tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12326588738813538722024-03-13T10:21:54.623+05:30as any fule knoas any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.comBlogger118125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-28457172462845851912023-11-05T21:07:00.013+05:302023-11-05T21:34:45.990+05:30Between stillness and movement: remembering Gieve Patel by Sampurna Chattarji<p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-large;"><b>Between stillness and movement</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Remembering Gieve Patel (18 August 1940—3 November 2023), the poet and the person</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Sampurna Chattarji </b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="white-space: pre;"></span></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7rHrPUVbAkosPI4qDb3sJ8EUDvXYPorHDKbSr12fWV6q8dEk1jMvSy0XEOo6wHJ-TJgXz16mMnglUgbiEA-Lb5P4G-VlHH9lZqI-iy6iVoKe9ZZBLxF9BEwgQGeFVlOQSszMyN2SBjgH-GXyfhi2ocBpQXoEHFSTbQFC083HGqj2kv75pWJ3nwtr8v6Ib" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="940" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7rHrPUVbAkosPI4qDb3sJ8EUDvXYPorHDKbSr12fWV6q8dEk1jMvSy0XEOo6wHJ-TJgXz16mMnglUgbiEA-Lb5P4G-VlHH9lZqI-iy6iVoKe9ZZBLxF9BEwgQGeFVlOQSszMyN2SBjgH-GXyfhi2ocBpQXoEHFSTbQFC083HGqj2kv75pWJ3nwtr8v6Ib=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; text-align: left;"><i>Poet Laureate Gieve Patel reads from his Collected Poems at NCPA, 12 November 2022, photo courtesy: Tata Literature Live Festival</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>t is 2008. I am en route to the Mussoorie Writers Festival organised by Stephen Alter. What is making me slightly dizzy with disbelief is not the excitement of reading from my first ever poetry book in the company of stalwarts—it’s the fact that I am to travel from Dehradun airport to Mussoorie with Gieve Patel. I am nervous. I know his work. I have studied it. My father has taught it. I have heard and met him at poetry readings in Bombay. But to travel together by car? What if he finds me insufferable? What if I find him aloof? I am nervous. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I am stupid with nervousness. When we get off the airplane and find each other near the baggage carousel, the infectious grin sets me at ease, right away. The car is waiting. Gieve tells the driver to take it easy up the slopes. “I have restless legs syndrome,” he says to me. “We’ll have to stop often, so I can get out and walk around a bit. It will slow us down; I hope you don’t mind. But first, we need to get ourselves a good breakfast!” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And so begins my first real interaction with Gieve, on that memorable ride to Mussoorie, conducted at a leisurely, companionable pace that disarms me entirely. I relax. There is no pressure. No pretentiousness, no pose. We speak, we share silences, we nap. We stop, often. Sometimes I get out and walk with him. We eat, we drink coffee. By the time we pull into Mussoorie, darkness has fallen, the hills are ablaze with jewels of light. We park our bags, and a person with a flashlight leads the way to Stephen’s house, where all the other writers are already gathered for a welcome dinner. We take a steepish shortcut through the darkness between the trees. Gieve follows the circle of light as nimbly as I do. He shows no signs of fatigue, chipper and dandy as ever, in a thick grey sweater that I will begin to recognise over the years. We ring the bell and enter a house full of laughter and warmth. Stephen welcomes me graciously (we are meeting for the first time) and embraces Gieve. They are old friends. As I cup my cold hands around a glass of hot toddy, I wonder how one car-ride can make me feel like we are old friends too. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgLeJNWugE-qP1jlGhy2gw-89Su8IuWrCwHYT3GAHIILszdDiz6WSZc7goBTKWXIyXbIF-ByJssGPiBJcrbpQ81NyntVQjCy9BTNwQjqHP2Ky1n3CslD3SvPwcMo3WyJxeU7DRHb9vXNBX5bvuCPD3GfVKtyvYqnc-2-H31dqxLTOOuOcswLGlF0EHyk-fi" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="520" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgLeJNWugE-qP1jlGhy2gw-89Su8IuWrCwHYT3GAHIILszdDiz6WSZc7goBTKWXIyXbIF-ByJssGPiBJcrbpQ81NyntVQjCy9BTNwQjqHP2Ky1n3CslD3SvPwcMo3WyJxeU7DRHb9vXNBX5bvuCPD3GfVKtyvYqnc-2-H31dqxLTOOuOcswLGlF0EHyk-fi=w400-h299" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; text-align: left;"><i>With Gieve at the Mussoorie Writers Festival 2008</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>hat was Gieve. The one who made the youngest, shyest person feel like a friend in a matter of hours. The one who saw and heard you with the same attention he brought to his practice as a doctor, an artist, a poet, a playwright and a teacher. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It grieves me to have to use the past tense. On the 3rd of November 2023 he passed away, at a palliative care centre in Pune. In the run-up to this day, his daughter Avaan had kept me updated, sending reassuring messages, strong and serene in the knowledge that her father was supported, loved, at peace, without (too much) pain. When the news came, a bunch of us poets and translators had just emerged from a festival at the NCPA (National Centre of Performing Arts) in Bombay. I had been expecting it any day now, but how could ‘any day now’ be that soon? He was gone.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Later, the cold clutch of grief melting within the warm circle of people who lived by what they believed in—the power of the word, the arts—I looked up at the sky and thought, he would have approved. That this is where my mourning began, at the site of celebration, where almost exactly a year ago, he received the Tata Literature Live! Poet Laureate Award for 2022—23. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When Amy Fernandes, the festival director, had asked me if I would write the citation and be in conversation with Gieve at the award ceremony, it was as if I had received a prize myself. In the run-up to the event, we met, spoke, planned over email and breakfast. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhgTCx20YIO6S_-zLk7cb-QeIIhCcTHeJmLcrPRixl8fS2d9re7sD3PPeB6hbj1ZWWrGKLUrtVcgWkPOAVikdm7DVgBY3omwn-TzU2UQU14S5bw-6NGWIKbqgewIYPN5lZjjvkAgraT6LCjvtKnV80gchkJ1R-5YPQkoUKo20K7nYdcoi_20_AnmBDudvyq" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="530" data-original-width="940" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhgTCx20YIO6S_-zLk7cb-QeIIhCcTHeJmLcrPRixl8fS2d9re7sD3PPeB6hbj1ZWWrGKLUrtVcgWkPOAVikdm7DVgBY3omwn-TzU2UQU14S5bw-6NGWIKbqgewIYPN5lZjjvkAgraT6LCjvtKnV80gchkJ1R-5YPQkoUKo20K7nYdcoi_20_AnmBDudvyq=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; text-align: left;"><i>5 November 2022, prepping at The Knead Café, Kala Ghoda</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I had a lifetime of questions. Gieve had a lifetime of patience. We sifted and sorted, shaping the event so that the audience would get a glimpse of his oeuvre in the short span of 30 minutes allotted to us. And of course, there would have to be poems! I had a mile-long list of favourites, from which we picked and planted, we finetuned, until the choreography was down to Gieve’s approval: ‘As we used to say in the old days: “tip-top”!’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I remember that evening, the 12th of November 2022, as if it were yesterday. The backstage bonhomie, Gieve immaculately formal, and gleamingly impish; the waves of applause and laughter from the audience as Gieve read and spoke; how he was able to turn the stage into a drawing room, both intimate and expansive. I remember reading the citation with only slightly trembling hands and heart: </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">For five decades, Gieve Patel has been looking for the ‘possible light’ beyond the century’s punctured and bruised skin. He has embraced the people ‘with needle, knife and tongue’; he has observed the city (almost always Bombay) with humour and horror; he has listened to the ‘subterranean splinterings’ between pain and pleasure; he has distilled and absorbed meaning and matter into ‘mind and heart’.</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">All of this Gieve Patel has done with a poetry of profound sympathy for the underdog; a healthy suspicion of ‘fluent victories’. His moments of truth come to us in hard-hitting flashes of hard-won insight, cutting us to the quick, teaching us how to relearn tenderness, how to acknowledge our carnality, corporeality, and chaos. He enables us to continue asking that despairing question— “How do you withstand, body?” He shows us our inconvenient, irreverent relationships with a ‘Mirrored, Mirroring’ God who merits unsolemn prayers and (un)scheduled appointments!</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">[…]</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">In recognition of the mind that has reflected on ‘The Ambiguous Fate of … Being Neither Muslim nor Hindu in India’; the heart that has stayed alert to the ‘thin continuous cry that hounds the universe’; the poet who sees himself as a ‘profane monk’ on a wayward pilgrimage with words—we are delighted and honoured to announce Gieve Patel as the 13th Tata Literature Live! Poet Laureate, 2022-’23.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p> </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span> remember hoping I had encapsulated everything he meant, not just to me and so many younger poets, but to the world of Anglophone poetry. Today, I know it was not nearly enough. Neither the citation (which Gieve told me was the ‘most spectacular Dassera gift’ I could have ever given him) nor that ‘tip-top’ conversation. We had meant to continue it, deepen it, I had so many things that I wanted to know more about. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In January-February this year, Gieve mailed to say he would love to take our plan forward, to have that in-depth discussion and get that long-deferred long interview down, whenever I could make the time. The fact that I could not make the time is a regret that I will not get over. His kind words in the last email (in May) saying he absolutely understood if I had too much to handle already should console me. But they don’t. Not yet. Maybe never. And so, I return to the poems. To the things we did speak about. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>MOVEMENT // STILLNESS.</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gieve’s way of knowing the world through poetry was never static. As his lines moved, the mind moved. And yet, how calm, how calming the words, <i>‘be still long enough and it may trace us to a level’</i>. Between stillness and movement, I marvelled at the way he gauged the distance needed in order to translate ‘reality’ into poetry. He never simply reported it—he balanced the centripetal/centrifugal movements of his mind while maintaining its centre of gravity firmly in the real. Through an immersion in chaotic outer movements, he was able to bring those ‘finely shaded’, finely organised ‘inner movements’ to the light. I’m thinking here of a poem like ‘From Bombay Central’ where the jostle of riding cheek-by-jowl with humanity is accompanied by an inner silence: </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;">I sink back into my hard wooden</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;">Third-class seat, buffered by</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;">This odour, as by a divine cushion.</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;">And do not suspect that this ride</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;">Will be for me the beginning of a meditation</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;">On the nature of truth and beauty.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For me, Gieve’s was a particular poetics of empathy as a function of looking. A.K. Ramanujan, with whom he had such a special friendship wrote ‘Watch your step, sight may strike you blind in unexpected places’. Gieve looked closely, tenderly and unflinchingly at the brutalities and tortures of the world—and refused to go blind. How did he sustain the act of looking? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>COMMUNITY // COLLABORATION</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In his poems, the flesh was often where the poem was born. The poem called ‘Cord-cutting’ is about birthing a child. Equally it is about looking keenly even as you<i> ‘divide your eyes and try to capture an altered feature’.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">That dividing of the eyes—a kind of singular two-fold attention—was at the heart of his two-fold commitment as a lifelong practitioner of poetry: the poet as individual artist, the poet as part of a community. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjv8zrWfgGcapuZl0A5_bHPNw9sdJW7wjjffH6crCZ5DIDeRBeZg2kwU95jGxf1oRniTjq-R1Fz6GXz3xbYmgRz_Eav6VxtdO31WolSoj4Gtgc4wTjDPGbBTXcGDfO1cKQTmHxVjW9A_Og9CHW5sR1JSmNbnuTJGpTLkaGIdy7NLBAJBLxv4qkUVZ7SO5Ll" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="940" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjv8zrWfgGcapuZl0A5_bHPNw9sdJW7wjjffH6crCZ5DIDeRBeZg2kwU95jGxf1oRniTjq-R1Fz6GXz3xbYmgRz_Eav6VxtdO31WolSoj4Gtgc4wTjDPGbBTXcGDfO1cKQTmHxVjW9A_Og9CHW5sR1JSmNbnuTJGpTLkaGIdy7NLBAJBLxv4qkUVZ7SO5Ll=w640-h352" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; text-align: left;"><i>Gieve Patel (fourth from right) after the Hope Street Poets reading, 2014.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In Bombay, that participation was not limited to the poetry community. Apart from very vivid memories of Gieve reading, listening and engaging thoughtfully and wittily, at numerous poetry gatherings over the years, I have very fond memories of Gieve travelling all the way to Juhu to see the films my husband was screening at Prithvi theatre—Pasolini’s <i>Trilogy of Life</i>, Derek Jarman’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s sonnets and <i>The Tempest</i>, and Christopher Marlowe’s <i>Edward II</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He was always receptive, endlessly absorbent. While trawling through old emails as a way of shoring up grief, I found an exchange on Russian translators that dates back to July 2016. We had been talking of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and while he admitted to being a ‘creature of habit’ who might prefer to re-read Constance Garnett, perhaps it was time to be ‘adventurous’ and try out the zip and zing of the Richard Pevear-Larissa Volokhonsky duo that I had told him about. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When he had his solo show at Gallerie Mirchandani-Steinerucke in January 2017, he invited not just my husband and I, but my parents as well, not forgetting to add: ‘alas, there is no lift, and it is a steep climb’. A tiny detail that made all the difference: the climb would be impossible for my father with his heart condition, and knowing just how long the schlep into town is for us from Thane, Gieve wouldn’t have wanted my dad to make that trip for nothing. Thoughtful and considerate, ever the gentleman, he equally relished ‘shenanigans’ (a favourite word) and revelled in a playful wickedness. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>MISCHIEF // IRREVERENCE</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The poet as mischief-maker is not often appreciated. Evident in poems like ‘Carrying bras and panties to the NCPA’, I love the way his poems can also play tricks on those of us who would rather both poet and reader be seen as perpetually sober and solemn human beings! Never a ‘believer’ in the conventional sense, who but Gieve could have written:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>A Variation on St. Teresa</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">Whenever You withdraw</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">only a little way from me I</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">immediately</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">fall to the ground.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">I wait upon</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">the strings You hold. In</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">this equation whatever</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">to make of love? And</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">of any independent</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">performance of a glorious</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">kind? My limbs</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">at best may be infused</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">by an outer force; and so</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">inconsolably</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">I await Your storms: screaming</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">seas, ripping gales, clouds</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">tumbled across the mouths of valleys</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">spewing lightning, with trees</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">shaken like rattles</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">in a child’s fist!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">These then, at last, do move me.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">Yes, I am moved,</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">indeed I am, I am.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As are we, with him. There is a turning point in the poem—as there may well be in life—which is not amplified into epiphany, but simply acknowledged as mystery. In a poem like the one below, which broaches the question of ‘God’, there is his trademark humour: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>The Difficulty</b></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;">In the beginning</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">it is difficult</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">even to say,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">‘God’,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">one is so out of practice.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">And embarrassed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Like lisping in public</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">about candy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">At fifty!</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gieve’s relationship with the sacred and the profane hinged on that turning point, creating a door we could swivel ourselves through. In his translations of the seventeenth-century Gujarati mystic Akho (or Akha Mahadev) his irreverence makes a case for a different kind of faith—one that is scathing in its exposure of hypocrisies:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;">His acquaintance with Hari—nil. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> But he sits decked in ochre, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> guru’s garb pulled from a bag of tricks.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">As snake goes visiting fellow reptile’s den, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> disciples saunter in </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> to exchange a lick on the mouth with him, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> then slither homeward again.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Too many such gurus in the world! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> Small chance, says Akha, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> they could give you a hand, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> reach you across.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">*</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Turban tilted rakishly </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">to hide the bald spot, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">but how will that mask </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">the godlessness in your heart?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Such dandy twirled whiskers! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Such fancy tripping speech! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Fool! Death tomorrow </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">thumps on a slackened drum.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Your charade goes poof, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">a miserable fart. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Akha says: Rotted doors </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">fall apart.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">*</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">This is </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> Bhakti without Knowledge: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> a dog barks when he hears </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> dogs barking,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">each howling after the other </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> in a rhapsody of belief. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> Has someone cared to ask </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> who’s seen the thief?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">So claim what you will </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> to have known or learned. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"> Akha says: You will go wrong</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">With scalpel gaze and palpable touch, with a single phrase like <i>‘the skin is soul-deep’</i>, Gieve could subvert our notions of depth and surface and bring the body back into our contemplation of the spirit. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span> last met him on the 15th of September, a precious appointment at Hinduja Hospital made possible by his daughter whose phone the call came from. Expecting Avaan’s voice, I was blown away by Gieve’s voice instead, chipper as ever, piping “Guess who?” It was he who said, you can come today, any time, a visitor’s pass would be left for me at reception. I went. Rather I flew. There he was, small and bundled under the covers. I dared not breathe. He sat up, coughing, and slightly shivery. He asked for a sweater. And there it was, the grey sweater, being tenderly draped around his shoulders by Avaan. “I know that sweater!” I found myself saying, and suddenly all three of us were laughing. I had been tense as a trip-wire, wary of wearing him out, conscious that my need to see him was far greater than any help I might extend. In minutes, Gieve had defused that tension, turning that hospital room into a drawing room, intimate and expansive, introducing me to his doctor as a friend and a poet, a gracious host who made me feel at home. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">He asks about my husband. He speaks of how he can see the sky from his bed. His hospital clothes are spotless white. Before I leave, I do something I never do, not even with my parents. I touch his feet. Outside, I look at the sky, up at the building, across the waves to Worli Sealink. It is, I know, the first and last pranam. Pain lifts, sorrow descends. A profound trickster, a profane monk, Gieve’s time may be up on this earth. But not in the minds and hearts of each one of us who loved him and his work. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Time’s Up</b></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;">When it’s time then</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">to pack up,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">to say goodbye,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">(bye-bye!)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">I would like</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">my</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">soul</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">carried away</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;"></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;">to the Thither .. ha!—</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: times;">by transport</span><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: times;">none other</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">than</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Indian Railways: a</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">third-class carriage</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">with open windows</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">on a day</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">not</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">too crowded.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> ________________________________________________________</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">All poems reproduced from the <a href="https://www.amazon.in/Collected-Poems-Gieve-Patel/dp/9382749772" target="_blank"><i>Collected Poems of Gieve Patel </i></a>(Poetrywala, 2017)</span></p><p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">A short version of this tribute first appeared in <a href="https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/art-and-culture/heres-looking-at-you-gieve-patel" target="_blank"><i>The National Herald</i></a></span></p></blockquote>as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-51992470565523608442020-12-27T10:19:00.004+05:302020-12-27T10:26:26.442+05:30Ibn-e-Mariam hua kare koi (Ghalib, translated by Mustansir Dalvi)<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHrRjkC9s5-Be7d2uutH-qj0iVjSYsijWHWyJ9dATBlEa9-h3HWBtK-VbFJgvph-2NuAvWHxF3TbL0KScf9D5oOjvhyBxJxjif0V4HHA01kaUv_9IwBdzbtyKvUSC5pedEvjJ3NQMDxbcS/s960/Ghalib+by+Sadaqain+1969.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="672" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHrRjkC9s5-Be7d2uutH-qj0iVjSYsijWHWyJ9dATBlEa9-h3HWBtK-VbFJgvph-2NuAvWHxF3TbL0KScf9D5oOjvhyBxJxjif0V4HHA01kaUv_9IwBdzbtyKvUSC5pedEvjJ3NQMDxbcS/w224-h320/Ghalib+by+Sadaqain+1969.jpg" width="224" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ghalib by Sadiqain, 1969</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Ibn-e-Mariam hua kare koi</span></p><p><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">by</span></p><p><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Mirza Ghalib</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Ibn-e-Mariam hua kare koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Mere dukh ki dawa kare koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Shaaraa-o-a’in par madaar sahi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Aise qaatil ka kya kare koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Chaal jaise kadi kamaan ka teer</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Dil mein aise ke ja kare koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Baat par vaan zubaan kat-ti hai</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Woh kahe aur suna kare koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Bak raha hoon junoon mein kya kya kuch</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Kuch na samjhe Khuda kare koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Na suno gar bura kahe koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Na kaho gar bura kahe koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Rok lo gar ghalat chale koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Baksh do gar khata kare koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Kaun hai jo nahin hai haajat-mand</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Kiski haajat ka ravaa kare koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Kya kiya Khizr ne Sikandar se</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Ab kise rehnuma kare koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Jab tavaqqo hi uth gai Ghalib</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Kyon kisi ka gila kare koi</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Here is Abida Parveen's rendition of Ghalib's Ghazal</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZV2m5o9xyg" style="font-size: large;" target="_blank"> 'Ibn-e-Mariam hua kare koi'</a></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: red; font-size: xx-large;">Oh, for a son of Mary to be</span></p><p><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">translated by</span></p><p><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Mustansir Dalvi</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Oh, for a son of Mary to be</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The one to redress my melancholy</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The one who wields letter and word of law</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">How shall we deal with an assassin like this?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">He struts like an arrow, in a bow pulled taut</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Oh, for someone to pierce my heart like this!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The tongue is cut just as word takes wing</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">He speaks, but is there anyone to hear?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I rant incoherently in frenzied passion</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I hope, dear Lord, no one hears me now</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not listen to words spoken in malice</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Do not respond to words spoken in spite</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Show the wayward the correct path</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Forgive those who transgress against you</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Who amongst us is not in need?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Who amongst us can assuage them all?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Recall how Alexander was treated by Khizr</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Who now can be truly considered a guide?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">When there are no more expectations left</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">What is there to complain about, Ghalib?</span></p><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Translation and Transliteration © Mustansir Dalvi, 2020, All rights reserved.</div>as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-89034810191372231812020-03-01T23:52:00.000+05:302020-03-02T12:32:45.362+05:30Rahiye ab aisi jagah chal kar (Ghalib, translated by Mustansir Dalvi)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Rahiye ab aisi jagah chal kar<br /><span style="font-size: small;">by </span><br />Mirza Ghalib</span><br />
<span style="color: red;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<i>Rahiye ab aisi jagah chal kar jahaan koi na ho<br />Hamsukhan koi na ho aur humzabaan koi na ho</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>Be-dar-o-deewaar sa ik ghar banaaya chaahiye<br />Koi humsaaya na ho aur paasbaan koi na ho</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>Padiye gar beemaar to koi na ho teemaardaar<br />Aur agar mar jaaiye to nauhaa-khwaan koi na ho</i><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Come, let us find a place to live<br /><span style="font-size: small;">translated by</span><br />Mustansir Dalvi</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: red;"></span><br />
Come, let us find a place to live<br />
Where we will find ourselves alone<br />
Where no one speaks our tongue<br />
And our thoughts are our thoughts alone<br />
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Come, let us have a house about us<br />
Without walls or doors<br />
Where there are no neighbours<br />
And no one to guard our home<br />
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Should we be stricken down with malaise<br />
We’d find neither doctor nor nurse<br />
And should we come to the end of our days<br />
No one would sing elegies over our grave<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Translation and Transliteration © Mustansir Dalvi, 2020, All rights reserved.</span></div>
as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-47938915059248000702019-11-05T06:39:00.000+05:302019-11-05T06:39:24.030+05:30Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna and Rajinikanth- three careers in retrospect<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna and Rajinikanth</span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">- three careers in retrospect</span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Amitabh Bachchan was a part of my growing up years, </span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">which is why I will never watch <i>Sooryavansham</i></span></div>
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<i></i><span style="color: red;"></span><br /></div>
<i>The transformation of the angry young man into the smug patriarch is tragic for hard-core fans of the actor, who turns 75 on October 11.</i><br />
Published in scroll.in Oct 11, 2017 · 01:30 pm<br />
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For two days during the summer vacation of 1977, I stood in the advance booking line to buy tickets for <i>Amar Akbar Anthony</i>. I did not succeed. Such was the hype that people had lined up in the early hours, much before I sauntered in hoping to see Amitabh Bachchan as Anthony Gonsalves before everyone else. Despite being a multi-starrer with Rishi Kapoor and Vinod Khanna, both of whom could easily headline their own films, this was all about Bachchan.<br />
