Cricket or Golf?

HT report on 27th January 2012

Am not a big fan of cricket, but I guess it is quite evident on how widespread the game is. Kids play in small alleys when they don’t have space and still why do DDA wants to build a golf course? that too stating that it will reach the common man?…. the common man needs place to play cricket …… go anywhere from the beck alley of slums to neighborhood parks to even India gate, one can easily see people playing cricket.

This is what happens when the city is designed siting in an AC room without consulting or even studying the stake holders!!…. We are too overwhelmed by what development is?? Many planners think that if people have cars, can play golf and speak english then its development!!!!

All the more, Delhi’s native landscape doesn’t permit grass lawns, so it will require excessive active measures to sustain. Why are we still carrying the British postcard image of green lawns as something that the city should take? Delhi has its own climatic/landscape features, the day we start respecting and accepting it, may be we will have a better city…… until then lets keep cribbing……

Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic!!!

On  26^th January suddenly there is a rise in patriotic wibes, radio starts playing old patriotic songs and TV is filled with glorifying bytes. And an age old way to celebrate it is by having a republic day parade.

Every year around December the defense ministry start erecting ugly fences around the most active public spaces in Delhi, the India Gate. Bit by bit parts of raj path’s gardens are taken out of the public realm. In schools we were taught that India got its real independence on 26^th January, and probably this senseless act of converting Lutyen’s Delhi to a cantonment is a social measure to make us realize the importance of an independent country. The day which signifies rise of a nation 63 years back is celebrated in the most undemocratic way by bringing the heart of the nation to a stand still.

Preamble to the constitution clearly suggests India as a socialist nation, but the republic day parade seems to forget that. The higher you pay for the ticket, the closer you get to the VIP area, where all the performance happen, and the free gallery is tucked in the corner where no one would take a paid seat anyway.

Father of the nation, who kept his non violence at the fore front of the independence we cherish, must be amused by the fact how we celebrate it by showcasing our army and weapons and how destructive we have become as every year pass by.

There are many who argue about the need or the excessive money spent on the parade and want to get rid of it… well am not one of them; but for sure every penny spent from the tax payer’s account should be worth it!  Where in the celebration is any reflection on the constitution? Why is such an important day organized by defense ministry which basically means by the armed forces? Why should we display our destructive powers on the day where we got liberated?

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a [SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC] and to secure to all its citizens:JUSTICE, social, economic and political;LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the [unity and integrity of the Nation]; IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

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FOLLOW UP

Report from HT on 27th January 2012

What Gandhi taught us….

When anything is talked about Gandhiji the most common terms associated with him are nonviolence, truthfulness and many such terms in similar lines. Are these the things that he actually taught?……… We glorified him with the title of Mahatma and then as the father of the nation, and followed it were stories about his life. Perhaps someone took him too seriously when he said that ‘my message to people is my life’, and hence all we know about him is through what he did in his life, the way he achieved Indian independence through non-violence, the way he shook the British empire by satyagraha and mass arrests, the way he promoted communal harmony, and many many more similar incidents.

But still something remains on what we achieve by bestowing him with the title of ‘Father of the Nation’, are we to follow nonviolence and truthfulness, well that doesn’t seems easy, but that’s what is being taught to us. We are asked to follow nonviolence, and be truthful since childhood, and thus we limit Gandhiji’s philosophy to personal conduct. As we have just seen him through his life story, for us Gandhiji becomes a role model for personal conduct, weather we achieve it or not.

So in today’s term has Gandhi become a word equivalent to socially desired personal conduct? Does father of the nation have nothing more to offer?……..well I guess his philosophy has been leftout in glorifying his personal life.

If we could analyze what he did, we can see that all his acts were based on one single fact of concentrating on the roots of the problem……. This still holds true, all our problems could be solved if we try to concentrate on the roots of the problem.

Gandhi was insistent on development of villages, but Nehru concentrated on building a modern nation through cities, well now we have realized that the root cause of all the problems in cities lies in the villages, better villages means better cities.

This philosophy of Gandhiji has such a great implication in urban design.

Today we are mad about wider roads, while the root cause of congested roads doesn’t lie in the width of the road but in the requirement to travel. Every city has been trying to solve its traffic problems by facilitating the movement of people (weather by better car movement or better public transport), but if we could reduce the demand for travel then we actually won’t need wider roads.

The current planning and urban design setup emphasizes so much on designing a place, but we should spend more time understanding the problem. If the root cause of the problem is identified then we would have automatically better cities.

