Singapore, the Garden-city State

Now i am at Singapore with the younger daughter.

Ever since my first visit to this place in 2003, i have been impressed by its gardens, which are everywhere, on street-sides, in housing complexes, in malls,on foot over-bridges, literally everywhere. I still remember how on my first visit, the moment i stepped out of Changi Airport, the first things that drew my attention were plants laden with beautiful multi-hued flowers.

The housing complex where my daughter's apartment is located, is full of plants, big and small, which are always in bloom. There are flowers of all colours and hues. In the mornings and afternoons, i walk on the pavements in the compound, lined with flowering plants and trees. Flowers and flowers everywhere. I am transported to a different world, 'far from the maddening crowds'.

Singapore is a tiny country, a small island. Yet it has found places to plant trees in abundance.

In India, Bangalore is called the Garden City. Its streets are lined with big trees and the city has Lal Bagh, the big garden. The Brindaban Gardens of Mysore are not far away. Yet Bangalore pales into insignificance when compared to Singapore in its wealth of flowers.

In Singapore,which has very minimum land area, the concept of Compact Living has been used to free sufficient land for planting trees and flowering plants. There are sky-scrapers to house the people.

A couple of days ago, i read about the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice where the Singaporean husband-wife architects Khoo Peng Beng and Belinda Huang have displayed their Project with the theme 'Superdensity - or How You House 5 million people on Land Area of 710 Sq KMs.'

The Project is called '1000 Singapores'. If you use the Singapore model of compact living 1000 times over, you could in theory, house the world's entire world's population on just 0.5% of the Earth's area. That means, 99.5% of the world would be natural land scape - a portion would remain for farming and natural resources but the rest of the area would remain significantly natural.

What an idea! Imagine a world full of trees and flowers.

Will it not be heaven on earth?

POST-SCRIPT

This afternoon, while walking in the compound, i heard the sweet melody of the cuckoo, koo, kooo, kooo. I had heard it a few afternoons earlier too. A cuckoo cooing in October! In India, cuckoos are known to coo in spring, in the months of March and April. In Singapore, i am listening to a cuckoo's melody in October. What a soothing and out-of-the-world experience!

I looked in the direction from where the sweet notes were coming and tried hard to locate the cuckoo but it stayed hidden amongst the dense leaves.

I lingered there till the cuckoo took a break.