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While I did go home empty-handed and did not watch the film for several weeks thereafter, I did not mind too much. My time would come. Until then, I satisfied myself with the radio programmes on Vividh Bharati, those 15-minute advertisements for the film, full of dialogue, song snippets and Ameen Sayani.<br />
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The adulation for Amitabh Bachchan started with <i>Bombay to Goa</i> and gained momentum with <i>Zanjeer</i>. At that time, we did not even realise that there were two ‘chs’ in his name. For us, he was the bee’s knees and was always referred to in the rushed and compressed “Amitabachan!” The young Jamaal in <i>Slumdog Millionaire</i>, covered in shit and holding up the unsoiled photograph of his hero, gets the pronunciation right exactly as I remember it from my schooldays. This metaphor for the unsullied leading man of our youth is apt. By the time <i>Sholay</i> and <i>Deewar</i> were released, Amitabh Bachchan could do no wrong.<br />
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I was in complete thrall of both man and image in the mid-1970s, as were many of my peers. We were just hitting our early teens and had the role model we were perhaps unconsciously searching for. The rebellious but upright angry young man channelised our angst at our school teachers, our parents and every authority figure around us. We were genuine fans, devouring information on Bachchan through the radio, though film magazines that we leeched onto waiting our turn at barbershops and exchanging gossip more made-up than real. Our eyes were willingly stabbed by the flashes of lurid, hand-painted, largely unsophisticated posters that were the norm at the time.<br />
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And, of course, we watched every Amitabh Bachchan movie that was ever released (and the whole back catalogue) on Doordarshan on Sundays, from <i>Saat Hindustani</i> to <i>Bansi Birju</i> to <i>Ek Nazar</i> to <i>Raaste ka Patthar </i>to his early Hrishikesh Mukerjee films. We watched in disbelief his villainous turn in <i>Parwana</i> and his rather wimpy presence in <i>Reshma aur Shera</i>, and cheered his herogiri in <i>Hera Pheri </i>and <i>Khoon Pasina</i>. We watched movies even if Bachchan had a blink-and-miss cameo, as in <i>Kunwara Baap </i>or <i>Chala Murari Hero Banane</i>. We watched him in some of the direst movies ever made in Hindi, such as <i>Besharam</i> (which seemed to have been scripted on the sets and has Sharmila Tagore covered in shoe polish in one scene) and <i>Zameer </i>(where it is unclear whether he is Saira Banu’s long-lost brother or love interest). We realised that some of these movies were drivel, but all we wanted was Amitabh Bachchan. The story came second.<br />
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<i>Amar Akbar Anthony</i> did change our perception of Bachchan as an action hero. This phenomenon has been described by several commentators before, but after his turn as Anthony bhai, Bachchan became “a one man industry” (a phrase apparently bestowed upon him by Francois Truffaut). As Anthony, he was action hero, romantic lead, and comic relief all in one. No longer the smouldering, brooding presence filled with self-righteousness and suppressed violence, Anthony was a chameleon and became whatever you wanted him to be as long as (to paraphrase Hobson) he was Amitabh Bachchan.<br />
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From this film on to this day, with few exceptions every film is a meta-film, a showcase for the variety show for the superstar he had become. Bachchan prefigures Rajinikanth, a hall of mirrors, with multiple reflections, all of the same person.<br />
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It has been correctly said that the Bachchan phenomenon rang the death knell for several character actors, especially comedians who always had their fixed space in the multiple narratives and vignette-filled montages that structured most mainstream Hindi films. Every Bachchan film was so dominated by the colossus that he subsumed everything into himself. The poor fellows in their waning years turned to direction, such as Deven Varma, Jagdeep and Mohan Choti. The makers in turn followed into oblivion, tail between legs.<br />
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And yet, Amitabh Bachchan reigned supreme in the eyes of his fans. His films now were fan fodder and kept everyone satisfied. We knew that even when he acted in ensemble films such as <i>Trishul </i>or<i> Kala Patthar</i>, the focus was solely on the central performance. All the other roles existed, for better or worse, to prop him up.<br />
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But then, sometime between <i>Coolie </i>and<i> Mrityudaata</i>, something changed. It was as if Amitabh Bachchan had been kidnapped and replaced by a lookalike also called Amitabh Bachchan. His roles were tired re-treads of bombast and exposition, doing and saying things he really did not seem to believe in, dressed up in costumes that bordered on the ridiculous, like <i>Laal Badshah </i>or<i> Toofan</i> or the truly, truly atrocious <i>Ajooba</i>.<br />
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Whether this was due to the after-effects of the <i>Coolie</i> accident, the onset of myasthenia gravis, the Bofors accusations, the self-imposed exile of five years, or the abject failure of his company Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited and its attendant financial liabilities, the later films weaned us away from starry-eyed fandom with alacrity. For the first time we began to question what was willy-nilly handed to us. Had the great man lost his mojo?<br />
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Amitabh Bachchan’s finest performance during this time, his swansong almost, was as a postman in an advertisement for the soft drink Mirinda. Here we saw the very best of Bachchan in under a minute – his commanding presence, his mellifluous recitation and impeccable comic timing as he reads out a postcard to a hapless villager from his wife with the news that she is leaving him for another man. Through rhymed verse and innuendo, we realise that the other man is none other than the postman himself. No tagline for an advertisement had greater weight: “Zor ka jhatka dheere se lage.”<br />
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With this delightful exception, our growing disenchantment with the one-man industry reached a tipping point with <i>Mohabbatein</i>, in which Amitabh Bachchan presented to us his newly crafted bearded look and unbridled patriarchal pig-headedness which, in an earlier and better time, would have been the domain of Rehman, KN Singh or Murad. Bachchan’s role was metonymous with all that was wrong in our increasingly conservative society. Was our disgruntlement a sign that we were growing up ourselves? A reaction against the decreasing space for inclusivity and cosmopolitanism – a space that was once occupied by Bachchan? Where did the rebelliousness go? Who was this dodgy daddy/uncle type figure who was borderline distasteful?<br />
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<i>Mohabbatein</i> was not a one-off role. Bachchan seemed to find increasing comfort as a patriarch full of misogynistic bluster and self-righteousness. This was evident in <i>Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham</i>, <i>Waqt, Viruddh, </i>and several other films. The outsider was now domesticated, assimilated in the mainstream, the upholder of some of the most venal values.<br />
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Around the time of his resurgence with the success of <i>Kaun Banega Crorepati,</i> we also saw Bachchan increasingly in print and on billboards and television hawking all manner of products from noodles and mango candy to cement and real estate. There was once an angry port worker who asserted, “Main aaj bhi phenke hue paise nahin uthaata.” Now it seemed to be all about “Bangla, gaadi and bank balance”. It was not that we begrudged Bachchan his earnings from endorsements. We just questioned the products. Jewellery? Infant clothing? Hair oil?<br />
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Yet, Bachchan continued to appear in a handful of roles that were challenging and enjoyable. <i>Aks</i> gave us glimpses of his former angry persona, while <i>Paheli </i>had a very interesting comic cameo. Perhaps the best of Bachchan’s current roles is <i>Paa</i>, which subsumes both his persona and his voice and shows us the potential of what he could have been if <i>Amar Akbar Anthony</i> had never happened. <br />
On the other hand, we have to contend with his award-winning roles such as <i>Agneepath</i>, in which his stylised acting and exaggerated accent grates like nails on a blackboard, or the absurdly conceived mentor figure in <i>Black</i>, whose efforts at taming a deaf-mute girl consist of berating her by shouting at the top of his voice.<br />
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The later Amitabh Bachchan is a very real disappointment for an acolyte of the former Amitabh Bachchan. Not for us the appellations of Aby Baby or Big B: he is the once and forever Amitabachan. It hurts to see him play the roles that once would have ideally suited Om Prakash (<i>Baabul, Piku</i>). The movement from the daddy to the daddu roles may be a natural progression for an emasculated angry man, but it is disappointing to see him find such comfort in it. There is perhaps no sadder creature than a former fan.<br />
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Which why I may be the only Indian citizen who, despite its 24/7 ubiquity on all film channels, has not yet and will perhaps never watch <i>Sooryavansham.</i><br />
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<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">Vinod Khanna conquered Hindi cinema by just being there</span></span></div>
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<i>When not playing the villain, Vinod Khanna played straight man to the more garrulous co-stars.</i><br />
Published in scroll.in on May 03, 2017 · 05:00 pm<br />
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Before Gabbar Singh, there was Jabbar Singh.<br />
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Not a grumpy, grungy, paunchy dacoit on the run from the police, but a smartly turned out young man with a twirled-up moustache, clean-shaven cleft chin and a black tikka, a daakuon ka sardaar, who laid down his own law at the end of a double-barrel gun. Before Amjad Khan, there was Vinod Khanna. A leading man/villain to face off a leading man/hero Dharmendra. It would be easy to be confused, watching Raj Khosla’s <i>Mera Gaon Mera Desh</i>, to decide on whose side you would rather be. This was the film that made Khanna a marquee star. Graduating from his several turns as a conventional bad guy, it would only be a few films before he would become one of the most sought after leading men of the 1970s.<br />
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And yet, one could argue that becoming the good guy emasculated him. In his early roles as an antagonist he inevitably chewed more scenery, and had more eyes riveted on him than on whichever hapless protagonist he was cast against, whether Manoj Kumar, Vinod Mehra, or even Dharmendra and Rajesh Khanna. Not since the heyday of Pran was Hindi cinema blessed with a youthful bad guy of immense charm and swagger, one who could deliver threats with an edge and a smile.<br />
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One wonders what direction Hindi cinema in the ’70s would have taken had Khanna remained with the dark side. Look at <i>Mere Apne</i>, a two-antagonist film, in which Khanna as the gang leader is still remembered for his intensity even though he is cast against the usually bombastic Shatrughan Sinha. <br />
Khanna was cast with Amitabh Bachchan in <i>Hera Pheri, Khoon Pasina, Amar Akbar Anthony, Zameer, Parvarish </i>and <i>Muqaddar Ka Sikandar</i>. In all these films, except the last one, there are no real villains to pose a significant challenge to the heroes. Imagine the possibilities had Khanna been cast as the villain in each of them.<br />
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Why is Vinod Khanna so fondly regarded upon his passing, while still making us feel that there could have been more to him? As a leading man, he strode the ’70s with other colossi like Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra and Shashi Kapoor. In nearly 50 of his 140-odd films, he was cast with another hero or with multiple heroes. Apart from the six with Bachchan, he made two films with Feroze Khan and Randhir Kapoor, three with Shashi Kapoor, five with Rajesh Khanna, six with Jeetendra and seven each with Dharmendra and Shatrughan Sinha. Almost all his significant hits came from some of these films.<br />
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Here’s the rub. When not playing the villain, Vinod Khanna, Adonis, heart-throb and ladies man, retreated into the scenery, playing straight man to his more garrulous co-stars. In most of his roles, he is the upright do-gooder, the head of the family or a police officer, serious and sacrificing in nature, a witness to the shenanigans of more expressive scene stealers. Slightly boring, in fact. <br />
This self-effacement is the leitmotif of Khanna’s career and can be seen even when he is cast in women-centric films. As the stoic spouse alongside Hema Malini in <i>Meera </i>and<i> Rihaee, </i>in<i> Lekin </i>with Dimple Kapadia or in <i>Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki </i>opposite Nutan and Asha Parekh, Khanna subsumes his role to that of a foil, allowing the women to take centerstage, and by holding back, allowing them to shine.<br />
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His solo roles were rarely blockbusters, but they have some of his best performances. In Gulzar’s <i>Achanak,</i> almost a one-actor film, he can be seen in virtually every shot, and is a good example of character development as a cuckolded army man who murders his wife and her lover and goes on the run.<br />
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Among the many roles Khanna has played as police inspector, the best by far is in <i>Inkaar</i>, a police procedural inspired by Akira Kurosowa’s High and Low, a story of the misdirected kidnapping and rescue of a child who belongs to the servant of a rich man. The climax is a long chase, and his quest to find the villain (Amjad Khan) and the ransom money allow Khanna to shine as a realistic action hero.<br />
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Among the many loving remembrances after Vinod Khanna’s death on April 27, filmmaker Paromita Vohra described his screen persona best, as one of “unhurried hotness”. He could capture both your gaze and imagination but with suaveness and cool. It is a persona more suited to the ’70s, when the leading man was one of a film’s characters and not its raison d’être, a protagonist in a quotidian setting who could still do extraordinary things.<br />
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My favourite Vinod Khanna film embodies all these qualities. In<i> Imtihan</i>, he is cast as a college teacher. Leaving a rich father, he departs from home to the stirring song <i>Ruk Jaana Nahin </i>and ends up as a teacher in a college filled with long-haired, wide-collared and bell bottomed delinquents. Over the course of the film, he reforms them and finds himself and his lady love. This was an action film without much filmy action (one fight scene in the end) that kept moving, with Khanna in the most canonical role of his career. There is nobility in his bearing and a dignity that he holds on to despite the adversities he has to undergo. <i>Imtihan </i>was one of his few solo hits.<br />
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It may be counter-intuitive, but the most famous role of his career, as Inspector Amar in <i>Amar Akbar Anthony</i>, is the one that probably led Khanna down the slippery slope to retirement. Typecasting at its worst, we find Khanna once again as the straight man to slapstick Amitabh Bachchan, feeding him lines that would be answered by memorable retorts (Robert? Kaun woh fast bowler Andy Robert?) in a movie that is less a narrative and more a variety show.<br />
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Khanna had the least to do in this burlesque that allowed both Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor to take centerstage. He does little other than react and is the least proactive in driving the pace of the film. His own slapstick turn as a one-man band in the climax is completely unbelievable, given his dour persona throughout.<br />
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Bachchan, on the other hand, consolidated his superstardom with a big-top performance – performances really – as hero, lover, fighter and comedian, killing once and for all the need for the mandatory parallel comedy track in Hindi films.<br />
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Movies after <i>Amar Akbar Anthony</i> would be more and more crafted as vehicles for superstars who were the narrative rather than part of it. Little wonder then that Vinod Khanna found it best to quit movies for his spiritual quest with Osho.<br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Rajinikanth in Hindi cinema: </span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">We awaited his wanton assault on our senses and were not disappointed</span></div>
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<i>We look back on the Tamil superstar's Mumbai years.</i><br />
Published in scroll.in on Jul 25, 2016 · 11:04 am<br />
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There is a moment in the <i>Kabali</i> trailer where the Superstar walks down a corridor with henchmen wearing a lethal Manila shirt. With one deft flick he sweeps back the trademark mane and I was, like Proust, transported back to the misbegotten days of my youth, the eighties. In that politically incorrect and not yet meta-charged period we were uncomplaining consumers – from the highs of the cricket World Cup victory to the lows of B-grade Hindi cinema. We absorbed it all, and accepted that Hindi cinema was no longer obliged to follow any rules, of history, cinematography, color, or continuity. Scenes assaulted our senses like “just one damn thing after another”.<br />
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Two men bestrode our screens in that period, overturning the traditional pantheon of filmi heroes with a story arc – Mithun Chakraborty and Rajinikanth. Rajini’s arrival on the shores of popular Hindi cinema (<i>Andha Kanoon</i>, 1983) followed Kamal Haasan (<i>Ek Duje Ke Liye</i>, 1981). While Bombay’s film world had already embraced female actors from the South for several decades, the debut of male superstars needed a more fortuitous positioning. But both fitted in oddly into the established system. Haasan did better with his edgy romantic roles, and the occasional directorial deviation (Chachi 420, 1997), while Rajinikanth was always difficult to slot.<br />
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In our Hindi filmi consciousness, Ranjikanth first made a dent in 1980, not as an actor but as a name, <i>Billa</i>. This was the Tamil remake of the Amitabh Bachchan blockbuster <i>Don</i>. <i>Billa </i>had other associations for us, as the man, who along with his cohort Ranga abducted and killed the Chopra siblings from Delhi in 1978, a case that had caught the imagination of the country in the years before carpet-bomb media. <i>Billa</i> was no name for a hero for an Amitabh Bachchan copy. While we sniggered about these Tamil fellows having no sense of cultural association, Rajinikanth would nonchalantly and unselfconsciously make another movie in 1982, called <i>Ranga</i>.<br />
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And then, of course, came the jokes.<br />
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Rajinikanth’s reputation preceded his debut in Bombay cinema – he of the swirling hair, the twirling cigarette, and the twerking sunglasses, whose iconic entry scenes, slo-mo and fast-mo fist fights and somersaults were laced with sound effects and punch dialogue that broke the fourth wall. With <i>Andha Kanoon</i>, we awaited his wanton assault on our senses, and were not disappointed. Enter Vijay Kumar Singh, man in black. As he walks around his childhood home (where, inevitably, his parents and sister have been raped and/or murdered) we see Rajinikanth’s POV. Unlike ordinary mortals, his vision is all fish-eye. His gaze is so intense the whites of his eyes turn red as we watch and he smashes a block of RCC kept right in the middle of the room for the sole purpose of smashing it. In declamatory tones, he promises revenge, but while Hindi film folk would raise a mutthi bhar matti as attestation, Rajini does more – he picks up and pulverises a fistful of concrete.<br />
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How can we assess the career of the Boss in Hindi cinema?<br />
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In movie after movie from 1983 to 1995, Rajinikanth pressed all the right cinematic triggers that would send his Tamil fans into Pavlovian frenzy, but this somehow worked only fitfully in Bombay. One reason for this ambivalence may be that <i>Andha Kanoon</i>, while a big hit, relegated him to Amitabh Bachchan, who despite only making an extended cameo remained centre stage. Bachchan also got to sing the title song. Rajinikanth ultimately would come across as a hit-man. Hindi cinema loves its stereotypes, and Ranjikanth would be offered few roles as leading man. He became an eternal sidekick, and more than once a “sachcha Musalmaan” sidekick (much in the mould of Shatrughan Sinha when he transited from villainy into good-person roles in <i>Khan Dost</i> et al.). Rajinikanth would be the faithful number-two man to Bachchan in <i>Geraftaar </i>(1985) and <i>Hum</i> (1991), and later to everyone from Shashi Kapoor to Raj Kumar to Govinda.<br />
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In order to garner brownie points, Rajinikanth had to oblige all by dying dramatically. With apparent lack of irony, in <i>Gair Kanooni</i> (1989), he dies twice in the same film, once as Aadam Khan and then as Akbar Khan. Both deaths are through a combination of stabbing and electrocution, in the latter case in Govinda’s arms, reciting the Kalma. And to bury irony once and for all, in <i>Geraftaar</i> he dies (as inspector Hussain) in Bachchan’s arms, reciting… the Kalma. It is unlikely in his current meta-avtaar, Rajini fans would accept something as mediocre as dying from their demigod.<br />
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In the days before his deification (not only by his fans but by our hysterical national television) Rajinikanth was happy to be an ensemble actor, an untenable position today. He would be subject to the role and the narrative, not embody the narrative, the text, the subtext, the denotations and connotations as he does today.<i> Wafaadar</i> (1985) and <i>Chaalbaaz</i> (1989) are both essentially comedy films. As Anupam Kher’s servant Ranga (!) in <i>Wafaadar</i>, the future “Thalaivar” acquiesces to all sorts of atrocities meted on his posterior. Surely if the Rajini bhakts today were to see Anupam Kher laying on Rajni’s bum with a swagger stick or giving him a swift kick in the youknowwhere, he would sincerely have to rethink his current domicile.<br />
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Rajinikanth would have starring turns in standalone B-grade films like <i>Gangvaa </i>(1984) and<i> John Jaani Janardhan</i> (1984) but they barely caused a flutter. He probably foresaw, quite early, his limited future in Hindi films and stopped after <i>Aatank Hi Aatank</i> in 1995. This too was an ensemble film based on <i>The Godfather </i>in which Rajinikanth played the role of Sonny Corleone. Hindi films were changing too, and his over-the-top turns had little mileage. Before long both global and indie sensibilities would make serious inroads and the appearance, storytelling and even acting would transform. Even mainstream Hindi film stars (the Khannate, for example) would have to change their ways.<br />
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The Superstar’s Hindi-speaking fans have had to wait for his Tamil films come to these shores in their dubbed versions, and through these filtered lenses have seen his rise from superstar to SuperGod. But even his most diehard acolytes would have noticed how, since his last five releases or so, right until <i>Kabali,</i> Rajinikanth has become completely subsumed in his own created image. <br />
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Becoming the Once and Future Thalaivar has come at a cost. Rajinikanth is now his own Chitti, the robot from <i>Enthiran</i> (2010) that his maker struggles so hard to contain.<br />
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-404321933155496212019-07-19T11:33:00.001+05:302019-07-19T20:48:36.557+05:30 Tranquility Base Bombay: My Role in the First Moon Landing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Tranquility Base Bombay: </span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><i>My Role in the First Moon Landing</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><b>20th July 2019</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">When we were kids, <i>‘Apollo’</i> meant the Gateway of India. The harbor around the Gateway (we still board boats to Elephanta and Alibag from here) was known to all as Palwa Bunder, of which the word Apollo was an angrezi corruption.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Palwa, as any fule kno, is Hindustani for <i>Mystus Vittatus</i>, a fish found in the waters off Bombay. Ergo, Apollo Bunder. Not much later, I knew Apollo to be the Greek God of the Sun, son of Zeus, whose (pater et fils) shenanigans I read about and observed in my copy of Homer’s <i>Iliad</i>- the comic book version by Classics Illustrated.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">All that changed after Apollo 11. Fifty years ago, on 20th July 1969 when I was five, NASA's Apollo Mission put man on the moon. If ever there has been a BC and AD moment in the history of the human race, this is it. Nothing before nor since has equaled this achievement, and I am happy to say I was part of it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Some memories help you root yourself in the past. Some are unreliable, but compelling. For me the most compelling of all the memories I have of early, very early childhood, is one where I hear people (probably at home) insisting that man can/will never step on the moon. In the fog of this memory, July 1969 takes center stage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Of course, at my age, at the time, I had never heard of either the American or the Soviet space program. Sometime after, and I was still as little at the time, I remember sitting in the garden outside my uncle Dawood’s farmhouse in Shirol, near Kasara, gazing up to a completely lightless sky, except for the incredibleness of the Milky Way, and watching a star mark its arrow-straight course overhead. A moving star! My uncle had a name for it: <i>‘Spootnik’</i>. What was that? A satellite, he said. That didn’t make things any clearer, but still I loved the show.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Of course, after July, the news was all around. Men had landed on the moon. We even knew their names, vivid and evocative- <b>Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin</b>. Images of spacesuit shod, glass visor (reflecting the blackness of space) wearing astronauts were all around us. In newspapers- the Times of India, in the Sunday Standard, in the Poona Herald, in the Illustrated Weekly of India, on the walls of restaurants, on Volga ice cream wrappers and on the covers of firecracker boxes during Diwali. Apollo 11, Astronaut, Armstrong, Aldrin, America all became Indian words.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">My role in the success of the moon landings came soon after, on the <b>24th of October, 1969</b>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">On that day, five years and ten months old, I found myself in Bombay, stationed at the turning outside the Crawford Market, under Lockwood Kipling’s marble murals, where the D N Road swings to Carnac Bunder. I was one among a huge crowd, lining both sides of the road. My uncle Musta-ali, whose finger I had held on to for the short walk from Bhandari Street next to Masjid Station (the Carnac Bridge end) to our current location, hoisted me up on the railing at the first roar from the mob.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Flanking motorcyclists in white uniforms formed the avant garde. The cavalcade arrived soon after, dark cars, as I remember, and in one of them three red faces in suits, their arms out, waving. Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin. As they swept past us, I looked at them, they looked at me, and I waved back and waved and waved.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Cavalcade that took the Apollo 11 astronauts though Bombay on October 24, 1969</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">[Photo: Time Life Pictures/NASA/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">That night, my uncle and I went to the Azad Maidan. After their momentous encounter with me, all three astronauts had been ferried there for a much lesser event- the <i>jaahir satkar</i> by the Government of Maharashtra. </span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyOgwkglYcZwGJTASN4n2Ng1s_n4zqaFaMPLNmo-rmBtJDy5xgiVnT1GhY2SKRZFFsRFHAd-2LMwm9Yj3Y6pA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/830169/view/apollo-11-worldwide-tour-bombay-october-1969">https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/830169/view/apollo-11-worldwide-tour-bombay-october-1969</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">That night, Azad Maidan was festive. All of Bombay had turned up. Neither astronauts nor officials were in sight. A replica of the landing craft Eagle had been made, perhaps in plaster, perhaps by makers of Ganesh idols, I don’t know. From the Eagle, an Astronaut was forever descending on to the Azad Maidan’s turf- just one small step away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">On one side of the tableau, exactly like during the Ganapati season, a film was being screened on a stretched white cloth. It was a documentary on the Moon Landing. I watched amazed as the astronauts somersaulted in the weightlessness of their capsule, where down was up, where they attempted to suck blobs of water out of the air. I can’t vouch for these last memories, I may have seen these in the film of the event called <i>‘Footprints on the Moon’</i> that was shown in cinema theaters not long after. I do remember the documentary being shown, though.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Indian First Day Cover commemorating the visit of the Apollo 11 astronauts to Bombay<br />
Photo Source: www.indianstampghar.com</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">The vividness of that day has stayed with me. It is one of my earliest, sharpest and most enduring memories that I cherish to this day. We in our fifties are getting on in years now. We predate television, we predate computers, we bloody predate man landing on the moon! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Today, as I track the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary on the telly, on my phone, on my laptop, on Netflix, I am filled with nostalgia. I gaze at ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and Michael Collins, alive and still kicking, I shout at the screen: ‘I saw you, man, you waved to me.’ Then I google for the precise date when, in their whirlwind tour, the astronauts came to Bombay for their tryst with me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><b><i>I was five. I was there.</i></b></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mario Miranda's impression of the day, from SPAN, December 1969</span></td></tr>