Concentrate on the roots, well that would be the best honor that we can give to the father of our nation….

Kashi, The city of Light

Kashi has ever been considered as a center of  the Hindu world, a circle through which the eternal & infinite light of Shiva passes, a city where death itself is celebrated. To celebrate death finds no parallel in any part of the world, a city where people don’t fear death, all the more people from all over India come here to die. Kashi is considered to be a different cosmos, a different cosmos where knowledge, like Shiva’s light is eternal and infinite.

Knowledge have been one of the determinants of what Kashi is today; from early thinkers like Kabir, & Tulasidas, to contemporaries like Munshi Premchand & Bhartendu Harishchandra, to musicians like Ravishankar and Bismillah Khan, and many more in many other fields. What all of them had in common, is their association with the Ghats. Be it be siting along the ghats and writing or floating in a boat on the ganga to perform, Ghats were part of the light that still prevails in Kashi.

Ghats, a collective effort of different individuals, at different time, from different backgrounds, resulting in a unified urban place, abutting the most sacred and largest open space in Kashi, the Ganga, is the most powerful imagery that Kashi projects. It is not just because of its physical appearance that one can see in photos, but primarily due to the metaphysical beauty that one experiences by being there.

Sitting on the Ghats, viewing the mystic ganga flowing slowly, one gets captivated by it. The game of ‘Gulli Danda’ goes on with lot of zest, kites keep flown by kids, tourist walk past with the mysterious and captivated look on their faces, indecisive on whether to look at the ghats or at the ganga, dogs and cows walk past as if the entire area belong to them and hindus take the holy dip with firm belief in their hearts that all their sins are washed off, which could be seen in the shine in their eyes when they come out; with all this and many more parallel activities going on, the ganga flows with the same calmness as she would have when Bhagirath brought her to earth, and the ghats standing as if in her respect, an atmosphere is created that let anyone loose to contemplate, to sit along the ghats for hours doing nothing and still be happy, and this is the atmosphere that triggers the urge to knowledge. An urge that made Buddha to choose this place to give his first sermon, an urge that made Tulasidas write Ramcharitmanas here, any man ready to accept and let go his ego could still feel the special atmosphere, the special feel that makes the ghats so special.

Life goes on as usual in Kashi, as would in any other city, but it stand still on the Ghats, the dimension of time is lost and suddenly what looks like a vibrant urban place becomes the contemplating ground for the entire city, where no sound is noise, where no activity is too big to be accommodated, where every individual finds a direct connect, no wonder its referred to as a gateway to heaven…

Public Art

City, a word that has gained so much of importance that phenomenon like opportunity, success, and career are all read along with it. People either migrate or they are born in a city, both ways it’s most certain that they will be a part of the rat race. The race for money and power, the vicious circle to achieve something known as success. Success the buzz word that no one ever could explain what it is, though each of the rat racers have a customized impression of the foggy image of what the success is like. Living in a city turns out to be using a set of tools/skills for daily survival, we are bound by our self created rules, of which some glorify by calling it ‘principles’, but we are no computer programmes to be governed by rules (or the glorified principles).

We are born and then we will die, there are only two set of threads to connect these two points of birth and death; one spans them by living, or by surviving. Then the question is what’s the difference between living and surviving? To put it simple, if u add “art” to survival it becomes life. Every human society developed from ancient times in different parts of the world had a great place in their civilization for art. Art was in their lives irrespective of any distinction what so ever, but the contemporary cities have framed art to the circles of few riches, into a society where the economically weaker section have no way to involve with art, rather art is projected as a privilege of the riches rather than a boon of a civilization. Ever since independence, India has been following the Nehruvian vision for materialistic urbanization as a mode for developing India, and completely ignoring the Gandhian vision of developing the base civilization aspects.

Permanent art installation on a traffic island

Well… we still are not able to come out of this illusion. We still are more interested in, projecting construction as a scale of assessment for development, flyovers as a symbol of modernization and on and on and on….. but how long can anyone separate art and civilization? The new generation has already started feeling the void. The youth cannot blindly follow the rat race, at least the better ones will definitely feel the void. Pubs and malls have popped up for the youth to spend their time, still this cultural shift is not having the same popularity as it used to be. Movies, dance, and the ever existing ear phones as an attire to youth clearly reflects the importance of art in life. City has been spending big money to buildup romantic traffic islands, to which no one have an easy access to, rather than seeing it through windshields. Art need not be expensive or permanent to have an impact, rather temporary installations have more impact than the permanent expensive ones. How can art be just a legacy to a circle of artist and self acclaimed art lovers???…how can public money be spent on art unless it belongs to people?…public art is not just a visual experience that shades away with the increase in the number of times one sees it, rather it should interact with the public realm, and that also refers that public art need not be only in public spaces, public art can be in galleries and still interact with the public realm much better than the designated public art installations.

