This has to be the worst summer *ever*. Is it global warming or the hordes of politicians performing Yagnas ? Per the Times of India, all the hopefuls from the heavyweights to the chillare are out uttering mantras and making offerings to Agni till their eyes bubble. Happening on such a large scale( factchecker: please insert number of hopefuls here), it cannot but make Al Gore wring his hands and weep.
The light, too, has an eerie end-of-days quality...although that may very well be because someone has parked a translucent plastic sheet on the skylight. I've been thinking, what can I do to help make things better ? Because I'm sure you will agree that its not just my back-from-California airheadedness talking, this truly is an awful state of things.
After scratching my head, pretty much the only thing I was able to come up with was - terrace gardens. {Pause for a rant on architecture in Bangalore : why does every building in Bangalore look like a jail ? The lack of imagination in everyday constructions is completely appaling and contributes to the impression of a concrete hell}. Read this article in Time Magazine that talks about Chicago's initiative to green itself by planing rooftop gardens. This isn't just your plants-in-a-pot kind of thing, it's a far more ambitious plan that includes literally growing plants on your rooftop.
now will this lead to buildings collapsing ? Not sure... I bet there's some kind of downside. But it sure is a wonderful vision - ugly concrete head-radiating rooftops, replaced by cooling green bowers. Sigh.
V Madhavan Nair (1945-2025)
5 weeks ago
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1 comments:
April 23, 2008 at 6:50 AM
Its like all other things here - (and this is not India bashing BTW). There is a general lack of skills to do anything well.
For e.g. we do have a roof garden planned, waterproofed etc. The building is built with that much more steel because of the extra dead-weight, especially when the soil on the roof is waterbearing etc.
However, we dont have the roof garden - reason, we are not sure there will be no leakage or seepage of water from this garden inside the house. Plumbing leakages sprung up after 3 years, who wants to take a risk with this? So that forces me to say "damn the environment, use the air conditioner".
At some other time I shall elaborate on the general rant of not getting anything done so that it is 100% - there is always something missing - be it software deveopment or buying grocery - something is always missing.
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