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-46065001088096440292019-06-01T15:08:00.000+05:302019-06-01T22:15:30.498+05:30The State of the Esplanade Mansion- in conversation with Vikas Dilawari<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">The State of the Esplanade Mansion- </span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">in conversation with Vikas Dilawari</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The building formerly known as the Watson Esplanade Hotel and now as Esplanade Mansions is the one anomaly in the list of heritage building conservation efforts in Mumbai. While building of similar vintage around it have benefitted from professional intervention, the Esplanade Mansion has, for a variety of reasons, and for nearly half a century allowed to go to seed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This building was anomalous even when it was built, between 1867 and 1869, based on the designs of Rowland Mason Ordish, an engineer associated with the Crystal Palace and St. Pancreas Station in London. It was a pioneering prefabricated, cast iron framed building, well ahead of its time, with most of tis components shipped directly from the Phoenix Foundry in Derby. Seeing the building come up, like a Meccano set, a traveller in 1867 remarked that the building was <i>“something like a huge birdcage had risen like an exhalation from the earth”</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The building, with some modifications, opened as Watson’s Hotel in 1869, and held pole position on the Kala Ghoda open space. It was also the one Hotel of choice for ‘European-Only’ visitors to give custom, and has been known for a variety of interesting occupants over its 150 year old history. Mark Twain stayed here and wrote about the view from his balcony. In 1896, the Lumiere Brothers held their fist screening of the ‘Cinematograph’ on its premises. Jamshedji Tata, in retaliation to being snubbed by the hoteliers, set up the Taj Palace in 1903, within sight of the hotel, both; it is said out of retaliation and spite. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL73HFx-EfjbRUj5WGE3Tz-Mlt-FDwBuQuG48PtIH_WM3G8WVpq4QF6TGr_wLbBHE8uTbCS09fpPmCOr1cjNXFvrnvLtS2Y-of9ZK0gDPDrVbrL9bi7mH1DBt34qGWSeCU4o2_szUsUoJc/s1600/watson-hotel-old+interior.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="404" data-original-width="600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL73HFx-EfjbRUj5WGE3Tz-Mlt-FDwBuQuG48PtIH_WM3G8WVpq4QF6TGr_wLbBHE8uTbCS09fpPmCOr1cjNXFvrnvLtS2Y-of9ZK0gDPDrVbrL9bi7mH1DBt34qGWSeCU4o2_szUsUoJc/s400/watson-hotel-old+interior.jpg" width="400" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHhp_30c0uBlRTaB8zU2TUmv_N3p0gcNhtJl8FKcBx72J-xfgPDnPHsnOZ-r0a4YZ_wwF79G_kQmMOxfObvQgZNb0pGwRqPzo8HUwspIuo4m8skD2F80s5QywcufFSNmRKU-rouJaAZL9U/s1600/watson-hotel-old.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="306" data-original-width="428" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHhp_30c0uBlRTaB8zU2TUmv_N3p0gcNhtJl8FKcBx72J-xfgPDnPHsnOZ-r0a4YZ_wwF79G_kQmMOxfObvQgZNb0pGwRqPzo8HUwspIuo4m8skD2F80s5QywcufFSNmRKU-rouJaAZL9U/s400/watson-hotel-old.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">From the 1960s however, the former Hotel was subdivided and tenanted to a variety of homes and offices. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Fifty years down the line, this state of affairs has led to make the Watson’s Hotel one of the most rundown buildings in plain sight in one of the most prominent positions of the city, still admired for its avant garde construction and rued for its current state. Parts of the building have been falling off in recent times.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">In July 2018, a new precinct was added to the global list of heritage sites at the 42nd session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, in Manama, Bahrain. This inscription, called the ‘Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai’ included the Esplanade Mansion as a prominent heritage building within the precinct.</span></span></span></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">On 23rd May 2019, the <a href="https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/mumbai/cover-story/prudent-to-demolish-esplanade-mansion/articleshow/69449802.cms" target="_blank">Mumbai Mirror</a> published a report of a structural audit carried out by the IIT-Bombay, and submitted to MHADA. The Mirror quoted from the report thus: <i>“The rigidity of the structure is lost. Several alterations have been made in the form of rooms and mezzanine floors, which have increased load on structure. In our view, any kind of structural repairs are neither logical nor economically viable. The repair of the building will be a dangerous job as many structural elements are not rigidly connected to each other. The repairs also cannot make the structure habitable under seismic conditions. Considering the above, it is of the opinion that it will be prudent to demolish the building.” </i>MHADA, in turn, would submit the report to the Bombay High Court.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">With the distinct possibility that the Esplanade Mansion, part of Mumbai’s indelible heritage may have it days numbered, I invited the city’s most sensitive conservation architect Vikas Dilawari for a discussion about the state of the Esplanade Mansion. This conversation is focused only on built heritage conservation, and Dilawari has been most forthcoming with his views.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><br />DALVI:<br />How do you read/ interpret the structural audit made by the IIT-Bombay, and their conclusions that the Esplanade Mansion is irredeemably distressed, and beyond any possibility of being safely conserved?<br /><br />DILAWARI:</b><br />IIT-Bombay is one the most reputed of institutes and I am sure their report would have gone through all aspects of the Esplanade Mansion in detail. As I have not read the report, I cannot comment on it. Also, not having surveyed the entire building and studied its context, commenting on specific issues would not be fair. However, I can speak generically with reference to heritage properties like the Esplanade Mansion. <br /><br />While it is very vital to understand what is in the report, it is equally true that the building is very significant in terms of its structural history and cultural heritage. Firstly, The Esplanade Mansion, or the Watson’s Hotel as it is popularly known, was an engineering feat of its time. That itself merits the extra efforts to try to retain it. Secondly, it is sad that despite being so exceptionally significant its heritage Grade II-A was never changed to Grade I in the proposed listing. I also wonder why extra efforts were not made by all stake holders -- users, owners, the state government and others, letting it become rundown to this state of disrepair in past decades despite having heritage legislation. <br /><br />‘Safely conserved’ is a tricky phrase. What you actually mean is ‘safely habitable’. This leads us to the larger debate of skilful repairing or retrofitting to meet present codes. If the building is unsafe and you repair it, you have enhanced its life but you haven’t yet made it earthquake resistant, which being a habitable building is what the study would perhaps have addressed. The same logic cannot be applied to uninhabited ASI protected monuments which are not earthquake resistant per se. Also the IIT building survey report would reveal whether the structural system of the whole building has developed overall distress or are there problems locally, and whether it is possible to replace or strengthen those areas. <br /><br />I think this building is a classic case study of whether conservation can be done. If so, the field of conservation in Mumbai has a very bright future. If it is pulled down, well then…<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>DALVI:<br />Given the amount of additions and alterations made over the last century, is it possible to reverse its effects through structural conservation?<br /><br />DILAWARI:</b><br />Additions and alterations have certainly taken place. The adding of dead load to the building to a very large extent would be the main concern. The additional load of mezzanines, for example, is undesirable and should be removed. These issues need to be addressed urgently. The original wooden flooring may have, possibly, been replaced with concrete too. <br /><br />The iron work in the building requires protection, and the building requires overall maintenance, but that has never been done thanks to the Rent Control Act. This Act is what inhabited heritage sites should be relieved from or modified upon. Economic considerations are vital if we want the maintenance of heritage sites to be good. Also, many of these matters are legal and go on perpetually and it is only now that the courts have intervened in the case of the Esplanade Mansion, so there is hope that some definite outcome will emerge. <br /><br />Structural conservation would mean restoring the building back to its original status, which would mean removing many things which been overlaid on it for a substantial period of time. Whether the removal of these additions is acceptable to the users/owners is a question. These are very complex issues. Hopefully, if this is resolved and the building vacated then there can be some hope for finding viable alternatives. <br /><br /><b>DALVI:<br />Structural engineer <a href="https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/mumbai/other/beyond-the-din-over-esplanade-mansion/articleshow/69510510.cms" target="_blank">Alpa Sheth</a>, has, in her response piece in the Mumbai Mirror on May 27th 2019, while quoting the report said: <i>"the cast-iron framing of the building does not lend itself to seismic resistance (which was not required when Watson Hotel was first built) and a completely new lateral load resisting system would need to be inserted into the building." </i>Does this not lend finality to the notion that the building is beyond the capacity to be conserved?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>DILAWARI:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I am not a structural expert so I would not react on that. As my area of interest is conservation, I can only argue that the very fact the Esplanade Mansion is still standing so many years after it was built is a good enough argument to repair and restore it back, at least to that state. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Yes, additional unwanted load or intervention, if unauthorized, should be removed. Yes, if it is possible to impart seismic resistance to the structure, without altering its authenticity and significance, then one certainly should try and be happy that the health of the building after repairs is better than what it was. <br /><br /><b>DALVI:<br />The Esplanade Mansion is dilapidated both from the inside and the outside. Several parts have fallen off and there are visible structural cracks. Is it safe, even responsible, to allow a conservation team inside the building to carry out structural conservation?<br /><br />DILAWARI:</b><br />The very fact that the building is standing and was habitable till yesterday means one can survey most of its parts. There may be areas not reachable or damaged or broken which one cannot survey, but at present most areas look accessible. In addition, there seems to be some propping done in the poor areas. This indicates a survey can be done with care and precaution. What is ideal is that once the building is vacated, it should then be propped and surveyed. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>DALVI:<br />What steps are possible to be taken to give this building a new/extended life? This building is a prefabricated framed structure of cast and wrought iron with infill brick walls. How will its conservation differ from that of a load bearing masonry building?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>DILAWARI:</b><br />The repairs would certainly need expertise of a very well experienced structural engineer in cast iron and steel works. The building has be made vacant and a proper structural study, economic study and reuse study needs to be carried out (with professional propping of the structure). The economic and reuse studies would require the participation of the stake holders. This will help in deciding its future. <br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The most important issue is in any structural conservation of this kind is the dead load. The first action would be to establish the good functional structural grid and then decide on the light weight floors and removal of the unwanted load of unauthorized additions. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The advantage of steel and timber structures is that you can locally cut out the distressed areas and replace them with new materials, or strengthen them with flitching. Whether we can get this similar kind of cast iron and wrought iron sections today (which were engineering feats then) is a question. Importing these sections from the original foundry, from the Phoenix in Derby, would be prohibitively expensive. Also, one is not sure if these elements are manufactured nowadays on such scale. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>DALVI:<br />The Esplanade Mansion is now inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage Ensemble. What happens to its status and the status of the ensemble if the building collapses or is demolished?<br /><br />DILAWARI:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Recently the Esplanade Mansion was also included in the World Heritage ensemble, but no efforts were made by the authorities to stem its decay. This is just like the case of Gilbert Hill, which is Grade II and not Grade I, so despite being listed, no adequate protections have been taken to prolong its life. We should remember that heritage listing is not the end but only the beginning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">If the building collapses or is demolished, the WHS committee will give a warning to states parties that they may remove the World Heritage Status. This happened in the case of Angkor Wat when the real estate (hotel industry) was threatening the temple or when a bridge was constructed in Hampi few years ago. <br /><br />The WHS tag will be even more threatened (as the OUV- Outstanding Universal Value for which it is listed) if it gets compromised. If for example, the site is redeveloped, with a high rise structure, with podium car parking. If state laws are not effective for the protection of such WHS sites, then a yellow and red flag will be waved in coming years. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Also, being included in the “World’s 100 Most Endangered Monuments” by the World Monuments Fund is not something to be proud of.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>DALVI:<br />If the building is, despite all other alternatives, demolished, what should come up in its place?<br /><br />DILAWARI:</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">As a true conservationist I would prefer it is never demolished. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The Esplanade Mansion was an engineering feat of 19th century. If we can, we should preserve this engineering feat through skilful repair or conserve it in a manner by which its authenticity and historicity is respected.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>Vikas Dilawari</b> is a conservation architect with more than three decades of experience exclusively in the conservation field, ranging from urban to architecture to interiors. He has double Masters in Conservation from School of Planning and Architecture (New Delhi) and from the University of York (UK). </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">He was the Head of Department of Conservation Department at Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture (KRVIA) Mumbai from its inception in 2007 till Aug 2014. He has served as advisory roles in International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). He has been a Trustee of Indian Heritage Cities Network (IHCN) and a former Co- Convener of INTACH Mumbai Chapter.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">His practice has executed conservation projects ranging from prime landmarks to unloved buildings of Mumbai. His nationwide work includes projects ranging from historic homes, palaces, residential buildings, educational buildings (Schools and Colleges), hostels, churches, temples, dharamsalas, museums, banks, office buildings, lecture halls, fountains and hospitals. Several of them have received national and international recognition. A total of sixteen of his projects have won UNESCO ASIA PACIFIC Awards for Cultural Preservation in SE Asia.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> Dilawari has lectured and written extensively on the subject of conservation nationally and internationally.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Note:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We are aware that certain aspects related to the Esplanade Mansion are sub-judice. This conversation is therefore clearly academic in nature, restricting itself only to areas of built heritage conservation. While the opinions are those of the conversants, nothing here should be construed as having any bearing on the legal aspects of the case.</span></div>
as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-51585064508566870452018-12-21T14:27:00.003+05:302018-12-21T14:27:56.780+05:30Cosmopolitician<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">COSMOPOLITICIAN</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">by </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Mustansir Dalvi</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Published by Poetrywala,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">an imprint of Paperwall Media & Publishing Pvt. Ltd.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">2018</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">(Hardcover)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">ISBN-10: 9382749829</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">ISBN-13: 978-9382749820</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Price: Rs.400</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Available at Kitab Khana Mumbai, </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">and online at <a href="https://paperwall.in/best-indian-book-store-online/best-poetry-books-store/cosmopolitician/" target="_blank">paperwall</a> and on <a href="https://www.amazon.in/Cosmopolitician-Mustansir-Dalvi/dp/9382749829/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1545380513&sr=8-3&keywords=mustansir+dalvi" target="_blank">amazon</a> </span>(Click on links)<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">'Cosmopolitician' in the press and media</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://scroll.in/article/900226/cosmopolitician-eight-poems-by-mustansir-dalvi-that-merge-dreams-and-reality" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">‘Cosmopolitician’: Eight poems by Mustansir Dalvi that merge dreams and reality</span></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In his second book of poetry, the translator and poet defies expectations of style and thought.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">scroll.in Nov 05, 2018</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.navhindtimes.in/the-architect-who-writes-poetry/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">The architect who writes poetry</span></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The annual Goa Arts and Literature Festival, which begins on December 6 has attracted several literary figures over the past nine years. Mustansir Dalvi has been one poet who has felt a deep connection that keeps him coming back. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Nav Hind Times, Goa December 5, 2018<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Advance praise for 'Cosmopolitician':</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">‘<i>Cosmopolitician </i>comes across like a force of nature, a conscious avalanche – and we are in its path. Juicy meat aplenty here for those of us who languish in the hospice for malnourished readers.’ </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">– Gabriel Rosenstock, author of <i>I Open My Poem, Where Light Begins</i> and <i>The Naked Octopus</i> </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">‘In his latest book <i>Cosmopolitician</i>, Mustansir Dalvi counters the outside world with poems seldom seen in the work of other poets. In seven sections; poems dealing with the larger scheme of life are conveyed in weighted words that are prevented from sinking by the structure and content into which they are placed. He is able to explore a wide range of styles and emotions that carry the reader away. And, as deep into the personal world as literature can take us: <i>“My name is mud, / gold runs in my veins, grouting an imperfect dam that holds.”’ </i></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">– Jayanta Mahapatra, author of <i>Sky Without Sky, A False Start </i>and <i>A Rain of Rites </i></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">‘Mustansir Dalvi’s verse is full of the unexpected, and keeps clear of the predictable. The imagination is taken for a delightful tour, with witty encounters on the way. By no means does this signify in any sense a lessening of serious and purposeful thought. Dalvi is capable of taking one through turbulent experiences with gravity.’ </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">– Gieve Patel, author of <i>How Do You Withstand, Body</i> and <i>Mirrored, Mirroring </i> </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">‘In his own way of sketching the world’s architecture, the poet offers us another reading for almost every cosmo-thing. As we do not need hands to bear the burden of this world, we get enough messages to do so in Mustansir Dalvi’s poems. A mega-project – to mix dreams with reality, houses with museums, scientists with caliphs, the banks of the Ganga with the Nile, joy with wars, Arabian Nights with Indian Days!’ </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">– Ashraf Aboul-Yazid, author of <i>The Memory of Silence </i>and <i>The Whisper of the Sea</i></span></span><br />
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<b><i><span style="color: red; font-family: "garamond" , "serif"; font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></b>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Contents</span><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>1.</i><br />
<i>there’s a hunger in houses</i><br />
Our Lady of Didarganj<br />
Caryatid<br />
Telamon<br />
Casa Batlló<br />
No one really walks here to know<br />
Macaroons in Marseilles<br />
The hospice for malnourished poets<br />
Dreams of falling<br />
Closing windows<br />
My Room<br />
There’s a hunger in houses<br />
<br />
2.<br />
<i>if we should cease to correspond</i><br />
You said you would kill it this morning<br />
If we should cease to correspond<br />
Kintsukuroi<br />
Sunken Ship<br />
Light reading<br />
Just for a shining second, then<br />
The fate of hour<br />
<br />
3.<br />
<i>where life stops being a city</i><br />
Sadashiva (eternal Shiva), Elephanta<br />
The Great Kiln<br />
Where life stops being a city<br />
Traumstadt<br />
Micturate<br />
Candy Floss<br />
Eudynamys Scolopaceus<br />
Peltophorum Pterocarpum<br />
Hijabi<br />
Sandhurst Road<br />
Glass within a glass<br />
Last day in a lived-in house<br />
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4.<br />
<i>the lunes of ibn al-Haytham</i><br />
The Nile gazes back at ibn al-Haytham<br />
Ibn al-Haytham impersonates himself<br />
Ibn al-Haytham hedges his bets<br />
The lunes of ibn al-Haytham<br />
Ibn al-Haytham invents the camera<br />
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5.<br />
<i>why someone needed to kick the infant Kafka in the balls</i><br />
Janus takes a selfie<br />
(Im)Mobile<br />
Pots<br />
Filled vessels make joyful noise<br />
Why someone needed to kick the infant Kafka in the balls<br />
Traction<br />
1969, July<br />
Coins, watches and teeth<br />
Dispersal<br />
At a wake<br />
Prayer can change your fate, too<br />
Song of Songs<br />
<br />
6.<br />
<i>Morgina’s daughters</i><br />
Embedded<br />
Shock and awe<br />
Two in the bush<br />
A black sequined scarf<br />
Tabula rasa<br />
Morgina’s daughters<br />
Morgina<br />
So they gave a war<br />
Khan Murjan<br />
Judgments in carpets<br />
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7.<br />
<i>a pashmina sky</i><br />
Vertigo<br />
Swimming with peacocks<br />
Wedding Baraat, Patan<br />
Jackfruit<br />
Parshuram<br />
Slow Home<br />
Eclipse<br />
Square Sun<br />
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Notes<br />
Acknowledgements<br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">About the poet</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Mustansir Dalvi is an anglophone poet, translator and editor. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">His poems are included in the anthologies: These My Words: The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry (Eunice de Souza and Melanie Silgardo, editors); Mind Mutations (Sirrus Poe, editor); The Bigbridge Online Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry (Menka Shivdasani, editor); The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India (Vivekanand Jha, editor); To Catch a Poem: An Anthology of Poetry for Young People (Sahitya Akademi, Jane Bhandari and Anju Makhija, editors); and The Enchanting Verses Literary Review (online, Abhay K, editor). Brouhahas of Cocks is his first book of poems in English published by Poetrywala in 2013. His poems have been translated into French, Croatian and Marathi.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Mustansir Dalvi’s 2012 English translation of Muhammad Iqbal’s influential Shikwa and Jawaab-e-Shikwa from the Urdu as Taking Issue and Allah’s Answer (Penguin Classics) has been described as ‘insolent and heretical’ and makes Iqbal’s verse accessible to the modern reader. This book was awarded Runner Up for Best Translation at the Muse India National Literary Award in 2012. His translations of the Sufi mystic poet Rahim are published in the anthology Eating God: a Book of Bhakti Poetry (Arundhati Subramanium, editor). Mustansir Dalvi has translated the poems of Hemant Divate from the Marathi in struggles with imagined gods published by Poetrywala in 2014. He is the editor of Man without a Navel a collection of new and selected translations of Hemant Divate’s poems from the Marathi (2018, Poetrywala).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Mustansir Dalvi was born in Bombay. He teaches architecture in Mumbai.</span></div>
as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-56926619353500500982018-11-15T16:48:00.001+05:302020-03-10T10:12:19.606+05:30Manto- Toba Tek Singh<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">Toba Tek Singh</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">by</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">Sa’adat Hasan Manto</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="color: #0b5394;"></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">translated by</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />Mustansir Dalvi</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Around two or three years after partition, it dawned on
the governments of Pakistan and India that, like other common prisoners,
the madmen too should be exchanged. This meant that Muslim madmen, currently
housed in asylums in India, had to be sent over to Pakistan, and Hindu and Sikh
madmen from Pakistan’s asylums should be handed over to India.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Whether justified or not, based on the opinions of minds smarter
than us, several high level conferences were convened in several places, and
finally a date for the transfer of madmen was scheduled. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Proper investigations
were made. Those Muslims, who had near and dear ones in India, were allowed to
remain in India. The rest were to be ferried to the border. Here in Pakistan, since
almost all the Hindus and Sikhs had already left, there was no reason to hold
anyone back. All the Hindu and Sikh madmen were, in the custody of the police, to be brought to the border in safety.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I’ve no idea about the other side, but here in the
asylums of Lahore news of the impending transfer spread and generated a lot of
interesting gossip and banter. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">One Muslim madman, who had, for the last twelve years, consistently subscribed to the daily <i>Zamindaar</i>, was asked by a friend:
“Moulbisaab! What is this thing called Pakistan?” To which, he answered with
great gravitas and concern: “A place in India that manufactures razors.” That
shut his friend up. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In a similar vein, one Sikh madman asked another Sikh
madman: “Sardaarji, why are they sending us to Hindustan? We don’t even speak
their language.” The other man smiled: “I know the language of these
Hindustanese… they are a devilish lot- they walk around with their noses in the
air.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">One day, while taking a bath, a Muslim madman shouted
“Pakistan Zindabad!” with such fervour that he slipped on the wet floor and was
instantly rendered unconscious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">And then there were some madmen who were not mad at all.
This lot were made up of cut-throats, whose relatives had bribed the higher-ups
to grant them lunatic asylums instead of the noose. They had some understanding
of why India was sub-divided and what this Pakistan meant, but even their
knowledge of current affairs was hardly complete. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">They learnt nothing from newspapers and could derive no conclusions by talking to their guards who
were, by and large, illiterate and ignorant. All they knew was that there is this man-
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who is also known as Quaid-e-Aazam. He had made a
different homeland for Muslims called Pakistan… but where it was, where its boundaries were, they had no clue at all. Which is why those inmates who had not
completely surrendered to insanity were possessed by the thought of whether
they were in India or Pakistan… if this was India, then, where was Pakistan?
And if they were in Pakistan, how was it possible that just a while ago they
were in India as well?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This business of what was India and what was Pakistan so
perplexed one madman that as the level of his insanity rose, instead of
carrying on his chores of sweeping floors, he clambered up a tree, made
himself comfortable on a branch and for the next two hours gave a convoluted oration on
the delicate matters between India and Pakistan. When his jailers asked him to come
down, he climbed up a higher branch. When they threatened him with dire
consequences, he said: “I do not wish to live in India or Pakistan… I will
remain on this tree.” After a lot of effort, when he was made to cool off and
brought down from the tree; he embraced his Hindu and Sikh friends and broke down
completely. His heart was overwhelmed with the thought that they would leave
him and go to India.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A Muslim radio engineer with an M.Sc. normally kept
himself aloof from the other inmates, and each day walked a solitary path in the
asylum garden in silence. On hearing news of the transfer he divested himself
of all his clothes which he handed over to the warden, and continued his lonely
walks in the garden in the buff.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A stout Muslim madman from Chiniot, once an active clerk
with the Muslim League, who bathed fifteen or sixteen times a day,
suddenly stopped. His name was Muhammad Ali. Consequently, one day he announced
to all in his ward that he was the Quaid-e-Aazam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Following his lead, another madman now started calling himself Master Tara
Singh. There was speculation that their proximity in that ward might lead to bloodshed, so both were declared dangerous and locked up separately.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Failure in love had driven a young Hindu lawyer from
Lahore insane. When he heard that Amritsar had been given to India, he was
immensely saddened. He was once in love with a girl from that city. She
had rejected him, but even in his madness he had never forgotten her. As a result he would, in the vilest terms, abuse all the Muslim and Hindu
leaders who had conspired together to break India into two, making his
beloved Hindustani and himself Pakistani. </span><span style="font-size: large;">When talk of transferring inmates began, the madmen
consoled the lawyer not to take it to heart, for he would be sent to India. The
India of his beloved. But he did not wish to leave Lahore, as it was his
considered opinion that his practice would not flourish as well in Amritsar.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In the European ward, there were two Anglo-Indian
madmen. They were traumatised by the news that India had become free and the
Englishmen had gone back. For hours they would murmur amongst themselves,
wondering what their status in the asylum, now in an independent country, would
be. Would the European ward remain, or would it be dissolved? Would breakfast
be served, or not? Would there be bread, or would they have to swallow both
their pride as well as bloody Indian chapatis?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Then there was a Sikh, an inmate for the last
fifteen years. He would always be heard spouting the same nonsense: “Ooper the gugud,
the annexe, the bay-dhyaana, the moong the daal of the laaltain.” The guards
would always say that he never slept a wink during his time there. Never
even lay down. But he would lean against a wall from time to time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">His feet were swollen from all that standing. His
calves puffed up, and despite this discomfort to this body he never
rested. But he would listen intently whenever there was talk of India, Pakistan
or the transfer of madmen in the asylum. If someone asked him for his opinion,
he would gravely reply: “Ooper the gugud, the annexe, the bay-dhyaana, the
moong the daal of the Pakistan Government.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But after a while, the phrase “of
the Pakistan Government” was replaced by “of the Toba Tek Singh Government”.
Now he would ask the other madmen about the location of Toba Tek Singh, of
which he was a resident. But no one knew whether it was in India or in
Pakistan. Those who tried to explain soon fell into a quandary themselves-
Sialkot was earlier in India, but we now hear it is in Pakistan; who knows if Lahore,
today in Pakistan, could tomorrow become part of India? Or the whole of India
become Pakistan? And who could put his hand on his heart and confidently assert
that both India and Pakistan would not, one day, vanish off the face of this
earth?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The man’s hair had thinned, and because he would bathe only
infrequently, his beard was matted, which made him appear quite terrifying. But
he was a harmless soul. In fifteen years, he never had occasion to fight
with anyone. The old bearers of the asylum knew about him, that he owned much
land in Toba Tek Singh. He was once a well-off zamindar whose head suddenly turned.
