Building blocks

You design whatever you want and however you want, but you know that anyway I'm going to change it a ­hundred times...!

Buildings are a slightly worried lot these days.

Understandable.

Picture this.

You were created, even launched, as a symbol, a monument, to the majesty and gravitas of authority.

Then, suddenly, your role gets re-written.

You are now a supermarket.

Bizarre?

And rather upsetting?

“Can you blame us?” demands a gorgeous, yellowing, days-of-the-Raj structure. “I was once a dangerously-close-to-Royalty habitat – and now I’m a large, ungainly, apartment block. I’m confused. Who am I?”

“Stop whining,” says a Road. “I went from ‘Lady Lord Avenue’ to ‘Appalam Depot Street’ overnight. Do you know what that did to my psyche?”

“Well, things change,” you offer, feeling it’s time you stood up for your species. “Time marches on, and...”

“We understand change, as in ‘Change’ with a capital ‘C’.” The building sighs, “It’s the overnight-quick-change that throws us. And you guys do that. Very restless, you are ....as a species. Always searching, seeking....”

“Chopping, changing,” the Road gloomily adds his bit.

“With the operative word being ‘Chop’,” the building mumbles, bitterly.

“What next?” these much-tried souls ask, sarcastically. “An old museum forced into mall-hood?”

When one person’s ‘Change Fest’ means another person’s ideas being turned inside out, things suffer.

And, inevitably, someone pays.... sometimes heavily.