got the shock of his life. He had painted the landscape alright, but he never painted the glass tower. About that, he was positive. But there it was, right there, in the centre of the landscape. He stared at his work in utter bewilderment. Then he held up the paint brush in his palm and smiled. The magic brush that had changed his life forever, was shining bright as the sunlight seeping in from the glass windows caressed it. Just the way it had done, when he fell in love with it for the first time.

The Magic Brush

Author’s Bio- Note:

Shinjini Bhatacharjee is currently pursuing Post Graduation from Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.