His relatives had brought him chained in some very heavy manacles and had him
admitted in the asylum. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Once a month, they would put in an appearance, ask about
his general well-being and leave. This went on for a while. But after the
troubles of India and Pakistan began, they stopped coming altogether.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">His name was Bishan Singh, but everyone called him Toba
Tek Singh. He had absolutely no idea what day it was, what month it was or how
many years had passed. But once every month, he would come to know all by himself
if his relatives were due. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">He would then inform his warden of the
impending visit. On such days, he would bathe well, rubbing his whole body with
soap; he would oil and comb his hair, don such clothes he would normally not
wear and come to meet his visitors well turned out. If they asked him anything,
he would normally remain silent or occasionally blurt out: “Ooper the gugud,
the annexe, the bay-dhyaana, the moong the daal of the laaltain.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">He had a daughter who grew the width of a finger with
each visit, and had in fifteen years become a young woman. Bishan Singh did not recognise her. Ever since her childhood she would look at her father and weep. Even when she was older, her eyes would fill with tears of hope.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">When the India-Pakistan episode started, Bishan Singh
began to ask the other madmen about Toba Tek Singh. The itch to find out became
all the more severe when he did not get a clear response. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">And now, he no longer
had visitors. Earlier he would know inside of himself when they were due to
arrive but now the voice in his heart had fallen silent. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">He longed for them to come, to be with him, to show him
sympathy, and to bring him fruit, sweetmeats and clothes. Could he not ask them
where Toba Tek Singh was?</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">He was sure
they would tell him if it was in Pakistan or in India, for in his mind they all
came from Toba Tek Singh, where he was a landowner.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In the asylum, there was also one madman who called himself
God. One day, when Bishan Singh<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>asked
him if<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Toba Tek Singh was in India or
Pakistan, God<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>burst out laughing, as was
his wont, and replied: “Neither in India, nor in Pakistan. For we have not yet
decreed it so.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Bishan<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Signh<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>entreated this God<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>several times to make his<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>decree so that the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>matter could be settled once and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for all, but he<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>was always preoccupied for he had so
many<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pending decrees to be<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> made</span>. One day, in frustration, Bishan
Singh vented out all his anger on him: “Ooper the gugud, the annexe, the bay-dhyaana, the moong the daal of Vaahe Guruji da khalsa and Vaahe Guruji ki
fateh... jo bole so nihaal, Sat Sri Akaal!” Maybe this is what he meant: You
are the god of the Mussalmans. If you were the god of the Sikhs, you would not have been so uncaring.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A few days before the scheduled exchange of madmen, Bishan
Singh had a visitor, a Muslim friend. He had never come to the asylum before. When Bishan
Singh saw him, he turned away to return, but the guards stopped him: “This is
your friend Fazal Deen… he has come to meet you.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Bishan Singh looked at Fazal Deen once again and began to
mutter to himself. Fazal Deen reached out and put a hand on his shoulder: “I had
been thinking a long time to come to meet you but I could not make it… all your
relatives have safely migrated to India… whatever help I could give them, I did…
but your daughter Roop Kaur…”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Fazal Deen fell silent. Bishan Singh tried to remember: “Daughter? ... Roop Kaur?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Fazal Deen spoke hesitatingly: “Yes… she… she’s all right
too… she went with them.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Bishan Singh said nothing. Fazal Deen began again: “They
asked me to find out if you are well… now I hear that you are going<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to India too… please give my salaams to Bhai
Balbir Singh<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bhai<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Vaghava Singh… and to Bahen<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amrit
Kaur as well… tell Bhai Balbir, Fazal Deen is fine…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the two brown buffaloes he left behind are
fine too, one had a calf, the other did<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>too but did not last beyond six<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>days… and… tell<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>me should you
need anything, I am always at your service… and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">here</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">are some plums for you.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Bishan Singh took the bag of plums and passed it on to the
guard standing beside them. Then he asked Fazal Deen: “Where is Toba Tek Singh?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Fazal Deen, bewildered, replied: “Where is… it is where it
has always been.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Bishan Singh persisted: “In India or in Pakistan?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“In India… no, no, in Pakistan.” Now Fazal Deen was
confused.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Bishan Singh walked away muttering to himself: “Ooper the
gugud, the annexe, the bay-dhyaana, the moong the daal of Pakistan and
Hindustan of the door phittay mooh...”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">***</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">All the arrangements for the exchange were complete. The list
of madmen was finalised and the day fixed.</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It was bitterly cold, when lorries carrying Hindu and
Sikh madmen from the Lahore asylum, along with a police escort, took off. The
relevant officers accompanied them as well. At Wagah, Border Superintendents from both sides met and got into official formalities. Then the exchange began, which went
on through the night.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Getting the madmen out of the lorries and handing them
safely to the opposite side was no easy task. Many simply refused to come out.
Many who consented to emerge were difficult to control because they went
wandering off all over the place. Many who wore nothing were forcibly clothed,
but before long they tore the clothes away from their bodies. Some were
abusive. Others sang songs. Some fought with each other. Some cried, or keened
in agony. They would not listen to instructions. And then there was the wailing
of the madwomen. It was so cold that even the noise of chattering teeth could be heard above the general
hubbub.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Most of the lunatics were not in favour of the exchange,
as they could not understand why they were being uprooted from their own place.
Those who could comprehend a bit started to raise slogans of “Pakistan zindabad!”
and “Pakistan murdabad!” Some Muslims and Sikhs took offence and rioting had to
be prevented two or three times.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">When it was Bishan Singh’s turn, as the relevant official
tried to write his name in his register, he asked: “Where is Toba Tek Singh? In
Pakistan, or in India?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The relevant official sniggered: “In Pakistan.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Hearing this, Bishan Singh jumped away and ran to join
his earlier companions. The Pakistani guards caught him and tried to take him to
the other side, but he refused to budge: “Toba Tek Singh<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is here…” He began to scream: “Ooper the
gugud, the annexe, the bay-dhyaana, the moong the daal of Toba<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tek Singh and Pakistan!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">They tried to convince him that Toba Tek Singh was now in
India… or if not it would soon be, but Bishan Singh did not relent. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">When they
tried to physically shift him he stood up on his two swollen feet and planted himself
in a manner as if no power on earth would be able to move him. But because he
was harmless, force was not used. They just let him stand there as the
rest of the exchange went on.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Just before sunrise, a shriek pierced the sky. This came from
the otherwise silent and steadfast Bishan Singh… officers from both sides came running to find
the man, who had once stood on his own feet without resting for fifteen years, now fallen on his face. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">On one side, behind barbed-wire lay
Hindustan. On the other, behind similar wire, Pakistan stretched out into the distance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Between them, on a piece of land that had no name, lay Toba
Tek Singh.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">© Mustansir Dalvi, 2018. All rights reserved. </span></div>
</div>
as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-32082524641504070432018-10-10T23:48:00.002+05:302019-01-17T13:33:41.513+05:30Manto - Thanda Gosht<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">Cold Flesh</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">(Thanda Gosht)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />by</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">Sa’adat Hasan Manto</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="color: #0b5394;"></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">translated by</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br />Mustansir Dalvi</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><span style="color: cyan;"></span><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"></span><span style="color: #0b5394;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />Kulwant Kaur got off the bed, as Ishhar Singh entered the hotel-room. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">With razor eyes, she glared at him and closed the latch on the door. It was after twelve that night. Outside, the city spread her skirts, hushing all into a strange, mystifying silence.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur sat back on the bed and crossed her legs. Distracted perhaps, in trying to unravel his tangled thoughts, Ishhar Singh stayed in a corner, twirling a kirpan idly in his hands. In this silence, moments passed. After a while, Kulwant Kaur, irritated with her seat, stretched out and started to swing her legs from the edge of the bed. Ishhar Singh remained silent.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur was a full-bodied woman with wide, inviting, fleshed-out hips, and breasts higher than they should be. She had a penetrating gaze, and grey, downy fuzz clouding her upper lip. The way she comported herself gave an impression that she was a woman of authority and resolve. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">By his physique and by the way he carried himself it was obvious to anyone that Ishhar Singh was the right male for Kulwant Kaur. For now, he hung his head, in his corner, not making a sound. On his brow, an otherwise tightly wound turban was slowly unravelling. The hand that once held fast onto the kirpan now began to tremble. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">A few more minutes like this and Kulwant Kaur could take no more. Still, she lowered her angry eyes and cried: “Ishhar, my love!” Ishhar Singh lifted his head and turned towards her. But instead of meeting her bullet-gaze full frontally, he could only turn away.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur cried out again: “Ishhar, my love!” Then, holding her anxieties inside herself, she got off the bed and moved towards him: “Where have you been for all these days?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh ran a tongue over dried lips: “… I don’t know.” </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Is this any fucking answer?” </span></span><span style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Kulwant Kaur retorted.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh tossed his kirpan to one side and stretched himself out. It felt as if he had been unwell for several days. Kulwant Kaur looked at the bed, now brimful with Ishhar Singh. A wave of sympathy washed over her. She put a loving hand on his forehead and asked: “What’s wrong, dear?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Slowly, he turned his gaze away, fidgety eyes fixating on her familiar face: “Kulwant!” His voice was stricken. Kulwant Kaur shrank into herself, said: “Yes, dear,” and began to bite her upper lip.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh unburdened himself of his turban. He turned to Kulwant Kaur, with entreating eyes. He then slapped her fleshy rump, hard, shook his head and muttered to himself: “This girl’s crazy.” </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />This sudden action made his locks fall loose. Kaulwant Kaur ran her fingers through his tresses like a comb, and asked in a voice full of affection: “Ishhar, my love, where were you all these days?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">“In the motherfucker’s house!” He stared at her and suddenly, reached out to her uplifted breasts and began to knead them. “Kasam Vaaheguru ki, you are one lively woman!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur brushed his hands aside and insisted: “Swear on my head, and tell me, where were you … did you travel to the city?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh gathered his hair back in a bun and answered: “No.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur's temper rose: “No, no, you did go to the city … where you looted a lot of money, and now you are hiding this from me.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Let me not be the fruit of my father’s loins, if I lie to you.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur was taken aback for a bit, but soon she started again: “But what I do not understand is … what happened to you that night? You were right as rain, lying next to me. You had adorned me with all the jewellery you stole from the city. You were kissing me all over, but what happened then? You got up, dressed and left.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh’s skin paled to a sickly yellow. Seeing this, Kulwant Kaur said: “Look, how your colour has changed, Ishhar sainyya! Kasam Vaaheguru ki, there is surely something you are not telling me.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“Nothing. I swear on your life.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh’s voice was nearly lifeless. This raised Kulwant Kaur’s suspicions even more. Pursing her lips she spoke, stressing each word: “Ishhar, my love, what. is. it? You are not the same person you were eight days ago.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">All of a sudden, Ishhar Singh sat up, as if someone had attacked him. He pulled Kulwant Kaur into his broad arms, and shook her with all his strength: “I am the very same, darling. Hold me tight in your embrace; let me feel the warmth of your very being.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur did not resist, but continued complaining: “What happened to you that night?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Motherfuckingness happened!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Won’t you tell me?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">“I would, if there was something to tell.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Set me alight with your own two hands, should you lie.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh wrapped his arms around her neck and buried his lips in hers. The hair from his moustache tickled Kulwant Kaur’s nostrils, and she sneezed. Both started to laugh.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh pulled off his sadri and looked at Kulwant Kaur with naked lust. “Come to me; let’s have a hand of cards.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Little beads of sweat formed on Kulwant Kaur’s lips. She blinked her eyelashes, and in a sly, shy voice said: “Fuck off!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh pinched the flesh on her bottom with vengeance. In pain, Kulwant Kaur jumped to one side: “Don’t do that, Ishhar sainyya! It hurts!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh reached out, bit Kulwant Kaur’s lips and began to chew on them. Kulwant Kaur let herself go completely. Ishhar Singh tossed his kurta off and said: “All right, let’s play trumps.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur’s lips started to quiver. Ishhar Sigh grabbed both ends of Kulwant Kaur’s chemise and, like a butcher who sloughs of the skin of a goat, pulled it off her body in a single motion and threw it aside. He gazed at her nakedness longingly and stated to pummel her all over: “Kulwant, kasam Vaaheguru ki, you are a woman worth waiting for!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur looked at the welts all over herself: “And you, my love, are a tormentor!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh smiled, under his lush, dark moustache. “Shall the torment commence?” And so saying he started to have his way with her with increased vigour. He bit into Kulwant Kaur’s lips, her earlobes, played with her upraised breasts, spanked her full bottom with loud slaps, kissed her cheeks passionately, suckled at her nipples, slathering them with his saliva. Kulwant Kaur too bubbled over in throes of passion. But despite all his overtures, Ishhar Singh could not get an erection. Every skill, every strategy, every throw of cards he could remember, he put to use like a failing gambler. Nothing worked. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur’s body was thrumming like a well-tuned instrument. Rejecting Ishhar Singh’s unnecessary movements she said: “Ishhar sainyya, that’s enough of shuffling, show your hand now!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hearing this, Ishhar Singh felt as if he had dropped an entire deck of cards. Taking a deep breath, he put his head on Kulwant Kaur’s lap and broke into a cold sweat. Kulwant Kaur did everything to warm him, but failed. So far everything took place without a word being exchanged, but when Kulwant Kaur realised that the rising ardour in her intimate parts was fated to remain unfulfilled, she got off the bed in a huff. There was a sheet hanging from a peg, which she quickly wrapped around herself, puffed her nostrils and struggled to speak: “Ishhar Sainyya, who is that bitch with whom you have been getting it off? She has wrung you dry!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh remained on the bed, taking torturous breaths, but did not say a word.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur’s anger grew: “I’m asking you! Who’s that bitch? Who’s your lover? Who is this card up your sleeve?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh answered, tiredly: “No one, Kulwant, no one.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur put her hands on her hips and said with determination: “Ishhar, my love, I will get to the bottom of this today … swear to me in the name of Vaaheguru … that there’s no woman behind all of this?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh tried to speak, but Kulwant Kaur would not allow him to get a word in: “Before you swear, know this – I am the daughter of Sardar Nihal … I will hack you to pieces if you lie to me … all right, now invoke Vaaheguru and tell me there’s no woman behind all of this?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh with great sadness bent his head and acquiesced. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur lost it completely. She leapt to the corner, picked up the kirpan, removed the sheath like a banana peel, threw it on one side and attacked Ishhar Singh.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fountains of blood sprayed everywhere. Unsatisfied even with this, Kulwant Kaur scratched and pulled at his hair like an army of demented cats, abusing her unknown rival in love with the foulest of curses. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">After a while Ishhar Singh begged weakly: “Let it go, now, Kulwant! Let it go.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">His voice had all the pain of the woebegone. Kulwant Kaur stepped back. Blood was spouting from Ishhar Singh’s neck and drenching his moustache; he opened his trembling lips and looked at Kulwant Kaur with a combination of reproach and gratitude: “My love, you acted in haste … but then, it was all for the best.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur’s envy surfaced again: “But who was she? <i>Your mother?</i>”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The blood had reached Ishhar Singh’s lips. As he tasted its acridity, his skin crawled: “And I … and I … killed five or six men … with this very kirpan.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur’s mind was only filled with the thoughts of the other woman: “Just tell me, who is that bitch?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh’s eyes were clouding, but he managed to bring a faint glimmer in them and said this to Kulwant Kaur: “She’s no bitch.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant screamed: “I am asking you, who is she!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh’s voice choked: “Let me speak.” He ran his hand over his neck, gazed at his living, pulsing blood and smiled: “People are such motherfuckers, I tell you.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur was impatient: “Ishhar sainyya, come to the point.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh’s smile spread under his blood soaked moustache: “I will … now that you have cut my fucking throat … I will, by and by, tell you everything.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And as he spoke sweat broke out on his brow. “Kulwant, my dear … I could not bring myself to tell you what happened. People are strange … there was rampant looting in the city, so, like everyone else, I too took part in it. Whatever ornaments or money I could lay my hands on, I brought home to you … but there is one thing I did not tell you.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh’s wounds had begun to throb and he stated keening in pain. Kulwant Kaur turned a blind eye to his state, and asked him spitefully: “What is it you did not tell me?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh tried to blow blood off his moustache and attempted to speak: “In the house … I targeted to loot … there were seven … seven inhabitants. I killed … six … with this very kirpan that you used to … let it go … listen! There was a girl … really pretty. I picked her up and brought her with me.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Kulwant Kaur heard him out in silence. “Kulwant, my dear, I cannot begin to tell you how lovely she was … I would have killed her too, but then I thought, no, Ishhar sainyya, you enjoy your Kulwant Kaur every day in any case, why not have a taste of this sweetmeat?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur merely responded: “Humph!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">“So I lifted her on one shoulder and set off … on the way … what was I saying? Yes, on the way … by the edge of the canal among the bushes and shrubbery, I lay her down … my first instinct was to play my cards, but then I thought, no …” Ishhar Singh’s tongue went dry.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kulwant Kaur swallowed, wet her lips and spoke: “What happened then?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">With great difficulty, words emerged from Ishhar Singh’s mouth: “I did … I did play my cards, but then … but then …”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">His voice sank.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Kulwant Kaur shook him awake: “What happened then?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ishhar Singh opened eyes that were now failing him. He looked at Kulwant Kaur’s body. Every sinew was throbbing.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">“She … she was dead … a corpse … just cold flesh … my love, my love, give me your hand.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />Kulwant Kaur placed her hand on Ishhar Singh’s, which had gone cold. Colder than ice.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />Year of Publication: 1950</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">© Mustansir Dalvi, 2018. All rights reserved. </span></span></div>
as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-90489799463923383482018-09-19T00:45:00.006+05:302020-01-28T13:02:57.214+05:30Manto - Ten Stories<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">M A N T O</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">TEN STORIES</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">translated by</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Mustansir Dalvi</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"></span><span style="color: red;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">1.<br />Sorry</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>(Sorry)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The knife <br />slices the belly open, </span></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">down, down beyond the navel. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">The pajama-string </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">is severed. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">All of a sudden, <br />the knife-wielder <br />invokes Kalma-e-ta'assuf: <br />"Che che che che... <br /><i>mishtake!"</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"></span><span style="color: red;"></span><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">2.<br />Beware!</span></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>(Khabardaar)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">With great effort, <br />rioters drag </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">the homeowner </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">out of his house. </span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">He gets to his feet, <br />brushes dust off his clothes </span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">and turns on</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"> them:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i>"Kill me if you want, </i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">but beware! <br />If you even dare touch a rupee...!"</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">3.<br />All Your Needs</span></span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">(Dawat-e-amal</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">)</span></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">When the fires were lit, <br />the whole mohalla <br />was reduced to ashes... </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">only one shop survived, <br />on whose proud forehead <br />a hoarding proclaimed:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>'One Stop Shop for All Your Building Needs'.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">4.<br />The Advantage of Ignorance</span></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>(Bekhabri ka faayda)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">A trigger pressed – <br />a bullet rages.<br />An inquisitive soul, head </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">poking out of a window,<br />laid low right where he stands.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The trigger squeezed </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">once again – a second bullet </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">screams into the night. <br />The water-carrier's mushk explodes, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">blood dilutes water, <br />both overflow.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Pressed a third time - </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">this time, missing the target, <br />the bullet drowns <br />inside a wet wall.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The forth finds<br />an old lady's back. <br />Dead even before <br />she can scream.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The fifth and the sixth, </span></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">both wasted, no one dies, </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">no one is hurt, but </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">the trigger-happy man </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">is left bereft.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">A child is seen <br />running down the street.<br />The man turns the barrel <br />in its direction.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">"What are you doing?" asks a friend.<br />"Why?"<br />"You've run out of bullets, haven't you?"<br /><i>"Be quiet! </i><br />D'you think this tiny little thing would know?"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">5.<br />Jelly</span></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>(Jelly)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">At six </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">in the morning, <br />near the petrol pump, <br />an ice-seller is stabbed.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Until seven <br />his body lies stiffening <br />soaked, drop by drop, <br />by melting ice water.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">At seven fifteen, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">police carry away the corpse. <br />All that remains <br />is blood and ice.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">A tonga passes by. <br />A child gazes in wonder <br />at fresh, congealing globules </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">of blood. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">His mouth waters. He pulls <br />at his mother's sleeve, points <br />downwards with his little finger: <br /><i>"Look Mommy, Jelly!"</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">6.<br />The Need for Rest</span></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>(Aaraam ki zaroorat)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i>"He's not dead... look, <br />there's life in him yet."</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i></i><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i>"Let it go, yaar... <br />I'm too tired."</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">7.<br />Halaal and Jhatkaa </span></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>(Halaal aur jhatkaa)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">“I put my knife to his jugular, <br />cut slowly, baaack and forth, <br />finished him, halaal fashion.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">“Why'd you do that?”<br />“Do what?”<br />“Why'd you grant him a halaal death?”<br />“It’s fun, this way.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">“Fun? Fun? Son of a bitch... <br />you should have killed him <br />with a jhatkaa... like this!”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">And the halaal maker’s neck <br />was lopped off <br />with a single jhatkaa.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;"><br />8.<br />A Dud Investment</span></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>(Ghaate ka sauda)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Two friends <br />made their selections <br />from the ten or twenty girls </span></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">in front of them. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">Then they picked one <br />and bought her together, <br />pooling in forty-two rupees.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The morning after, <br />one friend asked the girl: </span></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">"<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">What's your name?"</span></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">She told him.<br />He was left shaken: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">"<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">He told us that you...<br />were from the other religion!"<br />"He lied", said the girl.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">On hearing this, <br />he ran back to his friend: <br />"That bastard fooled us,<br />stiffed us with a girl </span></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">of our own religion.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>Come on, </i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>let's give her back!"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i><span style="color: red;"></span><span style="font-size: medium;"></span><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: medium;">9.<br />A Miracle</span></span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>(Karaamaat)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">The police commenced raids to recover looted goods. Scared, everyone tried to dispose of their loot in the dark of night. Then there were some who, finding the right moment, secreted goods far away from their homes, out of reach of the long arm of the law. One man faced a dilemma. He had come into possession of two sacks of sugar, looted from the grocer’s shop. Taking advantage of the dark, willy-nilly, he managed to dump one sack into a nearby well. But as he tried to throw the other in, he fell in himself, sack and all. Hearing his cries, many rushed to the well. Ropes were dangled into its dankness. Young worthies lowered themselves in, managed to extricate the man. Despite their efforts, after a few hours the man died. The next day, when people drew from the well to drink, the water was sweet. From that very night, lamps were found lit over the man’s grave.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;">10.<br />Good Hosts</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><i>(Kasar-e-nafsi)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "times new roman";"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The moving bus is accosted. <br />Those from the other faith <br />are pulled out one by one <br />and finished off with sword and gun. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Once the doing is done, <br />the other occupants of the bus <br />are plied with halwa, milk and fruits. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Just as the bus resumes its journey, <br />the spokesman of the hosts <br />addresses the passengers: <br />“Brothers and sisters, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">we came to know <br />about the time of the bus's arrival <br />only just now. That is why <br />we were not able to attend to you <br />in the manner we wanted.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 6.5pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">© </span>Mustansir Dalvi, 2018. All rights reserved.</span></div>
