This morning I was driving my usual route to work, and noticed vast emptiness. No, not within! But in the Sunnyvale (California) cityscape. Between last night’s drive back home and this morning’s commute to work, the sight of  a fan like building with its imposing overhangs and cantilevers I used to admire everyday, two times a day, has vanished from the face of the earth. All I could see were some debris, some remains of unpicked furniture, and lot of dust in the air. Life has come to a stop here…maybe to be born again or maybe not.

This building had intrigued me from the time I first saw it several years ago. I never gathered courage to venture into it, but it was pleasurable to drive past it everyday. The patina on its walls used to whisper to me the stories of days long gone, the life stories of the generations of  people who lived in and around it. This building was being used as a restaurant since I first saw it but changed hands several times. It was a very different looking building in the neighborhood, and did not really care about what was going on around it. It used to leave me wondering what was it built for originally, who designed it, who must have been the people who worked on or in the building… I never had any comments on how the building appealed to me. But the fact remains, its boldness in space attracted me.

Today it is a vast empty space with nothing to hold the memories and cherished moments of so many people who celebrated life here.

I am now wondering how would it be to wake up one morning to find that your neighborhood has been replaced by new buildings’? The familiar old building that you walked past everyday and got accustomed to, is no longer there to offer solace. You would feel you have lost a friend; you would feel alienated in your own home. What surrounds you now are the new ‘high-tech’ buildings, which are like babies- charming but with nothing to tell. A city without old buildings is like an old man without memories.  

Let us not forget that destruction is permanent. If in the name of efficiency we condemn the old today, what will be the fate of our new tomorrow? After all, time changes everything. But I firmly believe time CAN turn the space efficiencies of one generation into the space luxuries of another generation. We only have to try.