Grafitti may have some messages in them… “keep dili clean”

There are many mediums to public art of which graffiti is one. Graffiti is considered as an art by many and it is by far the most interactive and ever changing urban art form that has developed in modern times. Graffiti have been successful in filing up the void, but the point here is not the art but the artists, those who do graffiti are not much bothered about the public property. Defaced public property gives an image of uncontrolled area in a city and that of course promotes crime as in case of other western cities. Those who practice graffiti are the people who in general are fed up with the system, or at least are not bothered about the universal ownership of public places. These talents are diverted in paths.

some may even use it for patch-ups…..

spaces least used are abode of graffiti

Graffiti (sort of) in India is rare to see, but its popping up soon, because of the void that’s created in the lives of the youth. History has so many evidences that enforcing strict laws have never been a success story in stopping the youth; rather we should look at the problem from their way. Why can’t there be designated space for these people to express themselves?, why can’t we have public art that interacts with the public in its true sense? Coming up of graffiti is a positive signal that the city is ready for an interactive urban models for public art, by which can be generated a sense of belonging, for that is the most needed thing for a city to run smooth.

Art can do wonders and we need not be an artist to explore them….

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Interesting Links

http://www.48c.org/index.html

Indigenous Innovations – I (The Wall)

It is amazing to read about a phobia called Paruresis, how can someone have such a phobia which would not allow them to release themselves in public? Well it would be so good if this kind of a problem take roots in India.

But Indian philosophy teaches us “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam“, which literally means the whole universe is our home, and I guess many of us have taken it to a next level….the next level where in logically every house will have a toilet ….. and ….. hence the whole world is our toilet!!!

Urban eyes see a wall in the city as a potential toilet. Well if we go by the walls in Delhi, there actually is no need to build them, walls in-between the roads, walls for public parks, walls for a traffic islands….walls and walls and walls….basically the policy is to build walls wherever nothing else can be built…and may be the people’s protest against these walls come in the form of the essential human liquid waste? though this has grown to a grave problem now.

As the rule goes, ‘for every problem there is a solution’, we too have developed numerous solutions for this problem.

The first and the basic solution was to put a statutory warning. But someone forgot that we are kings in breaking laws, for those who can break a traffic signal for fun, in the absence of a ‘thulla‘, how can you expect them to control the nature’s call with a mere warning!

VIOLATORS SHALL BE "PROSECTED"!!!

Well the warning thing doesn’t seems working, so we came up with more innovative solution. The preliminary study for this solution revealed that Indians value their pride, so the language used in the warning has been slightly changed to a little more insulting format. This might have worked in a small town where people know each other, in cities like Delhi, who cares….“oh chad yaar ki farak penda hai”…..farak to nai penda, pur bund bund se hi to sagar banta hai….So still the problem persists….

SON OF A DONKEY DON'T PEE HERE (BY NDMC - New Delhi Municipal Council)

SEE DONKEY IS PEEING!!!

When everything failed, the final solution came. Someone suggested that the image of God is the most sacred image and hence “the innovative indigenous solution for an indigenous problem”.

"THE WALL" WITH 'GOD IMAGE' TILES

CLOSE-UP OF THE TILES

PORTION OF THE SAME WALL WHERE THE TILES WERE NOT INSTALLED

It is so amazing that usage of religion in designing public spaces can solve such grave problems. We have always been using religion in politics, in having different laws even in imparting values in our younger ones….but rarely in Architecture and Urban Design. If religion plays such an important role in people’s life then why shouldn’t we utilize it in our designs….may be we are in the evolution to use this factor also…I do hope so…

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Follow Ups

May be in this case Deepika is the catch to do it in open and not use the public toilet there?

...and in some cases government incourages the dual usage of footpaths!!!

One of the corners of CP.....religion can do wonders!!!

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Interesting Links

http://www.livemint.com/2008/02/27185756/IIT-Kanpur-scientists-develop.html (viewed on 04 July’ 2009)

…a revisit to Chandigarh…

One must admit that no other city in India would pull architects as does Chandigarh. Chandigarh the “The City Beautiful”, indeed a beautiful city, with beautiful architecture, jolly go people and such good looking girls!!! Chandigarh is probably the most talked about cities. I still remember the excitement I felt when I first decided to visit this city by Le Corbusier; and well Le Corbusier was like a hero for me at that time (and to an extend today also). During the first visit as a student, sitting in the train I was sad about just one thing, that I don’t have a camera, and oh yes, while coming back I was equally glad that I didn’t had one; years later my second visit with a camera proved me right that an architect should never travel with a camera.