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-74739764262174396402018-07-20T13:19:00.002+05:302018-07-20T13:38:27.784+05:30Kavi Neeraj - Kaarvaan guzar gaya<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqryUt4lQuhaGhzoub2-JYAzBAo80TAZe1rGK7-dzofUyvq6g0UZii55sII0sRJI6_xA-7C1b2Qc6N0b8QxW2_REko4ST3c0HA5_TvteOy3JDUpD_PtNRB5hBzgFszT1MU0g3z-iaHgw7R/s1600/706778-256721-gopal-das-neeraj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="843" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqryUt4lQuhaGhzoub2-JYAzBAo80TAZe1rGK7-dzofUyvq6g0UZii55sII0sRJI6_xA-7C1b2Qc6N0b8QxW2_REko4ST3c0HA5_TvteOy3JDUpD_PtNRB5hBzgFszT1MU0g3z-iaHgw7R/s200/706778-256721-gopal-das-neeraj.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">In Memoriam</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Kavi Neeraj (Gopaldas Saxena)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(4 January 1925 – 18 July 2018)</span><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Kaarvaan guzar gaya gubaar dekhte rahe</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">by</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Kavi Neeraj (Gopaldas Saxena)</span><br />
<br />
<i>Swapna jhade phool se, meet chubhe shool se</i><br />
<i>mit gaye singaar sabhi baagh ke babool se</i><br />
<i>aur ham khade khade bahaar dekhte rahe</i><br />
<i>Kaarvaan guzar gaya gubaar dekhte rahe</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Neend khuli na thi ki haaye dhoop dhal gayi</i><br />
<i>paanv jab talaq uthe ke zindagi fisal gayi</i><br />
<i>paat-paat jhad gaye ke shaakh-shaakh jal gayi</i><br />
<i>chaah to nikal saki na par umar nikal gayi</i><br />
<i>geet ashk ban gaye, chand ho dafan gaye</i><br />
<i>saath ke sabhi diye, dhuaan pahan-pahan gaye</i><br />
<i>aur ham jhuke-jhuke, mod par ruke-ruke</i><br />
<i>umr ke chadhaav kaa utaar dekhte rahe</i><br />
<i>Kaarvaan guzar gaya gubaar dekhte rahe</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Kyaa shabaab tha ki phool-phool pyaar kar uthaa</i><br />
<i>kyaa suroop tha ke dekh aainaa machal uthaa</i><br />
<i>is taraf zameen aur aasmaan udhar uthaa</i><br />
<i>thaam kar jigar uthaa ki jo milaa nazar uthaa</i><br />
<i>ek din magar yahan, aisi kuch hawa chali</i><br />
<i>lut gayi kali-kali ki ghut gayi gali-gali</i><br />
<i>aur ham lute-lute, waqt se pite-pite</i><br />
<i>saans ki sharaab ka khumaar dekhte rahe</i><br />
<i>Kaarvaan guzar gaya gubaar dekhte rahe</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Haath they mile ki zulf chaand ki sanwaar doon</i><br />
<i>honth they khule ki har bahaar ko pukaar doon</i><br />
<i>dard thaa diyaa gayaa ki har dukhi ko pyaar doon</i><br />
<i>aur saans yun ki swarg bhoomi par utaar doon</i><br />
<i>ho sakaa na kuchh magar, shaam ban gayi sahar</i><br />
<i>wo uthi lehar ke deh gaye kile bikhar-bikhar</i><br />
<i>aur ham dare-dare, neer nain mein bhare</i><br />
<i>oadh kar kafan pade mazaar dekhte rahe</i><br />
<i>Kaarvaan guzar gaya gubaar dekhte rahe</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Maang bhar chali ki ek, jab nayi-nayi kiran</i><br />
<i>Dholakein dhumak uthi, thumak uthe charan-charan</i><br />
<i>shor mach gayaa ki lo chali dulhan, chali dulhan</i><br />
<i>gaon sab umad padaa, bahak uthe nayan-nayan</i><br />
<i>par tabhi zahar bhari gaaz ek woh giri</i><br />
<i>poonch gaya sindoor, taar-taar huyi chunri</i><br />
<i>aur ham ajaan se, door ke makaan se</i><br />
<i>paalki liye huye kahaar dekhte rahe</i><br />
<i>Kaarvaan guzar gaya gubaar dekhte rahe</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">The caravan has passed</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">translated by</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Mustansir Dalvi</span><br />
<br />
Dreams spill like wilted blooms, intimacies bled by thorns.<br />
In the garden, the babool is bereft of its strings of pearls,<br />
and here we stand, yearning for the coming spring<br />
but the caravan has passed, leaving us to stare<br />
at dust, rising in its wake.<br />
<br />
Barely had we opened our eyes, woe! The sun began to sink.<br />
By the time we rose to our feet, life silently slipped by.<br />
Trees shed leaves, leaves. Branches, branches burned to ash.<br />
A lifetime sped by before desires found expression.<br />
Songwords turned into tears, verses were interred.<br />
Lamps around us have taken to wearing veils of smoke<br />
and here we are, bent and broken, stymied at every turn<br />
bearing witness to the descent of our changing days<br />
while the caravan has passed, leaving us to stare<br />
at dust, rising in its wake.<br />
<br />
O, the allure of youth, that every flower was smitten!<br />
O, the enchanting image, that made the mirror lose control!<br />
Here the earth rose, there the firmament flew,<br />
every heart went a-flutter, every gaze turned upwards.<br />
But then one day, an ill wind blew,<br />
ravaging every bud, choking every street<br />
while here we remain, despoiled, broken by fortune,<br />
inebriated by the spirits of our own exhalations.<br />
The caravan has passed, leaving us to stare<br />
at dust, rising in its wake.<br />
<br />
My hands came together to comb moonlight’s tresses,<br />
my lips opened to call out to every sign of spring.<br />
I was granted pain to ease every ailing soul with love<br />
and breath, to guide the heavens to come to earth.<br />
Nothing came to pass. Dusk turned to dawn,<br />
the rising wave crushed bastions into rubble,<br />
and here we are, floundering in our fears, eyes filled with tears;<br />
we wrap shrouds around ourselves and gaze at the grave<br />
while the caravan has passed, leaving us to stare<br />
at dust, rising in its wake.<br />
<br />
When a new ray of light rode like a vermillioned bride,<br />
drums beat with abandon, each foot rose to dance.<br />
A happy cry rose: <i>Here comes the bride! Here she comes!</i><br />
The whole town turned out, a twinkle in every eye,<br />
but just then a blighted bolt befell us,<br />
obliterated the sindoor, rent apart the bridal veil,<br />
while there we were, oblivious, in a distant house<br />
watching the palanquin with its bearers depart<br />
and the caravan passed, leaving us to stare<br />
at dust, rising in its wake.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Translation and Transliteration © Mustansir Dalvi, 2018, All rights reserved.</span><br />
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<br />
Click on link to see the song from the film<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TICB_JXVMk" target="_blank">‘Nai Umar Ki Nai Fasal’</a> (dir. R. Chandra, 1966)<br />
Singer : Mohammad Rafi<br />
Music Director : Roshan<br />
<br />
<br />
कारवां गुज़र गया<br />
-<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>कवी 'नीरज'<br />
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स्वप्न झरे फूल से, मीत चुभे शूल से,<br />
लुट गये सिंगार सभी बाग़ के बबूल से,<br />
और हम खड़े-खड़े बहार देखते रहे<br />
कारवां गुज़र गया, गुबार देखते रहे!<br />
<br />
नींद भी खुली न थी कि हाय धूप ढल गई,<br />
पाँव जब तलक उठे कि ज़िन्दगी फिसल गई,<br />
पात-पात झर गये कि शाख़-शाख़ जल गई,<br />
चाह तो निकल सकी न, पर उमर निकल गई,<br />
गीत अश्क़ बन गए, छंद हो दफ़न गए,<br />
साथ के सभी दिऐ धुआँ-धुआँ पहन गये,<br />
और हम झुके-झुके, मोड़ पर रुके-रुके<br />
उम्र के चढ़ाव का उतार देखते रहे<br />
कारवां गुज़र गया, गुबार देखते रहे।<br />
<br />
क्या शबाब था कि फूल-फूल प्यार कर उठा,<br />
क्या सुरूप था कि देख आइना मचल उठा<br />
इस तरफ जमीन और आसमां उधर उठा,<br />
थाम कर जिगर उठा कि जो मिला नज़र उठा,<br />
एक दिन मगर यहाँ, ऐसी कुछ हवा चली,<br />
लुट गयी कली-कली कि घुट गयी गली-गली,<br />
और हम लुटे-लुटे, वक्त से पिटे-पिटे,<br />
साँस की शराब का खुमार देखते रहे<br />
कारवां गुज़र गया, गुबार देखते रहे।<br />
<br />
हाथ थे मिले कि जुल्फ चाँद की सँवार दूँ,<br />
होंठ थे खुले कि हर बहार को पुकार दूँ,<br />
दर्द था दिया गया कि हर दुखी को प्यार दूँ,<br />
और साँस यूँ कि स्वर्ग भूमी पर उतार दूँ,<br />
हो सका न कुछ मगर, शाम बन गई सहर,<br />
वह उठी लहर कि दह गये किले बिखर-बिखर,<br />
और हम डरे-डरे, नीर नयन में भरे,<br />
ओढ़कर कफ़न, पड़े मज़ार देखते रहे<br />
कारवां गुज़र गया, गुबार देखते रहे!<br />
<br />
माँग भर चली कि एक, जब नई-नई किरन,<br />
ढोलकें धुमुक उठीं, ठुमक उठे चरण-चरण,<br />
शोर मच गया कि लो चली दुल्हन, चली दुल्हन,<br />
गाँव सब उमड़ पड़ा, बहक उठे नयन-नयन,<br />
पर तभी ज़हर भरी, ग़ाज एक वह गिरी,<br />
पुंछ गया सिंदूर तार-तार हुई चूनरी,<br />
और हम अजान से, दूर के मकान से,<br />
पालकी लिये हुए कहार देखते रहे।<br />
कारवां गुज़र गया, गुबार देखते रहे।</div>
as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-24932854100873753902018-04-26T22:40:00.000+05:302018-04-28T10:45:54.588+05:30Ishrat-e-qatraa hai (Ghalib, translated by Mustansir Dalvi)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIuD96UuU3gw8CivjDgbiMlnTfvgtr2l1GCkeImCYMnSzuhF_rj6Yk-IxKCqM79HchtFvQLVJZCdJwV_uFTtU24oubg3Z0dP0cnwMbcNYq9isY_QMNgwUIAQZhenpAmho2wqmCTOe-qlbG/s1600/Ghalib2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="490" data-original-width="427" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIuD96UuU3gw8CivjDgbiMlnTfvgtr2l1GCkeImCYMnSzuhF_rj6Yk-IxKCqM79HchtFvQLVJZCdJwV_uFTtU24oubg3Z0dP0cnwMbcNYq9isY_QMNgwUIAQZhenpAmho2wqmCTOe-qlbG/s200/Ghalib2.jpg" width="173" /></a></div>
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Ishrat-e-qatraa hai<br /><span style="font-size: small;">a ghazal by </span><br />Mirza Ghalib</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<i>Ishrat-e-qatraa hai dariyaa mein fanaa ho jaana<br />Dard ka hadd se guzarnaa hai dawaa ho jaana</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Tujhse qismat mein meri surat-e-qufl-e-abjad<br />Tha likhaa baat ke bante hi judaa ho jaana</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Dil hua kashmakash-e-chaara-e-zehmat mein tamaam<br />Mit gaya ghisne mein is uqde ka vaa ho jaana</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Ab jafaa se bhi hai marhoom hum, Allah Allah<br />Is qadar dushman-e-arbaab-e-wafaa ho jaana</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Zo’af se giriyaa mubaddal ba-dam-e-sard hua<br />Bavar aaya hamein paani ka hawaa ho jaana</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Dil se mitna teri angusht-e-hinaai ka khayaal<br />Ho gaya gosht se naakhun ka judaa ho jaana</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Hai mujhe abr-e-bahaari ka baras kar khulna<br />Rote rote gham-e-furqat mein fanaa ho jaana</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Gar nahin nikhat-e-gul ko tere kuche ki hawas<br />Kyun hai gard-e-raah-e-jaulaan-e-sabaa ho jaana</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Bakshe hai jalwa-e-gul zouq-e-tamaashaa Ghaalib<br />Chasm ko chaahiye har rang mein vaa ho jaana</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Taa ki tujh par khule aijaaz-e-hawaa-e-saiqal<br />Dekh barsaat mein sabz aaine ka ho jaana</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
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Here is Ghalib's ghazal rendered by <a href="https://soundcloud.com/shajar/ishrat-e-qatra-m-s-subbulakshmi-ghalib-urdu-ghazal" target="_blank">M S Subbulakshmi</a><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">The droplet’s desire<br /><span style="font-size: small;">translated by</span><br />Mustansir Dalvi</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
the droplet desires but<br />
to be subsumed in the river</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
when pain breaches all limits<br />
it becomes its own cure</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
we were fated to be hasped<br />
like a many-levered lock</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
it was decreed things would fall apart<br />
the moment they came together</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
the heart was annihilated<br />
in the struggle to resolve its woes</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
the rope was frayed<br />
in the efforts to unravel the knot</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
O Allah, must we now be deprived<br />
even from oppression?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
how severe is this hostility<br />
even to a constant friend?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
my weakness replaced my grief<br />
changed it into icy breath</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
only then did I realize<br />
how water turns into air</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
the thought that your hennaed touch<br />
will no longer soothe my aching breast</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
is like the agony of ripping the nails<br />
from the flesh of my fingers</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
after a spring downpour<br />
the sky clears</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
in the gloom of separation <br />
I drown in my tears</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
if the fragrance of the blossom has no desire<br />
to waft to the street where you live</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
why then does it swirl like dust<br />
in the alleys downwind?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Ghalib, you have been granted the spectacle<br />
of the passion of flowers in bloom</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
your eyes are required to plunge<br />
into colors of every hue</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
so that the wonder of the bracing wind<br />
will unfold upon you</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
see how the mirror turns green<br />
in the season of rain</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />Translation and Transliteration © Mustansir Dalvi, 2018, All rights reserved.</span></div>
as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-20805072809002096082016-12-27T18:36:00.001+05:302016-12-27T21:10:44.572+05:30Aah, ki meri jaan ko qaraar nahin hai (Ghalib, translated by Mustansir Dalvi)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZDBgJVnGau5zisJ5aYEMzAkfItHd6-1MP2ZbxvJgbvVO31_CzUYv8hF_Q7-woZZlgvKXYjRYty7MLtxUq0XPYch0FlAgON9458kL3aNXhMVNpuSjlxOaVrOrQj7merbgGypfhZfaDxWu/s1600/ghalib+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZDBgJVnGau5zisJ5aYEMzAkfItHd6-1MP2ZbxvJgbvVO31_CzUYv8hF_Q7-woZZlgvKXYjRYty7MLtxUq0XPYch0FlAgON9458kL3aNXhMVNpuSjlxOaVrOrQj7merbgGypfhZfaDxWu/s320/ghalib+photo.jpg" width="201" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Aah, ki meri jaan ko qaraar nahin hai</span></div>
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<span style="color: red;">a Ghazal by<br /><span style="font-size: large;">
Mirza Ghalib</span></span></div>
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<i>Aah, ki meri jaan ko qaraar nahin hai</i></div>
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<i>Taaqat-e-bedaad-e-intezaar nahin hai</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Dete hai jannat hayaat-e-dahr ke badle</i></div>
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<i>Nashaa ba-andaazaa-e-khumaar nahin hai</i></div>
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<i>Giryaa nikaale hai teri bazm se mujhko</i></div>
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<i>Hai! Ki rone pe ikhtiyaar nahin hai</i></div>
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<i>Hum se abas hai ghumaan-e-ranjish-e-khaatir</i></div>
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<i>Khaak mein usshaak ki ghubaar nahin hai</i></div>
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<i>Dil se uthaa lutf-e-jalwaa-haa-e-ma’aani</i></div>
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<i>Ghair-e-gul aainaa-e-bahaar nahin hai</i></div>
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<i>Qatl ka mere kiya hai ahd to baare</i></div>
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<i>Vaae agar ahd ustuvaar nahin hai</i></div>
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<i>Tune qasam mai-kashi ki khaaee hai Ghalib</i></div>
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<i>Teri qasam ka kuch aitbaar nahin hai</i></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">The promise of paradise</span><br /><br />
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<span style="color: red;">a Ghazal translated by<br /><span style="font-size: large;">
Mustansir Dalvi</span></span></div>
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O, my soul that finds </div>
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no peace; nor patience,</div>
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for I am indifferent<br />
to the tyranny of waiting.</div>
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I am promised paradise </div>
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in return for earthly life, and yet </div>
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this pledge is not equal</div>
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to the intoxication assured</div>
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Weeping, I am ejected </div>
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from your assembly</div>
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O, that I have no control </div>
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on my tears</div>
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How futile are these </div>
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estimations of my own grief</div>
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No clouds of love blow<br />
on this parched earth</div>
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Every sense of passion </div>
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has been lifted from my heart</div>
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What is the mirror of spring </div>
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if not the flower itself?</div>
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You have found, at last</div>
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a time for my slaying</div>
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Woe, that you are </div>
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not firm on that at all</div>
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Ghalib, you may </div>
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have sworn to get drunk</div>
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But no one really believes </div>
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you actually will</div>
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<o:p> .</o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Translation and Transliteration © Mustansir Dalvi, 2016,
All rights reserved.</span></div>
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-28116873567127952642016-11-22T14:19:00.001+05:302016-11-28T08:27:37.434+05:30A Cinema House in Poona<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">A Cinema House in Poona</span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b>1.</b></span></div>
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The motion pictures came to Poona with the coming of electricity in 1910. The first cinema house to be set up was the Napier Cinema in the Poona Cantonment. The Napier started showing silent movies to paying audiences in a shed-like structure, probably the first one in Poona.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHIxB-_6UvyZpmHckf62CkWU8TGN3aLukf-l5Dxski_KaQ7LlkGdXh8i4KpUUd7zqvIH7PgKwQ3ZyssgHI2bmNtZHWa0nl-TUfVXsvL6thZyfJXuE1h7yzkTQ7jjBs8i0aWEbkRjTnf1EO/s1600/napier+poona+old.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHIxB-_6UvyZpmHckf62CkWU8TGN3aLukf-l5Dxski_KaQ7LlkGdXh8i4KpUUd7zqvIH7PgKwQ3ZyssgHI2bmNtZHWa0nl-TUfVXsvL6thZyfJXuE1h7yzkTQ7jjBs8i0aWEbkRjTnf1EO/s640/napier+poona+old.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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With time and waxing popularity, the Napier was refurbished by 1919, or thereabouts, into a fairly well-boned neo-Classical building, with timber framing and a stone gable, punctuated with a Baroque-ish front. The Napier was very popular, and is mentioned in several accounts of Poona at the time. One peculiar feature was the screening of (what we today call) serials, short features of interminable stories that attracted the masses to the theatre weekly.<br />
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<i> "Monica also took Mehera to the movies. Once when her ayah, her seven-year-old brother, and Mehera went together to the Napier Theatre (later renamed the West End Cinema), Monica wanted to buy chocolates at the concession stand and pushed some British soldiers out of the way.</i><br />
<i> Mehera was flabbergasted. "I'm not going to push a soldier," she thought. "Monica can get away with it; she's a Westerner."</i><br />
<i> Most of the movies screened in Poona were American. A serial titled The Broken Coin (1915), starring Grace Cunard and Francis Ford, was a favourite. Every week there was a new episode, but eventually they became tired of it as the story went on forever with no conclusion."</i><br />
- 'Mehera-Meher, Volume I: A Divine Romance' by David Fenster; Meher Nazar Publications<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8iFtTNYTZpjE8x0mbIkUcymxwo932_oP0-rZMHgD17qnlIcLDk1uW1Sbzd_qRqEoLEAMqWbqSoKOnePmggVtsF8pYN2wJxwbhYvuJG0_KVoFqaCWL42bGYJKm8_KsUxVnMJ8i0SXzILkW/s1600/napier+poona+front+good+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8iFtTNYTZpjE8x0mbIkUcymxwo932_oP0-rZMHgD17qnlIcLDk1uW1Sbzd_qRqEoLEAMqWbqSoKOnePmggVtsF8pYN2wJxwbhYvuJG0_KVoFqaCWL42bGYJKm8_KsUxVnMJ8i0SXzILkW/s640/napier+poona+front+good+photo.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">Located on a busy thoroughfare, but on an un-demarcated plot, the theatre had, in its immediate neighbourhood a lovely fountain and a bandstand, that was very popular, gathering audiences whenever 'The Napier Cinema Band', which consisted of British (or Indian) army-men stationed in the Cantonment, performed. </span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCd6PxlFLBW3WhyX9ze9uPW5L0YJL8OOqVcdPvsyV8fcRET4JrN_dapguiYSFbJ66b0KZI6p6sK5W9SU6PzNajW-e-zcKgiTHGKGlO23qLWqKG0ekbUHzSeDfzBfzcfhs1Fg4ZeDyiEJRi/s1600/napiier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCd6PxlFLBW3WhyX9ze9uPW5L0YJL8OOqVcdPvsyV8fcRET4JrN_dapguiYSFbJ66b0KZI6p6sK5W9SU6PzNajW-e-zcKgiTHGKGlO23qLWqKG0ekbUHzSeDfzBfzcfhs1Fg4ZeDyiEJRi/s640/napiier.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thank you, Amit Vachcharajani, for this image.</td></tr>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><i>"In 1916, the first Poona (Anglo Indian) and the 2nd Poona (the first Indian company) gave a concert at Napier Cinema in aid of the War Fund, raising 100 Rupees. The Rosebuds (in nighties) sang 'Goodnight Mr. Moon' and were encored, before Miss Sawyer (Captain of the 2nd Poona) posed as Britannia in the concluding patriotic pageant.</i></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"> -'Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World', edited by Shirleen Robinson and Simon Sleight, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pg. 172</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXbg4JVVY5727ZlwwT9L1gpH7A_G_21CvNkrIse-IbqsVWcJAm_63qlLJnQQOL8TESOO4PCObpgOXOm-xcgXqeQF3yUlGItXeMtrMv4CvMuHI-jlmx4Totjzcbhj2Zu6k-upzuZKlWadIj/s1600/napier+poona+front+good+photo+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXbg4JVVY5727ZlwwT9L1gpH7A_G_21CvNkrIse-IbqsVWcJAm_63qlLJnQQOL8TESOO4PCObpgOXOm-xcgXqeQF3yUlGItXeMtrMv4CvMuHI-jlmx4Totjzcbhj2Zu6k-upzuZKlWadIj/s640/napier+poona+front+good+photo+2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The Napier Cinema became Napier 'talkies' in 1931. Not long after that came the big theatres in Bombay, under the patronage of the great American Studios like the Universal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros. Many old cinema houses were refurbished in this, the Indian Golden Age of Hollywood, and the Napier seems to have undergone a change too. Perhaps under the influence of the Western India Theatre Association and 20th Century Fox (I am speculating), the Napier was blessed with a two storey RCC front and a new name- the West End.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_CO-JzygVFX-TN1ajYigqXN-ia73j8zT80pO4sTxzT6_VjT_izSCKxEacZGPhSTvgnir43QBYGDAXaPEnISBcb3xwKhYuQFe-KJ1q2xbAhQee0sj1EjGccZyxR1NDE8i7eI3qrzgBm-w8/s1600/West+end.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_CO-JzygVFX-TN1ajYigqXN-ia73j8zT80pO4sTxzT6_VjT_izSCKxEacZGPhSTvgnir43QBYGDAXaPEnISBcb3xwKhYuQFe-KJ1q2xbAhQee0sj1EjGccZyxR1NDE8i7eI3qrzgBm-w8/s640/West+end.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The new building was superimposed on the old gable. You can see the poor gable sticking out of the top of the new building in the photo below. The new West End highlighted its own name twice on the facade, once in large concrete letters inset as the second floor balcony balustrade and the other as a vertical mast along its axis of symmetry, sticking out upwards, and skywards from the building in an Art Deco manner. While not an Art Deco building as such, the new front, with a cantilevered porch, fake arches, and vertical ornament striping its sides fell well within the fashion of the time. The West End shows some proto-Deco flattened ornament, sloping chajjas and a Palladian symmetry. Notice the protruding porch supported on concrete brackets.<br />
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This West End was the cinema house of my childhood. Now that I look back, many elements of the old Napier still remained even then, especially the old timber staircase that I remember vividly, painted olive.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd3xqh5tqUL6GcJ9bo4ErcrAvWGR8t8PmztODiuCJSKq3S-pekZHf16Y169I8OhmOZ61i3obxZ7efSRIhZJnk4ne9VklnMuoKoDC7fyuF2PoMM2YTKKsPBDKYKpuQMi_U-hArg9hmYOfLi/s1600/Westend+Cinema2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd3xqh5tqUL6GcJ9bo4ErcrAvWGR8t8PmztODiuCJSKq3S-pekZHf16Y169I8OhmOZ61i3obxZ7efSRIhZJnk4ne9VklnMuoKoDC7fyuF2PoMM2YTKKsPBDKYKpuQMi_U-hArg9hmYOfLi/s640/Westend+Cinema2.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b>2.</b></span></div>
The West End Cinema was within spitting distance of the Empire Cinema and the Marz-o-Rin Fast Food Place, famous for its eggy, mayonnaise chicken rolls and sandwiches and guava juice in milk bottles.<br />
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The West End marks one site of my misbegotten youth. This was my second school, where I saw all sorts of movies my parents did not approve of. Between the late sixties and the very early eighties, this is where I was indoctrinated in a variety of World Cinema, and force-fed such dire gems as <i>Sssssssnake</i> (Don't say it, hiss it!) (US), <i>3 Fantastic Supermen</i> (Italy), <i>Fantomas Stikes Back</i> (France) and <i>The Swiss Conspiracy</i> (<i>"My father always told me- son, never lose your head, or your arse goes with it"</i>)(Germany/US). I can safely bet that none of you have ever heard of any of these atrocities, much less seen them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfdIqhlqvdOoAdnyHEUQnBEtqmtb_NusJCr8F3DPVghE3U0vCy_oQ5d2WsNH6-g5qSLC5iv77ktC5uImtdJaDQlokKmyeopo7-CpKEq6tUY4PwHcIUG09l2-mL-HCLf8XItJIyqX8w0CUi/s1600/sssnake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfdIqhlqvdOoAdnyHEUQnBEtqmtb_NusJCr8F3DPVghE3U0vCy_oQ5d2WsNH6-g5qSLC5iv77ktC5uImtdJaDQlokKmyeopo7-CpKEq6tUY4PwHcIUG09l2-mL-HCLf8XItJIyqX8w0CUi/s400/sssnake.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYl_j7r-zKToGO0jnruNVR8t2G0oBm6SazPxZRW9fSsieW1KsuLJfAtoJ5Oe4Ut5lJZBadkAuETcMXTA6FVLytv4pJy8ZzEa9Q9TTLAg-8xXq05EOMxOUNArLDcUUkXucEckeD6Cd4cA-n/s1600/Fantomas_Strikes_Back.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYl_j7r-zKToGO0jnruNVR8t2G0oBm6SazPxZRW9fSsieW1KsuLJfAtoJ5Oe4Ut5lJZBadkAuETcMXTA6FVLytv4pJy8ZzEa9Q9TTLAg-8xXq05EOMxOUNArLDcUUkXucEckeD6Cd4cA-n/s320/Fantomas_Strikes_Back.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhATLOfhSZxwOz8J7XHBJ6PZfDr1_es1hRo3-eoMZKFyFNw1ZAauew5uJFgUow8LLEsFoVudl9vwUAytSZjVW_eZbv7SAzs9CO44nGcOp2rmSJN9oLr7MECWz5Zv8aCnfI0L-tYrVwKi_yB/s1600/three_fantastic_supermen_poster_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhATLOfhSZxwOz8J7XHBJ6PZfDr1_es1hRo3-eoMZKFyFNw1ZAauew5uJFgUow8LLEsFoVudl9vwUAytSZjVW_eZbv7SAzs9CO44nGcOp2rmSJN9oLr7MECWz5Zv8aCnfI0L-tYrVwKi_yB/s320/three_fantastic_supermen_poster_01.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
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I specifically remember being taken to watch <i>Lost in the Desert</i> (South Africa) as a special school outing during my 2nd or 3rd standard. A horribly traumatic choice for us young-uns (and a reflection on our teachers) considering the terrible, terrible things that happen to the child in the film, including being spat in the eye by a venomous snake, after surviving a plane crash.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNndZj8kVqLVbyoctKIuIl_yDwcdiqWALhfTwROqDmw7BkR5tMe_qSrdzU4QIz_RSr-dlXW03-oFwd19B1ytaUu1wrcqdlCcsjd7zpOxlRWxTHHFeYA1lWh1g9A6XlsTFnA6YZ5QF_1tjB/s1600/lost+in+the+desert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNndZj8kVqLVbyoctKIuIl_yDwcdiqWALhfTwROqDmw7BkR5tMe_qSrdzU4QIz_RSr-dlXW03-oFwd19B1ytaUu1wrcqdlCcsjd7zpOxlRWxTHHFeYA1lWh1g9A6XlsTFnA6YZ5QF_1tjB/s320/lost+in+the+desert.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
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The theatre was bounded into a rather large compound, as you can see, that had a low brick boundary that bounders and lowlifes (such as myself) would sun themselves on. On one corner was a marquee that displayed two large posters- one for the feature and another for the matinee. You can see how much these posters would have impacted my innocent self.<br />
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And observe the building extending in the rear. That was the site of a genuine 'merican soda-fountain, that we would aim directly for, if we had any money leftover after buying the tickets. A proper Saturday Night Fever experience, a movie I saw here too. My combed back hair dates from this vintage. The West End made me much of who I am today, I am sorry to report.<br />
<br />
Later, the fountain became a traffic roundabout and the bandstand vanished.<br />
Later still, in the 1980s, the West End itself was demolished to exploit the real estate value of its compound.<br />
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All that remains today is the traffic roundabout.<br />
So it goes.<br />
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-76842617358200097022016-09-04T18:50:00.001+05:302016-09-04T21:33:50.487+05:30In Conversation with Vikas Dilawari: Contradictions and Complexities in Urban Conservation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Vikas Dilawari</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Image: Piyul Mukherjee</span></td></tr>
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<br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Contradictions and Complexities in Urban Conservation:</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">In Conversation with Vikas Dilawari</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: red;">by</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Mustansir Dalvi</span><br />
<br />
This blogpost marks the news that Vikas Dilawari has been endowed with his 12th UNESCO Award for the restoration of the Cama Building at Gilder Road, which has received the UNESCO Asia Pacific Award of Merit 2016. The building (A Grade III Heritage Building) is owned by the Garib Zarthostiona Rehthan Fund, who have won their third UNESCO Award.<br />
<br />
This conversation was first published in<br />
Tekton: A Journal of Architecture, Urban Design & Planning;<br />
Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2016; pp. 72 - 87<br />
