Time travel remains a mystery, a unfulfilled dream, an alchemy - the profound consummate desire to turn base metals into gold. We attribute many trappings to travel in time, a 'machine' or a 'capsule' a kind of vehicle through which we will traverse the distances of space and time, a penchant for the past or the future, a need to right some wrong, or achieve something unattainable and elusive. I think there is that human need, that desire to go to places where we can never actually go, and time travel - or the possibility of time travel opens that vista, that dim possibility of going to times where we can never reach.
Will I be alive in the next hundred years? of course not, perhaps not even in the next 50 years (if I am lucky.) Will I be alive when my grandchildren are old enough to have their own children? Most likely no. It is a grim thought if we take it up like that. What would the world look like in future? Not so distant a future but lets say the next century? Is there a way of experiencing it in real.
I have travelled in time, to the future, and I live to tell. I have glimpsed what the future would be like if in all likelihood things go as we ideally want them to. Again, it is always our wish that future unfolds better things, life is easier, less problematic, world is more ordered, more cultured, more civilized.
Stepping out of the PIA 777, at the Tokyo airport, you feel you haven't travelled for 12 hours in a conventional plane, but, you have just disembarked from a space ship (one capable of going through worm holes.) The place you have come to is calm, silent and ordered, not in a sanitary way, but in a zen like manner. There is peace and serenity like one would find in a sanctuary or a retreat. Things move, but as though in slow motion, actions, people, words, gestures aren't abrasive, they don't scratch you, they don't tire you out - they are soft, supple, and somehow mildly soothing... I feel I won't ever get tired and exhausted here.
Tokyo, is a city placed somewhere in the next century or even beyond. The architecture is fused, capsule like, muted in colour and pleasing to the eye, its ergonomic. It isn't in opposition to its environment, it somehow stems out of it, as trees grow from around the ground they are on. There is heavy use of natural stone, yellow, mustard, black, grey, slate - Its used as cladding, in large blocks reminiscent of the pyramids, the parking lot/mall of the Ropongi is all huge yellow stones, rough and cut showing its veins of streams of colours blending with the pale sunshine of January. The rough hewn walls contrast with the sleek stone on the floor. The glass on the buildings reflect the blue and white sky, and the panorama is widened twice over giving an exalted sense of space.
How does one describe the fluidity of a people? Their actions and gestures are like a dance, a slow moving, one action, one movement flowing rhythmically into another, there is grace, flow, continuity, kind of a music. The sounds, voices, cadences, language, flows again, like water gushing out of a fountain, without a break.
The streets are clean. That is an understatement, they glisten, they sparkle, they shine - there is no dust, no mire, no grease, no dirt! where does it all go? Even the garbage trucks are so clean! Anyone with a cold, whether old, young, child will don a face mask, not to infect and cough and sneeze over others - politeness to max if there is such a thing. People move on the street giving way, they aren't pushing and shoving or jostling to get ahead - this is my kind of a future.
The thing that strikes me most is the huge dispensers of hand sanitizers everywhere - at the hotel lobby, restaurants, shops everywhere you go, you can clean your hands... and the next best thing in this future is the hands free, self-flushing toilets! wow, with heated seats in the airport loo, to inbuilt bidets, to choice of showers to wash yourself, with an option of 'sound' to drown the undesirable sounds! That is future as I would dream of!
The food is to die for, green, fresh and succulent. The fish tender and sweet. The veggies exotic and various, the drinks of all colours and kinds.... Strawberries the size of apples and sweet as sugar....
The shopping arcades glamorous and other worldy, the sales girls ethereal and pretty....the street fashion impeccable and inspiring!
Tokyo is exquisite. And its where I would want my future to take place in.....
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