The future we inherit

I like to imagine my daughter saying to me, in 20 years time, 'I cant believe you were walking around when pregnant next to all those polluting cars in cities. How were those cars allowed? It was so dangerous. People were dying every day, from car crashes and from diseases caused by car pollution. And you walked around with me pregnant in all that pollution! Unbelievable'

Will it be the equivalent to smoking indoors, smoking while pregnant or drink driving when my daughter is my age? When I was at university I couldn't imagine people not smoking inside. It seemed an integral part of going out - the smoke went with the music. Now it seems amazing that we ever did.

I hope that this will be the same with car pollution. Its crazy really given how much we know about the health threats of cars, the impacts of pollution on our health, the risks of road accidents and the contribution to climate change. Of course the vested commercial interests and the social norms of having a car as a sign of freedom are hard to break. Car advertising is so ubiquitous. The latest Bond film I saw last night seemed like one long car advert. But it doesn't have to be this way. Imagine buses advertised like cars:

My hope is that for one, cars in cities will be a rarity. In fact driving cars in cities will be considered the worst choice - why drive yourself when someone else can drive you on public transport (because  in my fantasy public transport will be efficient, clean and affordable).  Cities and towns will be mostly pedestrian with cycling or a super efficient clean public transport network the main ways to travel. 

We stumble into our future, rarely due to a plan but because of a million micro decisions and a few with power channelling money into where they think profit lies.  Sometimes a breakthrough will happen when a bold vision is given, leading to changes in behaviours and social norms. I like this story of neighbours who have got together to take over residential streets and block out the traffic so their children can play together. 

How about this for adults as well as for children? Mass weekend ‘Occupy’ of our favourite streets, blocking off the traffic in order to simply sit and read the newspaper in peace.If anyone has been to Venice, you know how amazing it can be to walk for hours without seeing or hearing cars. If only we could will that vision here too.

Fragments on a Night Train

Didnt anyone tell them?
You go on holiday to escape yourself
To give yourself a break
from yourself
your petty worries
your daily habits
your work routine

But here they are lugging their burdens in large wheeled bags onto the train flying through the night with light dreams of fields unseen.

I realised soon that i wasnt the one observing I was a mirror on their world.
They were watching their children and each other through my eyes

My presence alone, i need not speak, reflected back their lack of imagination.
A silent outsider I echoed back their dull coversation and their focus on food, phone games, multi distraction as the sights and play of light on europe sped past unnoticed.

Would they crack the glass and make me real with questions I couldn't ignore?
I waited but they turned their large backs and lay down to sleep.

As I too lay down, the soft carriage beats and humming wind carried me back to the same seat alone in a night sleeper to Delhi from Calcutta with another family, this time in brightly coloured clothes, sharing their food and excitement enveloping me in their family circle without conversing, but communing through their indian spices and smiles.

A fragment I found in an old notebook as I was tidying my desk and arranging a trip to Italy for a friend's wedding. We're going by sleeper train. My favourite way to travel.