<br />
Published with kind permission from Tekton.<br />
www.tekton.mes.ac.in<br />
<br />
All images published with kind permission from Vikas Dilawari Architects<br />
All images copyright (c) Vikas Dilawari Architects, and may not be used without their express permission, except where specified<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Mumbai</b> has been particularly fortunate in having a well established urban conservation movement for close on twenty five years now. Right from the early nineties, several exercises in identifying buildings, precincts and making fabric assessment for conservation were carried out, and in most cases legislated. The canonical buildings that Mumbai is identified by have been attended to, and are conserved with Grade I & II Heritage listings. The cave temples of Elephanta and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus have been designated as World Heritage Sites. Most of the buildings of the Raj have been duly prioritised. So much for the good news.<br />
<br />
Of the rest, much of which far exceeds the imperial buildings, attention to conservation, whether through legislation or actual intervention has been patchy, to say the least, and increasingly becoming more difficult to achieve. Buildings that were created by home-grown architects, urban precincts that define areas of consistent urban fabric like the Art Deco Precincts or Girangaon, the areas of the mills from the early twentieth century have all got a short shrift, not least because of the post-millennial city's obsession with the monetisation of real estate. Newer laws and newly framed Development Control rules have further diluted the early gains of the conservation movement, while the new mantra of 'redevelopment' allows for vast swathes of the city's historic past to be flattened for the insertion of new global homogeneity.<br />
<br />
Conservationists like Vikas Dilawari fight an increasingly difficult battle to get their projects realised, to preserve buildings for posterity and memory. There are only a few conservation practices in Mumbai of quality, and Dilawari is amongst the foremost. Dilawari was very forthcoming in participating in this dialogue, unravelling the several complexities and contradictions in the practice of urban conservation, especially in Mumbai.<br />
<br />
<br />
DALVI<br />
<b>Are there classical or canonical approaches to conservation? </b><br />
<br />
DILAWARI<br />
Conservation as a field in India has been following, informally or formally, the canons of the West. This is evident in the formal approach of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in the manner by which they look after its monuments since late 19th century. Thereafter in late 1980’s, when the concept of conservation of built heritage was introduced, the thinking was once again dominated by the approaches from England, for example from the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) started by William Morris that forms the base approach to English Heritage.<br />
<br />
Our country by and large does not have adequate governmental support, nor has it done enough research to advocate any alternate approaches, unlike the Japanese who boldly introduced the Nara Draft Charter on authenticity in the mid-1990’s. The Indian charter by INTACH was a small step forward but theory and practice both have to be put together, keeping our context in mind.<br />
<br />
It is also evident that most conservation architects practising in India were mostly trained formally in UK and/ or Europe and their practice revolved around the broad philosophy of the Venice Charter and other international charters that emerges out as a response to the threats to conservation in Europe at the time.<br />
<br />
<br />
DALVI<br />
<b>Have these definitions to Conservation changed over the last two decades or so? How does your practice relate to this?</b><br />
<br />
DILAWARI<br />
The approach and definitions have certainly changed in last two decades depending on several factors- whether it is a government sponsored project (as the government owns most of public heritage). If so, there is a paradigm shift to ‘beautification’ rather than real conservation. One more reason for this shift is that the soul of conservation lies in tradition and skills. Unfortunately these do not get revived in any ‘sarkari’ project, where the focus is on the contractor who can manage such projects where such beautification is profitable.<br />
<br />
In the private arena on the other hand, it is heartening to know that so many conservation architects in different parts of the country are trying their best to establish good bench marks. Private clients are now new patrons for conservation. However, access to craftsmen, good skills, and easy availability of traditional materials are some obstacles, along with a lack of governmental or intuitional support by way of legislation.<br />
<br />
My practice revolves around private clients, mostly. I was fortunate to get a free hand in doing my projects the way I wanted. We have tried our best to follow international charters adapted to the local context and the aim is also to revive lost skills in many of the projects. Let me explain this with an example- In the West, they follow a policy of minimum intervention and the retention of maximum original fabric to retain material authenticity, whereas for us economic viability is a major concern. In all our projects we try to revive some or the other lost crafts or skills or else we try to integrate good craftsmanship as a part of mainstream construction.<br />
<br />
<br />
DALVI<br />
<b>How does conservation contribute to the quality of urban life in a city?</b><br />
<br />
DILAWARI<br />
The buildings that we conserve are the architecture of yesteryears. Since they are constructed well, with traditional wisdom, materials and skills; and as they fit well in the planned urban design or town planning scheme or have organically grown, their conservation contributes to the continued quality of life and space. It is not just the physical attributes of the architecture, townscape, roofscape, mass and scale but the quality of space, the hierarchy of spaces and the social and cultural use that also need to be attended to.<br />
<br />
For past 7 or 8 years, we are dealing with many unloved residential buildings of the last century. We have realised that conserving them properly ensures a balance of growth. It is like natural law- the old will go and the new will replace it. In a nutshell, urban renewal helps in retaining continuity and brings gradual change. It is a mix of green and brown field development, unlike the present trend in Mumbai which is only redevelopment. Clean sweep redevelopment affects the urban quality of the city as it displaces original inhabitants, changes the class demography of the area, brings in severe load to already fragile infrastructure and completely alters the typology of built form and use of community spaces.<br />
<br />
<br />
DALVI<br />
<b>Bombay, as we know it today is the product of the City Improvement Trust schemes that came up in the 1890s in the wake of the plague. The city was reorganised into recognisable precincts that still flourish today. Most of the buildings in the scheme have been in continuous use for nearly a century now. </b><br />
<br />
DILAWARI<br />
We have come to the conclusion that many of late 19th century schemes like the City Improvement Scheme might have affected what could be heritage then (had this concept been there), but it improved the city’s quality of life and the built form. This itself is worthy of today’s heritage, despite the Rent Control Act.<br />
<br />
Conservation of details like chajjas, cornices and balconies served a functional purpose of keeping the building protected from ill effects of rains. Similarly clusters of buildings displayed uniform patterns like arcades, building lines, mass and scale, which imparted a unique urban design value that helped maintain the city’s identity.<br />
<br />
<br />
DALVI<br />
<b>You have been involved in the conservation of some of Mumbai’s most loved structures- the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, the Municipal Corporation building, the stained glass of the Rajabai Tower, amongst many others. What do you bring to these buildings in your specific approach? </b><br />
<br />
DILAWARI<br />
Let’s begin chronologically with our projects of buildings loved by all in the city:<br />
The Rajabai Tower of the university library and its stained glass project was the first one, way back in 1998. That’s the time when conservation was in its infancy. The clients were unaware of conservation and so were contractors. It was essential to have them both educated in the field of conservation.<br />
<br />
Since the Tower was a Gothic Revival building and the project backed by British Council Division, it was imperative to use all the skills of my post-graduation degree from York to restore it scientifically and authentically. This was the first project in the city with British experts coming to India to train Indian counterparts because of which a high bench mark was established. The trainees who had previous background in conservation were introduced to conservation philosophy and were taught the lost arts of stained glass painting and glazing, leading to their revival. The Indian experts thus trained have been busy in their own private practices restoring several other buildings.<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">Restoration of stained glass on the Neo-Gothic Rajabai
Tower, </span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">Mumbai University Library<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">Image: Vikas Dilawari Architects</span></div>
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There were educational workshops open to the public wherein they could come and visit the library and see the ongoing work also created a tremendous awareness in this subject. Being stationed in the building for two years, we were delighted when a peon or a cleaner would inform us if something wrong was happening.<br />
<br />
Restoration of the fire damaged Municipal Corporation Hall was done with INTACH Mumbai Chapter. This project set a benchmark in actual restoration as there was an extensive damage, both structural and non-structural related to soot. This was the first such project in the country concerning damage due to fire. A lot of science, in the form of petrography tests and load calculations was involved. We had to use modern materials like steel channels and plates to strengthen existing cracked stone brackets despite having stone craftsmen, as the load of the floors above did not allow bracket removal.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSzdgdB0ye7_WrUWLF6XdwStU7_vUPjJctMa4ERhBmvDS52ELDgi9puV_VvS2enK1Fxe_ylFwJ2zLMbPM4W8y8A3CNePLiiR2_dUFI-ePQrgvKZ74EO6GH_ittoO-kXMO0UsDKoRmkhs6C/s1600/3.Detail+of+gilding+in+the+Municipal+Corporation+Hall+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSzdgdB0ye7_WrUWLF6XdwStU7_vUPjJctMa4ERhBmvDS52ELDgi9puV_VvS2enK1Fxe_ylFwJ2zLMbPM4W8y8A3CNePLiiR2_dUFI-ePQrgvKZ74EO6GH_ittoO-kXMO0UsDKoRmkhs6C/s320/3.Detail+of+gilding+in+the+Municipal+Corporation+Hall+1.jpg" width="269" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">Detail of gilding in the Municipal Corporation
Hall. <br />The project helped reviving
the lost art of gold gilding.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">Image: Vikas Dilawari Architects</span></td></tr>
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This was also our first project where help was taken from traditional craftsmen, the Sompuras (temple builders) to reconstruct arches in Porbandar stone according to the architect F W Stevens’ original design, along with reviving the lost art of gold gilding. Professional conservators helped restore the decorative chandeliers and paintings that adorned the hall. Help from eminent architectural historians in the UK resulted in the right colour schemes with gilt being used. The Coats of Arms were repainted in their true colours to return old charm and glory to this splendid hall. This project resulted in convincing the decision makers of the MCGM (Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai) to accept conservation as a discipline and a full-fledged cell was established thereafter to look into other heritage structures owned by the MCGM.<br />
<br />
The Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum project was a god-sent gift, a unique PPP project, which allowed all the freedom and flexibility one desired for an ideal restoration. It was the project where the client, the sponsor, the architect and the display designer all went on a study trip to the UK to study around twenty of their best museums. The Building was the most opulent building of its time that had fallen prey to neglect and dilapidation; restoring it was like a dream come true. The previous experience of Rajabai Tower and the Corporation Hall gave us the necessary confidence to do the same in the most economical manner using the best contractors, as also monitoring and controlling system on a day to day basis.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhplS6tam7JSQC0Z2kSYgLgVM4iI0g9b-BdCCK4nkJLNj7QDINbJ5uL0KGMCnHZiSGoFgOjvdZ6qyDepkjCeO-5TsCGIK0vKRWVUIDq6qEul3XHgHETrBKnP1lJOuJYOM9amiBz4FybkDc3/s1600/5.+Bhau+daji+Lad+Museum.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhplS6tam7JSQC0Z2kSYgLgVM4iI0g9b-BdCCK4nkJLNj7QDINbJ5uL0KGMCnHZiSGoFgOjvdZ6qyDepkjCeO-5TsCGIK0vKRWVUIDq6qEul3XHgHETrBKnP1lJOuJYOM9amiBz4FybkDc3/s640/5.+Bhau+daji+Lad+Museum.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">Restoration of Dr Bhau Daji Lad
Museum- <br />a holistic conservation effort</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18.4px;">Image: Vikas Dilawari Architects</span></span></td></tr>
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The BDL project was the first holistic conservation effort- from landscape to display, from its building to artefacts, all under the dynamic leadership of Mrs Tasneem Mehta, the Director of the museum. Our challenge was to integrate state of art services in a discreet manner and adaptively reuse under-utilised spaces of the historic museum, while restoring them as authentically as possible, reviving lost craft skills in the process. The project got a UNESCO Asia-Pacific Award of Excellence in 2005 which is the highest award that any of Mumbai’s conserved buildings have received so far.<br />
<br />
<br />
DALVI<br />
<b>How collaborative is the practice of conservation in India? Could you give us a broad overview of your practices once you get a project?</b><br />
<br />
DILAWARI<br />
It is collaborative now, especially as the scale is widening and city level issues are involved. Now multinational and national PMCs and infrastructural firms are entering the mainstream. Projects are awarded based on a tendering system. My firm has stayed away from this kind of collaborations. Our practice is of a modest size, and we prefer to collaborate with local MEP consultants, structural engineers and landscape designers and to work as a team like any other architectural project. My small practice has 2 to 3 young architects and a few student trainees. We have an experienced site supervisor who has worked hands-on at sites. We also bring in the inputs of quantity surveyors and structural engineers, case by case.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8H_OTi41RYmSirazaHGlzT8Nl6_RrGMesCeAzfWqvSKig74AzMP6mrBAfxviyD1P6JpIMy5suF-3xcbsPkC9JXZviKeIjiFK61Fu_tk_EG1IJl_eHL2zt2KdTiR9bYjQaDn2OBidneYiG/s1600/10.+JN+petit+Library.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="406" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8H_OTi41RYmSirazaHGlzT8Nl6_RrGMesCeAzfWqvSKig74AzMP6mrBAfxviyD1P6JpIMy5suF-3xcbsPkC9JXZviKeIjiFK61Fu_tk_EG1IJl_eHL2zt2KdTiR9bYjQaDn2OBidneYiG/s640/10.+JN+petit+Library.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">Interiors of the restored Reading Hall <br />at J.N.
Petit Library, Mumbai</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18.4px;">Image: Vikas Dilawari Architects</span></span></td></tr>
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We normally prepare a fabric status report and share it with the clients. This is essential as clients and architects need to be on the same page- our philosophy, their brief. If and only if they agree with the findings of the report do we move to the next stage of preparing tenders. We normally choose a lead contractor and then try to get specialised conservation agencies as external agencies that can work with the lead contractor which we closely monitor. We believe in visiting the site fairly regularly and with close monitoring, we try to make each project economical. <br />
<br />
<br />
DALVI<br />
<b>The Conservation movement began in Mumbai in the early 1990s, and as did your practice. The city has seen some successes in the conservation of some iconic buildings but has been woefully inadequate in terms of conserving precincts. What seems to have gone wrong?</b><br />
<br />
DILAWARI<br />
Conservation has never got the required governmental support. It emerged in Bombay as a discipline due to activism and concern of NGOs and citizen groups and hence has seen a lot of ups and downs. From being the first city to have conservation bye-laws, it is infuriating to see the same laws being tweaked. Now Grade I and II identified buildings are protected, whereas the bulk that forms the urban grain is removed from its jurisdiction. This is the result of a lack of incentives for conservation, and is unsustainable because under the Rent Control Act, market rents can’t be charged. The government also unfortunately believes that urban grain is not important and allows its redevelopment.<br />
<br />
Popular landmarks do get governmental funding but repairs are carried out by usual bureaucratic procedures, with the lowest bidder getting the work. As a result, many of the buildings do not accrue real benefit of this spending. Moreover, the ‘beautification’ approach I described earlier dominates such repairs, where cleaning is more important as compared to actual structural repairs or strengthening.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw_gJXqntMLa6WXBjNVuZ0S6yZ5hQLNRhMl5-20BhltMEdPb-xcZUAAtmVcEn0Uaks761ihPZwnyZG3p_J_086JZCSCemXiiakSAvvvUL6xMf2L9cB1ojuq-ALd5sLlX36FKirhpuZe2PJ/s1600/IMG-20160904-WA0000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw_gJXqntMLa6WXBjNVuZ0S6yZ5hQLNRhMl5-20BhltMEdPb-xcZUAAtmVcEn0Uaks761ihPZwnyZG3p_J_086JZCSCemXiiakSAvvvUL6xMf2L9cB1ojuq-ALd5sLlX36FKirhpuZe2PJ/s640/IMG-20160904-WA0000.jpg" width="360" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Restored Nave, Interior of the 433 year old St. John the Baptist Church at Thane</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18.4px;">Image: Vikas Dilawari Architects</span></td></tr>
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There are also very few private owners or clients interested in quality conservation. It is thanks to a small number of really concerned and knowledgeable citizens that the conservation torch is still alive.<br />
<br />
It is desirable that rent control be removed and skillful repairs using like-to-like materials with minimum intervention be introduced meticulously. We need to appreciate that when residential tenanted properties are conserved and repaired, they serve as affordable housing, which is missing in the city.<br />
<br />
<br />
DALVI<br />
<b>What is your opinion of the new rules for redevelopment in Mumbai, especially the sections 33/7 and 33/9? You have talked about the fabric of the city. What consequences do you think Cluster Development will have on the city’s fabric? How do you look at the new DC rules that are to be promulgated shortly?</b><br />
<br />
DILAWARI<br />
It is unfortunate that our Government thinks that “Redevelopment” is the only solution for the dilapidated tenanted buildings. Redevelopment comes with a price. It erases a close knit interwoven socio- cultural fabric which forms that particular place; replacing it with a new typology, new inhabitants who get less of public facilities like reduced open spaces. It also severely loads the already fragile century-old infrastructure, as that has not been renewed. It is really sad that the surveys reveal a decline in the population in B, C & D wards of Mumbai but we are constructing high density, upmarket, high-rise blocks which certainly don’t cater to those in need of affordable housing. This is because “redevelopment” only caters to the greed of individual developer and is not related to any larger picture of the city.<br />
<br />
Cluster Development thus comes into play within the larger picture. Ideally, structurally sound and vibrant housing stock should be viewed like trees and can be retained while new development can happen around it, integrating it harmoniously. This is not the case here, as Cluster Development wants a clean slate. That is where the problem is. Imagine the Bhendi Bazaar area where Cluster Redevelopment is proposed; the very name of that place has a ‘Bazaar’ attached to it. But, if you see the redevelopment proposal, the bazaar factor will be erased forever, especially the famous Chor Bazaar.<br />
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DALVI<br />
<b>Hasn't the problem of redevelopment been the result of the government largesse of 'free housing'. In a sense this did create unreasonable aspirations in the inhabitants and has effectively killed off the work of the Repair Board that quietly worked for several decades to keep ld buildings functional?</b><br />
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DILAWARI<br />
Giving free additional space as per minimum standards is a big burden and should be curbed as it affects the overall health of the city. Areas like Bhendi Bazaar are already very dense and they will become even denser affecting the quality of life which is all important.<br />
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Imagine the CP Tank area undergoing Cluster Redevelopment. It would be really disastrous as that place has such a complex interwoven socio-cultural matrix which is the actual soul of the area. The Cluster Redevelopment following sections 33/7 and 33/9 will destroy that. For example, the Lal Baug area is known for its cultural festivals like Ganeshotsav, with pandals that come up in the open spaces of chawls or in common open spaces between buildings. With redevelopment this too will be affected.<br />
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It is really sad that no investments are being done to encourage good repairs which are more effective, easily implementable and help in retaining quality of life and benefits the city. Charging redevelopment cess is one way where money can be ploughed back directly to improve the infrastructure of that area and used as additional cess fund to repair this building stock. Why is TDR (transfer of development rights) used for redevelopment but not for building repairs is the question we should ask. <br />
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I am currently involved in restoring a fair number of residential community housing or tenanted buildings belonging to various trusts and I find that once these are restored, it is hard to believe you are still in Mumbai, as these buildings are actually neglected gems but seen together as a precinct, they are like oases in a concrete desert. <br />
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DALVI<br />
<b>One of the ways your conservation practice stands out amongst others in the city is the attention you have paid to the lived-in buildings, especially domestic architecture inhabited by largely the middle class of the city? What has been your experience with dealing with a number of end-users, as opposed to a single client or patron?</b><br />
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DILAWARI<br />
It is not easy to deal with several clients. Dealing with tenants as individuals is always difficult as their tastes vary largely. <br />
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I was fortunate to get very good clients in trustees of the Sethna group of buildings, who believed in being custodians of heritage and were concerned of the difficulties of middle and poor income residents. These buildings and the spaces used by the owners had great associational value as the generation staying currently was born here and had bonded with this area and community.<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">Sethna group of buildings, Tardeo, Mumbai<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18.4px;">Image: Vikas Dilawari Architects</span></span></div>
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These were ordinary buildings, fairly dilapidated with nothing significant in its external appearance. However, as we proceeded further, we realised that these buildings are actually beautiful in their simplicity. The past interventions had stripped the buildings of its details and once we restored them, we realised that other owners wanted the same treatment for their buildings. We found that skillful and economical repairs, using good modern material replacements (like RCC slabs in place of jack arches), we could prolong the life of the building. So a pilot exercise on one building helped us restore seven buildings in this complex.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvhK3IaZzAWJZ3Mk7tWXpOUSj6GDqqMryjlOeKSy-PtOkbspDEs_zdw9Auw1hq-tiA8O-hlPeN746QPux10K4eLd0xwc0Nig8qWUZfBH6yaaoCQCNTxs59bTsrH1Ew5nkHIVR_Nwcb8RWl/s1600/9.+CAMA+BLDG.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvhK3IaZzAWJZ3Mk7tWXpOUSj6GDqqMryjlOeKSy-PtOkbspDEs_zdw9Auw1hq-tiA8O-hlPeN746QPux10K4eLd0xwc0Nig8qWUZfBH6yaaoCQCNTxs59bTsrH1Ew5nkHIVR_Nwcb8RWl/s400/9.+CAMA+BLDG.JPG" width="263" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">View of restored Cama Building <br />at Gilder Lane,
Mumbai Central<br /><span style="line-height: 18.4px;">Image: Vikas Dilawari Architects</span></span></td></tr>
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The next complex we did was Lal Chimney. Here, we realised that these were ornate structures and required a lot of wood work which, when restored, brought back the old time charm. This made us believe that many of old Mumbai’s unloved buildings are actually precious gems. We are now dealing with a large ensemble of 23 buildings in Gilder Lane. Here, we are now restoring a few buildings, and at the same time, redesigning new buildings in scale and harmony with the existing by using salvaged materials and catering to the new needs of the community like introducing a geriatric ward for the caring of the aged.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Corridor of restored Cama Building <br />at Gilder Lane, M<span style="line-height: 115%;">umbai Central</span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 18.4px;">Image: Vikas Dilawari Architects</span></span></span></td></tr>
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DALVI<br />
<b>You have talked of making your practice of conserving public monuments transparent-that is- open to the view of the general public, even as the work goes on. Could you elaborate on the values (and pitfalls) of this process?</b><br />
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DILAWARI<br />
In the UK, any project that receives government funding has to be educational in nature which means that a model or a film explaining what was done or the actual work that is happening is showcased in a regulated manner to the citizen. We did that for stained glass work while working on the Rajabai Tower. This not only generates a lot of interest but brings a great amount of awareness at all cross-sections of the society. I believe this will also ensure high standards as it is open for scrutiny by all citizens. The only pitfall is that cynics and vested interests will always criticise and this can be demoralising. <br />
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DALVI<br />
<b>As an educationist, what were your learnings in terms of the propagation of conservation among architects? Why do the precepts of conservation not permeate through general architectural practice, as sustainability and barrier-free design has now begun to do?</b><br />
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DILAWARI<br />
<br />
I have now been teaching and practising for the past 25 years in various capacities, initially as a visiting lecturer teaching conservation as an elective subject and then as a head of department. The propagation of Conservation has taught me to make architects aware of the built environment they have inherited by understanding the layers- first, the historical, followed by the social and cultural patterns prevalent at that time that shaped the environment, and then finally, understanding the construction technology and materials that built it. This task is possible by site surveys and through text books. Mapping these layers shows how interestingly our cities are made and why they work.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">St John the Baptist Church at Thane, exterior after restoration</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18.4px;">Image: Vikas Dilawari Architects</span></td></tr>
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After the mapping, the next stage is to understand the defects and its causes whether in an urban area or in a building. It is here you analyse how wrong policies can result in the deterioration of built environment. This is the complex part, as time available and the maturity level of the student (due to the lack of practical experience) generates good mapping but not ideal working solutions. I strongly believe that practical knowledge should be coupled with theory while imparting education, as it happens in medical colleges housed within hospital complexes. <br />
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If one looks back to our academic syllabus, measured drawing was an integral part of the training but this is now ignored by many. Reintroduction of such subjects will give an opportunity to students to get firsthand experience of a monument that will educate them in materials and construction technology. I have also noticed that our sensitivity bar needs to be raised. If conservation is introduced at the under graduate level, then it helps in controlling of egos as we learn to respect the original creation.<br />
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In the five years of architectural education, the focus is on creation however, the preservation of built environment should also be included. Mainstreaming is possible when there is a need or demand in the society, backed by appropriate government policies, which presently are lacking. Once conservation becomes viable professionally to sustain a practice, I guess it will become more permeable. <br />
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<b>VIKAS DILAWARI</b><br />
Vikas Dilawari is a conservation architect with more than two and half decades of experience exclusively in the conservation field, ranging from urban to architecture to interiors. He obtained his double Masters in Conservation from School of Planning and Architecture (New Delhi) and from the University of York (UK).<br />
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He was the Head of Department of Conservation Department at Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture (KRVIA) Mumbai from its inception in 2007 till Aug 2014. He has served as advisory roles in International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). He is a Trustee of Indian Heritage Cities Network (IHCN) and Co- Convener of INTACH Mumbai Chapter.<br />
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His practice has executed conservation projects ranging from prime landmarks to unloved buildings of Mumbai. His nationwide work includes projects ranging from historic homes, palaces, residential buildings, educational buildings (Schools and Colleges), hostels, churches, temples, dharamsalas, museums, banks, office buildings, lecture halls, fountains and hospitals. Several of them have received national and international recognition. A total of twelve of his projects have won UNESCO ASIA PACIFIC Awards for Cultural Preservation in SE Asia.<br />
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Architect Dilawari has lectured and written extensively on the subject of conservation nationally and internationally.<br />
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-55824412379334966822016-07-17T15:56:00.002+05:302016-07-17T15:56:42.540+05:30Space Gulliver- in conversation with Sampurna Chattarji<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sampurna Chattarji, Promenade des Anglais, Nice, 2011</td></tr>
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<i style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">Space Gulliver</i><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">- in conversation with Sampurna Chattarji</span><br />
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<i>Space Gulliver: Chronicles of an Alien</i> is Sampurna Chattarji's 14th published book, out from Harper Collins in July 2015. That she is prolific needs no underlining- she has published, poetry, poetry in translation, novels, short stories and prose in translation amongst other things; and dealing with them all would require more than this one conversation.<br />
<br />
I sought to indulge her on her latest book of poems and prose poems, the complex but endlessly fascinating study of Space Gulliver, Chattarji’s outworlder Who Fell to Earth. Opening her eyes in this ‘alien’ situation, more than dealing with her Lilliputian/Gaian inhabitants, Gulliver considers her state of being. She speaks to herself in layered verse, and contemplative prose, as her physical being speaks to her too. It is Chattarji’s musing on our own condition, seen through a sensuality not of this world that reflects back on us, we the poor occupants of this lovely planet.<br />
