Where would you say a green outlook on life crosses over with rage? My answer would have been, “It doesn’t” for one is all about held back aggression and the other about being in touch with and in harmony with nature. But the great city of New York is turning that assumption on its head.

It  is spring in New York and the weather is as fickle as ever. I landed in 9* C and rain, after following the summer temperatures on the charts,  dressed in Ahmedabadi summer wear. Luckily the next day was warm and sunny. And I ran into eco aggression! David Belt is a developer who became known here last year for developing movable swimming pools out of Dumpsters, huge waste disposal units. This year he has come up with a project called Glassphemy, a psychological recycling experiment. “Recycling is so boring”, he says so he has devised recycling while taking care of city aggression and making it a much more visceral experience. The experiment/experience consists of a 20 x 30 foot clear box with high walls made of steel and bullet proof glass. There is a high platform on one side and a low one on the other, with people on both. The people on the high platform are armed with used glass bottles which they throw and smash against the far glass wall – the fact that there are people safe behind and outside the wall might be a further encouragement – hitting without hurting anyone. As the glass smashes various bright lights go on and the bottles make a stomach churning sound. Then the throwers and the thrown at exchange places. Passersby interviewed after a session say that till you start throwing and hearing the smashes one has no idea how much aggression and anger one carries. And that they feel really unburdened after the experience. The broken glass then gets recycled into new glass bottles on site. May I suggest this to Mr. Gautam to divert the very very high levels of aggression and anger amongst our people? (The bottles in New York are donated by the bars around the site. Perhaps our bootleggers and tipplers can help?)

And then there is the Theater for One experiment in Times Square. Scene and set designer Christine Jones once had the privilege of watching a magician perform a trick (he pulled out her ace of hearts out of his own mouth) at a distance of two feet and thought, “How amazing it is watching a show at this distance”. (I must invite her to view shows at Natarani!) So she decided to create a mobile theater space where each show would have an audience of one – allowed to enter, free, on a first come first served basis. For the next ten days, with six separate shows ranging from magic to stand up comedy, this is what her theater will offer for six hours at Times Square, as part of the Ties Square Public Arts Project. The theater is a box, 9 feet by 4 feet, but with complex light and sound possibilities on computer consoles. She plans to expand the back stage area a bit to allow scene changes in her next version. There might be single audience members but the list of people who have put this together covers an A 4 sheet.

Another interesting new phenomenon being seen and repeated is of a new offer for employees stuck on small or zero increment jobs in the allegedly austerity driven economy. Terraces and parking lots in many company head quarters are turning into city farms or city farm plots. Employees are being encouraged to go and get their hands dirty, dig the soil, feel the earth and then take hoe whatever organic vegetables they grow there. While not every one is enthused there are enough people who think this is a great diversion from being stuck at the desk – and every one welcomes the booty of fresh greens and reds for a healthier table. This last endeavour is of special interest as Mumbai is also in the throes of similar initiatives. Monisha Narve, the brain behind RUR (Are you Recycing?) and Preeti Patil, Catering Manager at the Port Trust have both started initiatives that are fast catching on and exciting people. Preeti runs an initiative called Urban leaves and besides having turned the huge Port Trust terrace into a virtual green belt with coconut and areca palms, to brinjals, strawberries, bananas and hundred other things, meets other volunteers in a park in Chembur and creates organic vegetable patches to train people to do the same in their balconies and homes. Monish works with other women and in schools to get them to do the same and showed me proudly how all her household green waste is converted, inher balcony and without a stink, into great manure to be used in the pots lining her tiny balcony and outside her windows. In all the Mumbai experiments the households concerned add nothing to the land piles and no green waste gets dumped into the city solid waste.

Many new initiatives to tackle many new urban problems. Thinking out of the box to find solutions is imperative. The more of us to come up with good ideas that are win wins for all concerned, the more successful we will be in sorting out personal as well as societal problems.