The name Chandigarh brings in the image of the open hand…..open to receive…. open to give…… an amazing piece of art. One could sit in hours watching the hand rotate to the wind. It seems as if the High Court on one side and the Assembly hall on the other side, and the secretariat at the back, stands in appreciation of the open hand, which reflects the sublime message of the democratic world that all the three pillars are for the people……..if only people are let in? The capitol complex as it is known is an amazing piece of art and architecture, but a bad example of urban design. The place which is supposed to be the center of attraction for the visitors and the Chandigarh walas is deprived to its own citizens due to its cantonment like environment. There are more policemen than there are civilian visitors. Yes! Security is a concern, but keeping more and more of the troops can in no way increase the security of a place.…..this reminds me of the comment by Australian Architect Lawrence Nield, who said that “…the concept was great, with the kind of spaciousness that’s incorporated. But then the poor man is nothing more than an intruder here. The construction of a cricket stadium at this site would probably have lent the complex more life and charm”…. It may sound like a joke, but visiting this place makes it as the only viable idea!, there is enough space and may be cricket is the only thing that can attract Indians to any place in the world…and may be it could do the wonder that Le Corbusier’s murals and embossments were not able to do. The vast open space may look good in photographs, but it is horrible to have huge open areas in a place where sun is overly stooped in. There are trees only at the boundary of the complex and the rest is an open land for the sun to play its game…. May be it would have been amazing if build something like this in some European country with much cooler climate, but the Corbusier who devised ‘Bruise Soleil’ and the ‘Parasol Roof’ for India, completely ignored the open areas, or may be purposefully left it so as to give a better visual dominance to his buildings. What ever be the fate of the city, but the buildings are amazing, it still has the charm as it had when I first saw them in books, probably the charm of his architecture hides the flaws in the city….

Corbusier’s architecture is seen at capitol complex and then at the museum complex. The museum complex is at much smaller scale than that of the other one. Architecture of the museum complex is amazing, just that it over-powers the exhibits there, and amazingly the main museum is almost similar to the one at Ahmadabad. The kind of lighting inside is too good, and the best part is that it merges so well with the artificial light; it’s not easy to distinguish between the two. Museum is filled in with art works and that makes the complex come to life, but the lack of hangout space makes this also less visited by the people. Other than architecture there are two things that amazed me the most, first the city museum which tells everything about the evolution of the city to its current situation, and other one is the natural science museum. Science museum amazed me because almost every museum I visited had a board ‘please don’t touch’, but here I have seen boards saying ‘Please touch and feel the fossils’…. Indeed amazing!!!

More than Corbusier’s architecture, there is one thing that attracts the outsiders and the insiders alike, is the rock garden. An awesome garden…. Suddenly one man’s scrap business seems much better than 60 years of modern blah blah…..

And above all there is the Sukhna Lake, may be the only thing that works as per the desires of its creator. Evenings it’s crowded with people and this is when one feels that there actually exists a crowd in Chandigarh too….

The city as it is has no charm other than the architecture of Le Corbusier and others and the visitor places like the lake and many gardens. Buildings in general look very boring, the hotel looks like an office building and a school looks like both of them…. All the buildings are similar, rather than uniting the city, it makes the seemingly logical plan very confusing, one cannot go by keeping some landmark, and everything looks the same.

Sector 17, which is the commercial sector, is almost deserted during day time. Commercial centers are to be the most vibrant of the areas, but it’s all dull down with exposed concrete and brick. Though at night the darkness subdues the architecture and the colorful lights highlight the fountains…. Its life for the youth at night….. pubs, bars and shops…..only thing you need is a heavy pocket….truly as emphasis was by Khushwant Singh by saying that the tagline should change form “The City Beautiful” to “The City of Joy”.

Though one can find so many flaws and the city is subjected to so much of criticism, but still, Le Corbusier’s city has let India project itself on the global map as a modern country, the way Nehru dreamt about. It is one of the largest urban complexes of the post-war era, and the most successful experiment of the twentieth century….. at least it has let many think in a different way…. And many of us still feel visiting Chandigarh as a pilgrimage…..what more can a city expect….

:)

…. just a way to start a blog on the first day of the year…..