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This body/object finds its counterpart in a building as object- the Canterbury Cathedral, in whose vicinity Chattarji spent several weeks in a residency. The cathedral’s spire casts a long shadow in her book, mingling with her chronicles of Gulliver that together create a palimpsest of materiality, bone and stone, leaving us as a <i>flaneur</i> traversing terrain, terrior and terror in equal measure.<br />
<br />
I am very pleased that Sampurna graciously accepted my invitation to this interview, and in a freewheeling email exchange talked about Gulliver, but also about the writing of poetry, the experience of a residency and the interior world of the writer.<br />
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<b></b><b><br /></b>
<b>MUSTANSIR DALVI</b><br />
<b>Tell us about the million strings that tie Space Gulliver to earth. I get a feeling that she arrives, not <i>tabula rasa</i>, but with a weight that she uses to make sense of earth, and yet, like wearing thick, soda-water glasses this gets in the way. Do you see her that way?</b><br />
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<b>SAMPURNA CHATTARJI</b><br />
As a person who wears the kind of “thick, soda-water glasses” (slightly glamourized by a titanium frame!) you mention, I could hotly deny everything you say! Instead let me address the question, first by thanking you for intuiting this strange, loaded weightlessness that Space Gulliver carries with her into the world that is my book.<br />
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You are right, even though her arrival feels like a bolt from the blue, she does not arrive “tabula rasa”, it is not the shock of the first time – it is, as the first of the Space Gulliver poems states, a “return”. There is some degree of irony (I hope!) in the lines:<br />
<br />
<i>Space Gulliver returns</i><br />
<i>Space conqueror, she</i><br />
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The fact that she has come back to earth can be seen both literally and figuratively. It’s a jolt, and as the book progresses, a gradual acclimatisation to earth conditions, a re-learning of things she once knew and had (maybe) forgotten.<br />
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Having said all that, I must also add that there is another story to this return. As you know, I had written 6 poems inspired by a piece of artwork by Swiss artist Judith Albert. At that point in time, 6 poems seemed enough. Space Gulliver the character had come into my life and gone, and I didn’t miss her.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">by Judith Albert, from Journal fuer Kunst, Sex und Mathematik</td></tr>
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It’s only when I arrived at the University of Kent on a cold (snow still on the ground) February morning in 2012, and found myself ensconced in the room that was to be my home for the next 3 months that Space Gulliver (SG) popped into my head and refused to go away. I was, technically, supposed to be writing another kind of book (which I hope will get written another time, in another place). I tried shooing SG away, but she hung on. And I must confess (I can now confess!) that I hung on to her too. This may sound a bit pitiful, like a lonely child clinging to an “imaginary friend” but after the initial startlement, even a little annoyance at her reappearance, I was glad to have her around.<br />
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As I found my feet in those unfamiliar surroundings, as I began re-learning the student life, the shared-kitchen life, the temporarily single-againlife, it felt comforting to know that someone from my past life was with me in this sometimes disorienting new present. Of course if you’d asked me then, I may have had different answers, or none at all. But with the intervention of time I can see more clearly how this was a symbiotic relationship. She was not ‘me’ – but she was ‘mine’. I knew her once, I hadn’t paid much attention to her then, now that she was back, I could make her speak to me, reveal herself, I could invent histories for her, I could transfer emotional predicaments on to her, I could make her my alter-ego, my twin, my co-pilgrim. Does that sound too fanciful?<br />
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The word ‘pilgrim’ seems appropriate given that I was in Canterbury! I hadn’t thought of myself as a pilgrim before I landed there, nor even while I was there. But now, back home, I wonder if that’s what she and I were? Companions on a pilgrimage into the unknown. Not the entirely unknown – rather a half-familiar place now made strange only by the fact of considering oneself a more permanent resident, rather than someone simply passing through. My earlier visits to that part of the world had always been a week or ten days at the most. Three months felt like an eternity – at least in the beginning – and the idea of surviving it in the company of an intrepid traveller such as Space Gulliver was one that pleased, enchanted and comforted me.<br />
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But for all this intimacy with this ‘alien’ – to answer to the tail-end of your question – I never visualised her! A Scottish theatre-person who works with children asked me (at one of my Kolkata readings) – “How big is Space Gulliver?” and I was stumped! I had never thought of her in such concrete terms. Though I did not hesitate to accumulate concrete details around her, I had not seen her in my mind’s eye – merely sensed her. I knew her gender, I knew she loved walking, I knew she could see in the dark, could inhabit any number of modes of travel and apparel from boxes to bodysuits, knew she loved walking, knew the exact colour of her walking shoes (purple!), knew she had a practitioner’s interest in language, knew even which books she liked (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe being one) – but I did not know what she looked like, nor how big (or little) she was. Flipping through the poems now, I see I have made her fluctuate – she can become small as a “tiny sweet orange”, as big as a giant in her “seven league boots” – but I haven’t conveyed any specific physical characteristics. Perhaps I want the reader to imagine her the way they will?<br />
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<br />
<b>DALVI</b><br />
<b>How complicit is she, who fell to earth, with this alien planet. Does she descend with her eyes open or was she surprised to find herself in the New World?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>CHATTARJI</b><br />
Oh, I wish I knew! Let me return to the poems for clues. In the beginning she is frightened:<br />
<i>That chest of carved and polished wood lies within her reach</i><br />
<i>But she will not touch it</i><br />
<i>She is a visitor now</i><br />
<i>And earthly things disturb her</i><br />
<i>Materialize</i><br />
<i>All around her with their unflinching edges their resolute past</i><br />
<i>Even the drapes on the walls</i><br />
<i>And the intricately carved bedspread on which she</i><br />
<i>Lies</i><br />
<i>Frighten her with their ornate proximity their embroidery</i><br />
<i>That speaks of pain</i><br />
<i>Staking its territory as needles stab fabric in a million hands</i><br />
<br />
Ordinary objects seem hostile to her, indeed almost terrify her. She, who is “no longer terrified of vastness” seems to shrink inside what is probably a normal comfortable well-appointed human habitation, as if everything in it were an assault. She recognises things because she has lived here before, but the time away has unlearned and undone her, and that fear seems to suggest that she came back before she was ready.<br />
<br />
So maybe it’s not surprise that accompanies her back, but rather befuddlement – where am I, why am I here. Like waking from a trance. It’s almost as if, having “conquered space”, having become “Laughably used to having Brahmand around her” she has forgotten how to live on this planet anymore, what to do with her limbs, her gaze, how to fit herself into the circumscribed room, how to get used to being on the ground looking up at the sky instead of the other way around, how to deal with this new scale. It’s a kind of “space-sickness”, maybe.<br />
<br />
On the question of her complicity: as the book progresses, doesn’t she lose her terror and become more and more complicit in the ways of this world? From being a kind of stowaway in a room on this strange mother-ship who imagines a “great benign-ness” watching her, who talks to ladybirds and hides from young people with “glittery skins/ And flyway hair” – she begins engaging with the world that initially terrified her, and she falls in love! How devastating for her! She is no stranger to this “amoral tech heaven” where:<br />
<i>devices need to be paired</i><br />
<i>Before they can speak to each other</i><br />
<i>Before this act so close to intercourse can take place</i><br />
<i>Him entering her phone directly</i><br />
<i>but she is rattled and unnerved by contact, is she not? See the lines:</i><br />
<i>To her who has lived without human contact for aeons</i><br />
<i>Stretching her fingers apart to see him better</i><br />
<i>Feels like the most intimate contact</i><br />
<i>As if she has really touched his hair</i><br />
<i>His neck his waist</i><br />
<i>Instead of merely the soft skin </i><br />
<i>Of the device that nestles at his hip</i><br />
<i>Or at his ear</i><br />
<i>Accepting his mouth</i><br />
<i>Just as her straining eyes must accept that </i><br />
<i>On some days </i><br />
<i>The mid-morning moon that strikes her with its </i><br />
<i>Deranged light</i><br />
<i>Is really the sun</i><br />
<i>And the mid-afternoon half-moon in a sky of no dimension</i><br />
<i>Is really the moon</i><br />
<i>And that the horizon is capable of receding</i><br />
<i>The way her body recedes</i><br />
<i>After half a bottle of red</i><br />
<i>Into a farness comforting in its extremity</i><br />
<br />
At first, the only enterprise that interested her was “observation” and in this pursuit the horizon was her accomplice:<br />
<i>Space Gulliver prefers the complicity of the horizon</i><br />
<i>In this enterprise called ‘seeing’</i><br />
<br />
She was comfortable with that complicity, it was neutral and perhaps even ‘scientific’ enough to leave her unscathed. But when human contact occurs she is pulled right in, and her relationship with her surroundings, and her apprehension of herself as an “alien presence” changes radically, to the point where she cannot quite demarcate the boundaries between herself and the “others”. She, who has wanted to obliterate location, finds that “Place has encroached her”. Towards the end of the book, you can see how the comfort of belonging, of having made friends with the seemingly-hostile environment and its inhabitants starts stifling her and she wants to move on, wants to “Abandon this ‘she’”, wants<br />
<i>a ship to sail away in</i><br />
<i>Leaving ‘her’ behind</i><br />
<i>To grow worms</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>DALVI</b><br />
<b><i>"How many ways can you approach the same Cathedral"</i>? Let us count (a few) ways. This is Canterbury, isn't it? Can you describe the experience of visiting the Cathedral and its impact on you?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>CHATTARJI</b><br />
Oh yes, very much Canterbury. As you know both the Cathedral poems and the prose Journal entries are clearly Canterburyan!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Canterbury Cathedral</td></tr>
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<br />
I had visited the Cathedral in 2011, the year before my residency. I had visited it like a tourist, albeit a literary tourist, marking the spot of Thomas á Becket’s murder and remembering the play (Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral). Having studied Chaucer in college it was only natural that I should go and see a (really kitschy) version of Canterbury Tales, complete with odours and atmosphere!And take photos of the gates that the pilgrims must have walked through, wandered through the lodgings, taking more photos. Both the Cathedral and the medieval town were fragments of literature that I was somehow magically walking through, gliding through. It was both surreal and also strangely superficial, if you know what I mean. My interaction with the place was so on the surface, despite prior knowledge, despite a strange tug – my first experience of it was almost frivolous. I’m reminded of a game we used to play as children where we had to run and touch a wall and come racing back. That’s how I approached the city and the Cathedral; I touched and raced away, flushed with the sheer mindless triumph of it.<br />
<br />
But in 2012, everything changed. First, I was perched on top of the hill, on a very modern campus, looking down on this very ancient city. And the best thing about my room on the edge of the University campus was that I had a clear view (on clear days that is) of the spires of the Cathedral. I cannot begin to explain or even understand how important that view became to me during my stay. The Cathedral was how I oriented myself. It was like my true-north! I needed co-ordinates to locate and anchor me in this new geography and the Cathedral was my key co-ordinate. I grew fond of it, I admired it (in the night especially), I perhaps even spoke to it from my room!<br />
<br />
And when I went down into town, I found I could save myself from being lost (in the early days) simply by trying to see where the Cathedral was. It was everywhere! Which could be maddening, but it was not, at least not to me. My relationship to the Edifice that was THE Cathedral had changed. I could still admire its beauty, but I could also ignore it. After all, I lived here. I could visit any time (or not). That freed me from reverence (not that I recall being reverent on my first visit either!) and I felt able to enter it normally, casually.<br />
<br />
I remember one Sunday literally racing down the hill to arrive in time for the Sunday service because my friend (who is a fabulous singer, and whose choir had been narrowly beaten in an all-Kent choir competition, unfairly I thought!) had told me that the famous Canterbury Choir whose conductor was the key judge at the competition would be singing that Sunday! I wasn’t late, and I have to admit, the choir was fantastic. The acoustics of the Cathedral are so glorious, I felt kind of transported – and this without any religious leanings whatsoever! The only experience that outshone this one was hearing the choir sing in Christ Church, Oxford just before Easter that same year.<br />
<br />
So thanks to my being a resident in Canterbury (or rather above it!) the Cathedral changed for me – from tourist attraction to familiar landmark to ethereal song – a movement that in a sense “vanishes” the structure away in almost exactly the way the fog would, or the night, once the Cathedral lights were switched off:<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i>At midnight </i><br />
<i>The cathedral </i><br />
<i>Disappears</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
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PS: In 2015, I found myself taking a young Welsh poet friend around Canterbury! How strange: there I was, an Indian poet playing tour guide to a Welsh poet, after 3 years the geography of the city and the Cathedral still so familiar to me, it felt like home.<br />
<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>DALVI</b><br />
<b>May we read your book separately (the Cathedral poems and the Gulliver Poems) or as part of the same occupied space.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>CHATTARJI</b><br />
I think you could, of course, read the 3 kinds of pieces separately, but I think they work best when read as part of the same occupied space (and dare I add – in the sequence in which they are presented). They are all of a piece! I like your use of the word “occupied”! That’s exactly it – the same space occupied in 3 different ways, in 3 different modes – creating and perhaps replicating my own 3-dimensional anchoring to what had once felt like surface alone, smooth and glassy, impossible to get a grip on.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>DALVI</b><br />
<b>Let us into the secret of your conception of Gulliver. </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>CHATTARJI</b><br />
You know your question makes me think about her lost/home planet, wondering where it was, what it was like. Almost like thinking of a lost book, the book that tells us where she was and who she was before she returned to Earth, the book I might one day even write (or not!).<br />
<br />
When I wrote this book, with the subtitle: Chronicles of an Alien, I was finding out more and more about SG every day, with every new poem. In the initial SG sextet, she was clearly some sort of explorer, keen, hungry for words as much as for what the words provided: food, pickle, chalk; she was a pattern-seeker, a person equipped with naming words but not always able to fit the name to the object it signified:<br />
<i>There are many beings here, roaming the ether.</i><br />
<i>Are they real? Is that a parking meter? A lamp post?</i><br />
<i>Is this what it means, to travel?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Always a bit off-kilter, but never thrown. When she came back for this book, I didn’t think at all of her previous avatar. She was all-new, and mysterious to me. She was oddly disembodied – an idea that was the outline of the body that I would have to flesh out as I went along. The idea of having lived so long in another atmosphere, in an outer space too remote to contemplate, dependent on all manner of machinery, very sophisticated machinery that enabled her to breathe, eat, travel at the speed of light, all of it was taken for granted, like a knowledge that I shared in common with whoever might read her, eventually. All the science-fiction that we share like a collective memory. That’s what I was drawing on, and that freed me up to focus on her here-and-now, her landing and her learning to love where she has landed. I realise now – you’ve turned me into a detective, sleuthing through my own book! – that there is some sort of secret coercion in her past: a “They” that seems slightly sinister:<br />
<i>They never taught them to breathe</i><br />
<i>There were machines that did that</i><br />
<i>For them</i><br />
<i>Space Gulliver could hold that</i><br />
<i>Against them</i><br />
<i>Against herself</i><br />
<i>Who took her away</i><br />
<br />
This reminds me a bit of the “they” in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We. A manipulative “they” who “took her away” – no doubt for her own good, perhaps with her own complicity, a “they” who made her dependent, made her powerful, made her very veryspeedy! Is that why she escaped? Giving up the adrenaline of speed for the grinding slowness of another gravity? Giving up a comforting airlessness and having to learn to breathe on her own again?<br />
<i>The slowness of it flabbergasts her</i><br />
<i>For days she buckled under </i><br />
<i>Over-oxygenation of lungs</i><br />
<br />
Having to cope with more primitive modes of transport, which rob her of her spatial sense:<br />
<i>Perhaps it appears far to her who has abandoned the great machines</i><br />
<i>That lent her speed and cannot travel anymore as the crow flies</i><br />
<i>For her to measure where she is how far from where she was</i><br />
<i>She will need instruments that torture </i><br />
<i>Needles that point dials that encompass gauges that fill </i><br />
<i>With secrets she is saving for the time she will read her own memoir</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
<b>DALVI</b><br />
<b>Gulliver exists in a phenomenological reality that is turgid, sticky; the gravity of earth is certainly heavier than her lost/home planet, her being even more grave as the gravity pulls her to possible reconciliations.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>CHATTARJI</b><br />
The words that you use to describe her phenomenological reality – “turgid” and “sticky” – how apt they are, and how wonderful that’s what it comes across as. Because it is turgid and sticky, the clutch of this organic world, at least in the early days of her arrival. Oh, and about her “being grave”. How right you are! In the beginning she is very grave, isn’t she? And then she begins to lighten up, loosen up, make jokes (even if the joke is sometimes on herself) – I liked seeing that happen.<br />
<br />
I must also share two key influences: one is Tarkovsky’s Solaris, and the other is a science-fiction novel I adore: Walter Tevis’s Man Who Fell to Earth, which was made into a film with David Bowie (who else!) in the role of the ‘alien’, who as we see becomes all-too human by the end of the story. This section clearly references Solaris:<br />
<i>Space Gulliver adrift</i><br />
<i>That was how they made them in the movies</i><br />
<i>Bodies like bubbles</i><br />
<i>They rarely mentioned metal</i><br />
<i>The thing that saved you</i><br />
<i>The sheets you had to rip through if you </i><br />
<i>Wanted to touch someone from a dream</i><br />
<i>Bloodying yourself all over</i><br />
<i>Mirrors were always convex on that ship</i><br />
<i>And disrepair a condition of comfort</i><br />
<i>Huge fronds of weed</i><br />
<i>Sea that spoke</i><br />
<i>Every cauldron bubbling with tomorrow</i><br />
<i>Transport</i><br />
<i>Yourself</i><br />
<i>Isn’t that what they taught you in the schools</i><br />
<i>Where fabric was an essential lie</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nicholas Roeg's The Man who Fell to Earth (1976)</td></tr>
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<br />
My beloved alien comes from my fascination with a notion of space travel as inward, messy, traumatic even, a function of dream and nightmare, a place of comfort that doesn’t look or feel comfortable, that involves the flesh even while denying/disembodying the flesh. Damage as a necessary condition of any kind of significant journey. <br />
<br />
<br />
<b>DALVI</b><br />
<i>"Space Gulliver unbridles her horse</i><br />
<i>Escapes on the bare back of the runaway sentence</i><br />
<i>Someone close the door of the barn."</i><br />
<br />
<b>You seem to straddle the world of prose fiction and poetry seamlessly, riding runaway sentences bareback. Space Gulliver is your 14th book. Can you give us a bit of an insight into your working ways?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>CHATTARJI</b><br />
Thank you for the compliment! I like the idea of being a bareback rider!<br />
<br />
Insight: hmmm...<br />
I think the way in which I work doesn’t change whether I’m writing prose/fiction or poetry. The only thing that is different is the nature of the sheer physical commitment: the day-after-dayness of sitting at the desk that a novel for example demands. While I can write poetry in short sharp bursts. How not to flag, that’s the great challenge in writing fiction, how to stay invested in the characters and their predicaments. When I’m writing poetry, I focus like a laser – and there’s no scope for flagging! <br />
<br />
Having said that, I wrote Space Gulliver – which is after all a sequence of poems – the way I’d write a novel! I wrote everyday – and the fact that I had 3 different entry points made it easier in a way, kept me buoyant and interested and committed.<br />
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<br />
<b>DALVI</b><br />
<b>Returning to your time in Canterbury; how was your experience as a Resident Writer? Does the forced separation from a familiar environment invigorate the writing process, or is it a mixed blessing?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>CHATTARJI</b><br />
The day I arrived in Canterbury, my first reaction was: “Why on earth did I come?” It was a grey, grim day, and even the fairytale snow on the ground did little to lift my spirits! I even – I can now admit – cursed myself for thinking I needed to be on a Residency to write a book, having written all my previous (till then) 13 books sitting in my book-filled den at home in Thane!<br />
<br />
But that gloom swiftly passed, and I found myself invigorated by the change. It wasn’t just that I was in a hyper-state of awareness, as if everything might be material to the writing, and in a way much of it was. I think an unfamiliar environment makes me look at everything, including the way I write, differently, and that was exactly what I needed.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>DALVI</b><br />
<b>Were you reclusive during that time or garrulously social?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>CHATTARJI</b><br />
I was deeply fortunate to be at the University of Kent, attached to the School of English, which counts among its lecturers several very fine poets, creative and critical minds: David Herd, Nancy Gaffield, Jan Montefiore (since retired), Patricia Debney, Simon Smith, Caroline Rooney, Sarah Wood. I gave a reading, I conducted a workshop for the MFA Creative Students, I attended many poetry readings by visiting poets, was part of many conversations about poetry and writing, I was invited to read poems about the sea at the Turner Gallery at Margate, along with other Kent poets (teachers and students).<br />
<br />
I was drawn into the community in a way that was as hospitable as it was instructive. I learnt a lot! I made friends for life. And I was so happy that the first launch of Space Gulliver in summer 2015 was at the University! It felt so apt, and this was all because of the lasting associations that were forged way back in 2012. Canterbury gave me my second poetry-family (the first being right here, in Bombay!) –and I feel great love and gratitude to have such richness in my life.<br />
<br />
So, I was neither utterly reclusive nor wildly sociable! I think I struck a good balance, and I am rather pleased I did, knowing my own tendency to sometimes get carried away!<br />
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(interview with Sampurna Chattarji, July 2016)</div>
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© Mustansir Dalvi, 2016, all rights reserved.</div>
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-83300009772713429052016-06-18T08:33:00.002+05:302016-06-18T08:33:55.370+05:30On Charles Correa's Passing: A Lament for Bombay<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It is a year now since Charles Correa left us, and the city feels his loss with every revised policy for densification, over-urbanisation and the commissioning of redundant infrastructure. I am posting a paean to the architect that I wrote last year. It was published, in a slightly different form in the Economic & Political Weekly VOL - L NO. 28, JULY 11, 2015.</div>
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-large;">On Correa's Passing: A Lament for Bombay</span><br />
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<i>An urban architect who was a friend of the residents of the city and the environment, Charles Correa was more than a builder of sustainable houses and offices. He was a quintessential Bombaywallah, one who put forward eminently sensible solutions to some of the problems of his favourite city. Sadly, most of them did not materialise and the problems continue unabated.</i><br />
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Charles Correa was a shaper of the public realm. Remembered and revered for his several striking and iconic buildings, his ideas, both through writing and design, through built, un-built and speculative work foreground the community, the civic and importantly, the inclusive. As a true-blue Bombaywallah, a lot of Correa's attention was focused on his hometown, but there are few interventions that allow us to identify Bombay as Correa's city. Even today, Kanchenjunga is the apartment building we associate best with Correa. In Bombay, he was proselytiser, activist (sometime filmmaker), academic and architect, but above all, he was Citizen Correa. His vision of the city was both broad and specific. He saw patterns and possibilities before most others, especially the government, did. And offered solutions freely. That few of these were actually taken is something that all its citizens must be held to account for. Therein, in Correa's passing, lies this lament for Bombay.<br />
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Charles Correa set up his practice in Bombay in 1958, returning from MIT after a Master’s Degree. His thesis, interestingly, was presented in the form of an animated film called 'You and your Neighbourhood'. He brought his concerns into his practice from the very outset. His early work can be seen in the context of the early post-independence years, where along with a few other practitioners like Habib Rahman and Balkrishna Doshi, an expressive internationalism defined the optimism of a Nation State. Public spaces like International Pavilions in the country's capital brought him in touch with the government as client, and this relationship continued right until the turn of the millennium, but with varying degrees of success. His design for the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya in Ahmedabad (1958) is one of the finest examples of civic buildings that represent independent India.<br />
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At the same time, Correa built several houses that allowed him to explore the contexts and specificities of site and climate. Buildings in Ahmedabad led to his developing a template for what he called the 'Tube House' (1961) - a small open plan, two level, row house prototype that created comfort conditions within using passive means- where the design itself allowed for ventilating the house. This was built as an exploration of low income housing for the Gujarat Housing Board. This design is significant it became the fountainhead for alternatives in Ahmedabad, Kota, Lima, Bangalore, Bombay and New Bombay, and for all scales of housing, from housing the poor to housing the very well-off (as in the Sonmarg and the Kanchanjunga Apartments).<br />
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Correa's housing designs play out like the variations of a jazz soloist, riffing on a central theme, wandering away and returning, working and reworking ideas. The central theme was inevitably, the interface between the building and its beyond, the quietness of the interior space and the bustle of the public. In his housing designs, he always had place for the raucousness and unwieldiness of a city, of an old city like Bombay, set in its ways.<br />
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Even in his more upmarket housing, his buildings never turn away from the city; instead they embrace it, look upon it and take it in. The famous corner balconies of Kanchanjunga allow 270* panoramic views of the city. Their double heights are intended to give the impression of being outside, as in an al-fresco space, one with the urbanity around, capturing 'a piece of the sky'. The apartments corkscrewed around these balconies made the best of Bombay's meagre breezes, ventilating the rooms within. The tower became, according to Correa, 'a Tree of Life'. In later years, he would rue the addition of air-conditioners to the apartments for they were designed precisely to function without them.<br />
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The public realm, as mentioned earlier, becomes central to Correa's architecture the poor. One of his proposals in the late '60s was a series of simple upraised platforms (or otlas) for organising hawking along the edge of D N Road in Bombay, lined on both sides with the classic covered arcades (an idea developed more than a century ago by Bartle Frere, the Head of Police in Bombay, to protect citizens from the harsh summer and hard monsoons). Correa's platforms gave pedestrians unrestrained access. Each platform had a water tap for washing the platforms at the end of the day and providing a clean place to sleep under the stars, as so many in Bombay still do. He was keenly aware of the difference between the pavement sleepers and the homeless- 'Migrants don't come to the city looking for housing. They come looking for work.' The sleepers were workers and employees of offices on D N Road. One immediately thinks of the Best Bakery tragedy in Bandra. There too, the people killed in the car Salman Khan was in were bakery workers, not the destitute or homeless. This simple proposal never came to fruition, nor did his later proposal for reorienting traffic at the Flora Fountain, creating an urban plaza for the public rather than a paid parking lot. Neither the traffic nor the issues with hawking have been addressed with any degree of resolution, forty years down the line. <br />
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In the early seventies, Correa made a series of designs for squatter housing in Bombay. He proposed twin units of two room houses organised in clusters with open to sky space and organisational centrality, all with their own small courtyards opening out into larger community spaces, creating a hierarchy of territories and common ownership. This design was the precursor of the Belapur Housing in New Bombay (1983), now regarded as a significant landmark in mass housing in India. Correa was clear about not recreating the sub-urban sprawl in this part of the new city, but rather making a concentrated cluster of low-rise land use. Correa laid out a set of guiding principles that governs this development- incrementally, open-to-sky spaces, equity, dis-aggregation, pluralism, malleability, participation and income generation, principles he called ‘non-negotiable’. The housing units would be 'packed close enough to provide the advantages of high density, yet separate enough to allow for individual identity and growth options'.<br />
