We, the neon generation

By Adil Jussawalla

ANYONE who has flown over cities at night knows that they hold a special pleasure. At relatively low altitudes, one can pick out the streets of cities one is familier with, or relatively familier with. I haven’t flown out of Bombay since it became Mumbai, but taking off from Sahar, gaining altitude fast, one saw Bombay drop its squalor as one might see a leper drop her sores during a miracle. Bombay’s skin grew baby-fresh, dressed in strands of light. From the air, Bombay, or any big city for that matter, looks magical.

It’s the magic of electricity, something we take for granted now and something we’re beginning to regret. Cities overconsume electricity as satellite pictures show. Lakes, rivers and mountains, the province of a low-orbit satellite by day, are replaced by earth’s cities at night. The former simply disappear into wells of darkness as lakes of lit cities surface, brightening, always brightening until it’s bed-time for their citizens, the darkness of residential areas now merging with the darkness of the day’s lakes, the lights of entertainment districts gone too, only the streetlights on.

Even assuming we’d been able to put up satellites in the era of gas-lamps, would such a view have been possible? Would it have been possible if we went back still further, to the time when the streets of Mohenjodaro and of Rome were lit by torches? What would a low-orbit satellite have caught? Nothing much, I think.

There’s a special brightness to electricity — not brighter than a thousand suns, thank God, not yet, but special enough — which has radically changed our view of light and darkness, day and night. We expect more from electricity than from any previous source of energy, so it gives us more. Can you imagine the equivalent of a Las Vegas in Mohenjodaro? Guys trying to advertise liquor and casinos with torches? Pathetic. That’s right. We of the neon generation, accustomed to bright lights, know it’s pathetic.

All this fanciful talk because I recently went to a poetry reading with a difference. And the difference lay not in the poetry but in the electricity: The room was very well lit. Never mind if those sitting at the back of the room couldn’t hear the poets —some got very angry that they couldn’t but why? It’s my impression that very few people care what they hear at poetry readings — or mishear what they hear — what’s important was that the room was well lit.

Most of the poetry readings I’ve been to have taken place in rooms which may as well have been dungeons. Sixty or 40-watt bulbs do not a poetry reading make. The poet can’t see his poems so he stumbles as he reads. The audience can’t see the poet which, perhaps, is a mercy for the audience, except that, after a group reading, member of the audience freely congratulate the poets for poems which others have read.

No, poetry readings should be well lit. Unless, the organisers want special effects — like scorching the poet with a spot or blinding the audience with a searchlight. In either case we’ll manage. Provide us with the lights and we’ll provide you with the action. Let’s brighten up the act fast and never mind the conspicuous consumption. There’s a satellite watching us, for the special effects only electricity, so far, can offer.

(ANF)