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It is the elegant drawings and old photographs from the freshly built scheme that we still recall with some nostalgia. In reality however, after about thirty years, the Belapur project has transformed considerably from that which it was originally intended for. Meant to be social housing for artisans with modest resources, with a basic shelter, site and services, it was intended to grow with accretion as the families grew economically better off. Today, it is a bit of a curate’s egg. Parts of it show clear indicators of gentrification rather than community living and growing together. Several signs of upper middle class aspiration and comfort are visible. Built over and over-built, on occasion demolished and rebuilt, individual houses turn their backs to the sensitively planned open spaces as only Mumbai's cautious middle class can. Balconies are bricked up, terraces are harnessed as extra rooms, windows closed for air-conditioning and cars parked everywhere. Elsewhere, it does seem that the original homeowners have moved out and a newer lot with no affiliations to the original scheme have come in, displaying current post-liberalisation aspirations and entitlements. The appreciation that the neighbourhood was designed by one of India's finest architects is academic and probably more in the minds of visitors and students who keep landing up there and wondering if they have the right address.<br />
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Many of Correa’s guiding principles are seen in the planning of New Bombay (now Navi Mumbai). Intended to house two million people across the harbour on the mainland, it was designed (along with Pravina Mehta and Shirish Patel) as a series of nodes strung along a central transport corridor like a string of pearls. New Bombay offered well designed urban neighbourhoods for contemporary living across scales. Here clear plots and wide roads with infrastructure, well placed gardens and pedestrian paths form the highlights of each node. Several projects of mass and affordable housing were designed by architects like Kamu Iyer, Uttam Jain, Raj Reval, Hema Sankalia and Correa himself. Navi Mumbai did take about thirty years to come into its own. Execution struggled far behind planning, local trains took more than ten years to set up, and international airport is still in the works and the legislative and executive branches of Bombay never shifted to the CBD in Belapur as was intended. But still, the new city is slowly finding its own identity away from Bombay. Still a lot remains to be realised, most significantly the effective and sustainable use of the water edge, the western seafront of Navi Mumbai and options of water transport. Even the node designed by Correa- Ulwe is only just being populated, and more by speculation rather than occupation because of its proximity to the chimera that is the airport. And, Correa would sadly live to see and record that squatters had begun to establish many pockets in his new town.<br />
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Back in the island city, Correa would be called upon by the Government of Maharashtra in 1996 to set up a committee to prepare and integrated development plan for the now defunct mill lands. The redevelopment was to include ‘coherent urban form and civic amenities and to generate new employment opportunities for mill workers’ now out of jobs for nearly a decade. The famous one third/one third/one third solution that he proposed for open spaces and amenities, for affordable housing and for sale in the open market was lauded in the city. It offered the real chance for having a consolidated open space in the city that has one of the smallest amounts of open spaces in all the cities of the world. A space like Central Park was imminently possible. But various vested interests whittled down and diluted the proposal to make it but a shadow of its original self. Today there is no consolidated open space. Instead and alternative business enter is consolidating itself, populating the spaces that were once the mill lands with malls, hotels and office spaces, certainly not inclusive, nor incremental.<br />
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What has been lost is the old urbanity of the city, one where people of all classes and stations lived cheek by jowl. ‘Affordable housing isn’t something that happens in a vacuum’ writes Correa, ‘ it is the direct result of the correlation between the pattern of public transport and employment distribution in the city. The third that would have been converted to affordable housing is ultimately become the city’s biggest loss. This large area has only fuelled the stakes of the real estate market. Today, there is hardly any affordable housing being built in the city. Those living in the chawls in proximity of the mills still live in conditions of decaying buildings or have moved out to the furthest reaches of the metropolitan region where some affordability is possible. The absence of sensible social housing in Central Mumbai is a vacuum that is filled in by self-help housing in other parts of the city having locational advantage in terms of public transport. In other words- slums, self-built and regulated, outside the pale of mainstream amenities and civic regard. Correa’s opportunities for urban transformation were also opportunities for social engineering- thorough harnessing the power of the city.<br />
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What remains in Mumbai today is an aspirational population clamouring for the limited spaces and opportunities that she offers. Gentrification is now a mental construct that makes the citizen demand rights- from subsidised transport to free housing, giving little in return. Inclusive spaces such as those conceived by Correa through his designs and his advocacy are usurped within the ambit of real estate and not shared space, awaiting monetization. In a city where only two types of growth can be seen- the rise of luxury towers and the agglomeration of slums, the convivial, collegial and ethical urbanity that Charles Correa had always talked about, something that he clearly identified as the spirit of the city is recession. The public realm, exists in so far as to allow people to commute from one place to another, not to loiter, to contemplate or to breathe in.<br />
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We lament the city, for in Correa’s passing, he will, without doubt, be remembered as an architect of some of India (and the world’s ) finest contemporary buildings, but might well be forgotten as Citizen Correa- a person who knew Bombay intimately, had the ideas to transform the city into a place for all, but for all his efforts was really not heard.<br />
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-6489438354758343162016-05-03T23:25:00.001+05:302016-05-03T23:25:20.440+05:30Ginger Biscuits<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkLc-JOY4DNWyNw1buaDvSxIqFLipVnS-5MBCBG-5InaHYMim_EfziA15ISP8safAwEYfszKtLe72Onmtbxc2cpZEOwgKe7whNZ62jGAY3ozaEcgGs1L_9HeeNZ1KECYa_NoWR8dj8er88/s1600/ginger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkLc-JOY4DNWyNw1buaDvSxIqFLipVnS-5MBCBG-5InaHYMim_EfziA15ISP8safAwEYfszKtLe72Onmtbxc2cpZEOwgKe7whNZ62jGAY3ozaEcgGs1L_9HeeNZ1KECYa_NoWR8dj8er88/s640/ginger.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image and eaten by Pooja Ugrani</td></tr>
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Of all the available biscuits, I like ginger biscuits
best. </div>
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It is an acquired taste; so of course, they are the least
easily available. When I can lay my hands on them, I tend to over-buy and
hoard. I have to, you see. In the boondocks where I live, resources are
available only because they sell. <i>'Yeh
item running hai'</i>. New products do make their way on and off, but last only
if they catch the imagination of the grand unwashed. Only <i>running</i> items are reordered.</div>
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This is not the way of the small kirana-wallah but the
credo of the franchisee supermarkets as well- Big Bazaar, D-Mart, Hyper Mart
will only stock items that will easily clear their shelves. The end effect is
obvious- there is no diversity, no innovative products, no inclusion or
freshness in the merchandise, only the staid and steady. So of late, no ginger
biscuits. Also no coconut-orange juice, no basil and no Dindori.</div>
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In much the same way, our government has imagined 'smart
cities'.</div>
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They have redefined ‘liveable cities’ to ‘cities that
have the potential to give maximum returns’. In a great leap of associative
fallacy they equate 'smart' with 'running items'- with economic viability. This
ledger-book definition keeps citizens entirely out of the balance-sheet. If 100
crores are to be put into a city, it must generate 100 crores to be deemed
smart.</div>
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This, in the long run, is a slippery slope. We can
imagine stock patches of habitation with corporate built slickness and all
round surveillance. A city where you can control your air conditioner with your
mobile phone. But you cannot buy a packet of ginger biscuits, because not
enough people like to eat it. Cities without diversity or inclusion, with only
economic drivers, lacking socio-cultural touch points are cities heading for
stagnation. We already have enough gated communities and failed malls to show
us what such smart cities can become. No dogs, no bachelors, no women living
alone or together, no musicians, no non-vegetarians, no Muslims. Nothing that
is not conventional or conservative.</div>
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The great cities of the world have shown us one thing in
the 21st century- they can run, grow, even flourish <i>despite</i> the government and their planners, not because of them. You
live in one of them today. Look around. You have enough to complain about, but
the city is not about to collapse. Diversity and everyday innovation power
cities forward, social contracts that are made and remade on the streets power
its spirit. And yet none of this is reflected in the Development Plans and
indeed Smart City conceptions of the state.</div>
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Labels are all they are. Even definitions are difficult
to come by, let alone directions.</div>
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Meanwhile, I dream of ginger biscuits.</div>
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-11370827152332325482016-01-15T11:01:00.000+05:302016-01-15T14:24:37.727+05:30‘Historicize and Problematize’<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx94z1v3RI-9ndKszEuuOXrershJOwa30x9G5Godw4MDff8vBNyIXv0kjDFJU0XT4SdRxeaaj3s_yyFMannxjTv0CzIH0tvuyfvkk80i-cEXSWjNsb3wsVITVSNIjNbn9VMMtf5dWXBTUy/s1600/soa+conf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx94z1v3RI-9ndKszEuuOXrershJOwa30x9G5Godw4MDff8vBNyIXv0kjDFJU0XT4SdRxeaaj3s_yyFMannxjTv0CzIH0tvuyfvkk80i-cEXSWjNsb3wsVITVSNIjNbn9VMMtf5dWXBTUy/s640/soa+conf.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The inaugural conference of ‘The State of Architecture’
exhibition (currently on at the NGMA, Mumbai, curated by Rahul Mehrotra, Ranjit
Hoskote and Kaiwan Mehta) called ‘The State of the Profession’ achieved the
objective set out by Kaiwan Mehta in his opening remarks: ‘Historicize and
Problematize’. In doing so several affirmative readings were possible about the
state of architecture in India today. The conference covered the profession,
practice, education, criticism and institutions. Here are some larger
impressions that remained with me:<o:p></o:p></div>
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The profession of architecture, if seen as a collective
set of ideals, is difficult to pin down. At one level this is the consequence
of the diversity of practice that is now increasingly prevalent. Yet at
another, this difficulty may be attributed to the lack of ‘communities of judgment’,
to use an evocative phrase by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who gave the conference’s
keynote address, among architects in the country. Looking towards ‘institutional’
definitions does not seem to help, as institutions too, in a sense are ensconced
in silos of their own making. </div>
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The choices made by several architects who spoke at
the conference present (rather than represent) the ‘problematization’ of the
profession and the fuzzy presence of the professional. This conference brought
together such professionals whose practices are essentially reflexive, rather
than located in the self-confident comfort zone of the mainstream. For what it
is worth, this too can be attributed to the impotence of regulatory mechanisms
or the community’s own unwillingness to introspect as a collective. Questions
were raised, but it will be some time before definite readings are possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The practice of architecture in India, since the millennium,
seems to have grown richer by moving outside of the mainstream. It is not the
diversity of practices that are the most revelatory (although that is important)
but the diversity within individual practice. The embracing of multiple
disciplines, media, collaborations and muses have resulted in a variety of ‘messy
practices’, reflecting the ‘punctuated chaos’ (to quote Bill Gates) that we
find ourselves in currently. This can only be a good thing. The feedback loop
between thinking and doing gushes like a cataract in some practices. In many
cases, these practices cater to the same patrons as that of the mainstream,
indicating a more enlightened patronage and a greater sense of collegiality and
synthesis. </div>
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On the other hand some practices, co-create with end users, bringing
themselves in direct contact with the communities they design for, even
searching out communities not catered to by architects so far. Several
practices reach out to the marginalized- slum inhabitants, those living in tribal
or rural areas located far away from transport streams. These architects
subsume their expressions into those of their constituents, and even encourage
the users to express themselves in the built form. There is an embedded-ness of
the crafts-person in the design process. This does hark back to the pre-modernist
practices in the country before technology got valorized at the expense of the
indigenous crafts tradition. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The state of architectural education is particularly
problematic. It should have been an article of faith that schools of
architecture were the laboratories that informed architectural practice. This
does not seem to be happening. Education is overwhelmed by numbers. One of the
unique features of this exhibition is the location of architecture within the
larger eco-system of education, criticism, location and institutions. What
emerges is that from 2015 onward, more than 25,000 students will graduate from
the 450 odd architecture schools in the country. This is a number greater than
the number of practicing architects in the country. This begs the question- who
are the teachers, and what is the nature of learning in these many schools? How
may quality or innovation or farsightedness be possible in this proliferation? </div>
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Curricula too, are largely prescriptive, where under the rubric of a single
university, may cater to the lowest common denominator. The roles of both
students and teachers of architecture have to be re-examined in the light of
fast and easily available information. The top down didactic and ‘expert’
supervisory approaches seem to have lost their relevance. The teacher has to be
reimagined as an ongoing learner and co-create with the student. There are few stand-alone
schools in this country who may chart their own course. A clear call was made
in the conference for a syllabus that was more flexible and less prescriptive,
less of a cookie-cutter, one size fits all templates. Here, the diversity of
practices can provide role models, and be muse to architectural education
rather than the other way around. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The role of institutions that oversee the profession was
perhaps the most problematic. The governing institutions mandated to look after
the interest of architects and to regulate practices and provide codes of
conduct under which practices could flourish seemed to present a monocular
gaze, more at ease with the mainstream sense of the profession. Laboring under self-perpetuating
myths of their own presence, they presented a stance of protectionism and definition.
The current positions of institutions comes across as largely reactionary-
expressing fears of encroachment by ‘others’- by engineers, by ‘non-architects’
of various stripes, by foreign firms, by project managers. In the affirmative universe
of collaboration and multi-disciplinarity they seem to write themselves out by
focusing too much on who should be an architect and who should not. </div>
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While it
was readily accepted in the conference that architects as a whole in the county
influence a relatively small amount of actual building, the vast majority of
building still happens outside the pale of institutional memberships. The institutions
themselves did not seem to accommodate this reality in a worldview largely oriented towards building memberships and corpuses.<br />
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In both the exhibition and the conference, the state of criticism in the country was historicized
perhaps for the first time . Architectural
writing and critical self-examination is only now emerging, and its influence
is far from clear. More books on Indian architecture are being written, but not
enough on contemporary concerns and challenges. Like reflexive practices, we
need more of reflexive criticism whether in books or journals. Journals such as
that of the Indian Institute of Architects have excellent archival value,
particularly from its early decades, but do not provide critical writing. Other
magazines that have emerged since the turn of the century largely valorize and
commemorate the boutique practices and showcase architects in their very
limited roles as lifestyle designers. </div>
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There is also a dearth of academic
writing on architecture because of the absence of peer-reviewed journals on
architecture. In the last couple of years some journals have been established
but their value shall only be seen in their sustainability. <o:p></o:p></div>
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If one had to rank the various states of architecture in
India based on the deliberations and the initial viewing of the exhibition, the
practices in constant dialogue with themselves and their larger environment are
the most encouraging. The profession is being redefined by these practices and
has a potential to influence education and criticism. There have to have a
larger presence on the cultural consciousness of the country for lasting value,
much beyond the confines of this conference. Architectural journalism still has
to take off to meet these practices half-way and become the critical carriers
of potential. Architectural education
has to resume its role as producer of ideas and alternatives that can be
fructified in practice. The institutions that govern architecture need deep
self-examination as to their present and future relevance.<br />
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One issue undiscussed
in most part was the location of the Indian architect in a stage larger than
the local. Perhaps the valedictory conference that focuses on architecture in
South Asia will pick up the gauntlet.<o:p></o:p></div>
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-74367618200085399762015-12-04T11:51:00.000+05:302015-12-04T11:51:01.074+05:30Without the benefit of hindsight- In conversation with Rahul Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote and Kaiwan Mehta<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">First published in Domus India 46
December 2015<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Reproduced with kind permission of the editor</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="color: red;">Without the benefit of hindsight<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="color: red;">In
conversation with Rahul Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote and Kaiwan Mehta</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Mustansir
Dalvi<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Looking back
to the time architectural practices first began to proliferate in India, one
sees that they always operated within an ecosystem of practice, academia and
association. We can trace this to the 1930’s, when the Indian Institute of
Architects (IIA) was set up, which in turn emerged from the alumni of the
Bombay School of Art. Teachers at the school were the most prolific
practitioners in the country, and students made the easy transition from
learning, to apprenticeship, to setting up their own practices. Even patrons,
largely non-state (in the penultimate decades before independence) aligned themselves
with the architects in a collegial association. The Journal of the Indian
Institute of Architects and their annual lectures became the mouthpieces of
collective praxis, as the many presidential speeches show. Everyone knew what
everyone else was doing, knowledge flowed centripetally. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In the years
after independence, these bonds became looser as the nation-state became the
chief patron. While private wealth and industry provided steady work for
architects all over the country, the IIA still continued to remain the platform
of discourse and dissemination- an internal professional rumination, largely
distanced from changing politics and culture in the country, especially from
the seventies onwards. While students of architecture did briefly take political
stances during the Emergency, practice remained unaffected. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">By the end
of the eighties, with the rise of the patron as aspirant or speculator, and, a
few years later with the effects of liberalization made flesh, the erstwhile
associations started to crumble, the ecosystem became unstable, and in some
ways unsustainable. Architectural practices became myriad and diffuse, working
centrifugally, aligning into various smaller constellations. The influence of
the IIA waned, while the Council of Architecture, mandated to look after the
concerns of practice in the early seventies through an Act of Parliament, by
and large, came to focus on monitoring architectural education that had, by the
turn of the millennium, boomed with colleges springing up in all parts of the
country. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Education
too, dispersed in the wake of overarching Modernism’s eclipse and the
acceptance of pluralism fuelled both by the rise of critical theoretical
positions in architecture as well as a dilution of the rigor that functionalism
once imposed on its practitioners. Critical discussions on Indian architecture
have since been restricted to a few conferences and the odd polemic in
architecture magazines (which also proliferated since the eighties, but have
mainly been showpieces of architecture for the rich and famous). Books on Indian
architecture, when concentrating on the contemporary are in the form of
monographs, vanity publications or, when serious, about urban change. Vistara, the exhibition, in 1984 was
comprehensive, but an overview of Indian architecture. Three decades on, there
has been no serious review of the state of the architectural profession in
India. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">That is what
the exhibition ‘State of Architecture’ (SOA) seeks to redress. Scheduled to
open at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai and other associated
venues the SOA exhibition will be open to the public for around three months
and will take a comprehensive look at our architectural present. The curators
of this challenging endeavor are <b>Rahul
Mehrotra</b>- architect, academic, author and researcher, professor at Harvard
and one of the foremost architectural practitioners (RMA Architects) in the
country; <b>Ranjit Hoskote</b>- cultural
theorist, art critic, curator and author and <b>Kaiwan Mehta</b>- the editor of these very pages, of Domus India, also
an author, academic and urban theorist. As the exhibition reaches its final
stages of preparation, the curators had a free-wheeling conversation with
Mustansir Dalvi about the exhibition, its objectives and the larger state of
architecture; its practice and production, in retrospect and in prognosis;
covering many issues from praxis to patronage, from theoretical positions to
political stances.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Why is this the right time to
take stock of the state of architecture in India today?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHROTRA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">For several
important reasons:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The first is
clearly to correct or compensate for the absolute silence in the discussion of
architecture in the last decade or two. For good reason, our discussions and our
focus have been on urban questions, or at least we have approached our
discussion about architecture through the lens of the city. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Further, the
architecture that has been celebrated in India since the liberalization of our economy
has been the ‘architecture of indulgence’- weekend homes, restaurants, resorts
and corporate offices; and, as an extension of this limited spectrum of what is
celebrated, the discussion is focused on material, craft, and texture in an
almost fetishistic manner. While this is productive in its own way – it removes
the perception of the usefulness of architecture away from the public. All such
programs that, while they are crucial crucibles for architectural innovation,
touch a very small fragment of our population. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Lastly, in
India, the State has more or less given up the responsibility of projecting an
‘idea of India’ through the built and physical environment as it had done in
the post- independence era when several state capitals, government and educational
campuses were built across the country. Today the major state-directed projects
are highways, flyovers, airports, telecommunications networks and electricity
grids which connect urban centers but don’t contribute to determining or
guiding their physical structure. The State is now obsessed with a statistical
architecture – GDP, etc. So the idea of this exhibition, through focusing on
public architecture is to bring this issue into focus and question the State’s
role as patron for architecture, or more broadly the role of the architect in
contemporary India society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Do you project the exhibition as
a historical unfolding or a critical deconstruction of Indian architecture? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHROTRA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
exhibition is interestingly both a historic unfolding as well as critical
deconstruction - a productive hybrid, which we believe, results from multiple
curatorial hands. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHTA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
exhibition should be imagined as a diagram of the curatorial team’s own
experiences as practioners, critics and theorists - at one point it emphasizes
memory and history, but on the other it also makes tangible and hopefully
discernable the living chaos of the present. We are at the threshold of
classifying and clarifying the chaos that maybe accorded to the present state
of architectural manifestations and, rather than a rush to classification, it
is important to understand what the presence of chaos or multiplicity means.
Naturally this creates an ambiguity in terms of our roles and our
instrumentality as designers and so this is a condition that’s worth
interrogating productively. In that sense the exhibition shuffles between the
protocols of established histories and establishing arguments in light of
dramatic historical shifts and the need for newer criteria or lenses of
analysis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
architect as a professional figure will also be drawn out in the exhibition and
the events that surround the show, as against only talking about architecture
and buildings, per se. The architect as individual needs to be recovered, not
as a hero or a socialite, but as a technocrat, a social being, a political
entity, a professional contributor and a public intellectual. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Could you briefly take us through
the three parts of the exhibition you have envisaged- ‘the State of the
Profession’, ‘Practices and Processes’ and ‘Projections and Speculations’. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHROTRA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The first
section, ‘The State of the Profession’ will present data on the profession all
the way from education, to the media’s representation of the profession to
issues that face practioners today. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The second
section is an historic overview sliced by three milestones: the first-
Independence, the second- the Emergency and the third- economic liberalization.
We believe these three moments had a fundamental bearings on the DNA of the
profession and a clear sway in its agenda, from one of national identity
construction to much more of a regional obsession starting in the 1990s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The third
section is focused on the present generation of practioners – broadly under 50
years of age. In this section we have curated approximately 80 projects that we
think signal the contemporary issues as well as aspiration of society in India,
but more importantly also register the talent of an emerging generation of
practioners in India.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">What is the more significant, in
your opinion- the product or the praxis?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHROTRA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Clearly,
what is more critical is the praxis. The modes of engagement and the forms of
patronage that support these different models of architectural practice are
thus going to be privileged in this exhibition. The three parts we have
envisaged will take the viewer through both a historical perspective as well as
confront them with the present state of the profession, while in terms of the
pure data what the present generations of practioners are producing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Do think that the architect today
has a more muted voice and lesser agency than in the last century? To extend
this line of thought- is architecture in the county driven more by the patron
than the architect? <span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHROTRA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Architecture
is largely being driven by patrons and the voice of the architect, at least as
we see it, is muted – far too muted, sadly so. Since the liberalization of our
economy, architects are pandering to Capital in unprecedented ways – creating
what we could call the Architecture of Impatient Capital. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Capital on
account of its impatience creates architecture that is often whimsical, most
often vendor driven, for ease of speed of construction, with new roles emerging
for architects who now interface with technology but also exchange and access information
in a renewed relationship, sometimes productively and often in a subservient
way. This then, by extension, is a critical issue for practioners – the
ideological stance of most patrons, which is largely based on and invested in
Capitalisms. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Twenty-five years after the
processes of liberalization commenced in the country, the State has loosened
its stranglehold on the production of infrastructure, preferring to outsource
that which it once mandated to the entrepreneur/speculator, transforming, in
the process, the consumer from occupant to aspirant. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHROTRA:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Interestingly,
in today’s world no ideological stance can be singular or clear. Through the
last 25 years we have the simultaneous experience of transitioning out of socialism
and transitioning, simultaneously into capitalism (or some form of it). Thus
there have been other patrons, trusts, faith-based organizations, NGOs and
civil society more broadly that has also supported architecture and recognized
its role in the well-being of society. We hope we can celebrate this other half
of architectural production in India that is, equally or if not in greater
measure, altering and making the ‘new landscape’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">If the
developer is playing a role in the building of our architectural physical
fabric, then we will have to see where and how we can engage with that set of
players. Real-estate is as much about planning, policy, and culture as much as
it is economic and finance - this reality has to be elaborated, researched and
explained, while as a profession we have to negotiate these forces for the
larger good of our built and natural environments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Architectural
education has a massive role to play in articulating and negotiating these
conditions. Building appropriate capacity and training a generation in the
various modes of engagement with practice, etc. But the media more generally
must also make this more central to its imagination and agenda. We don’t see
enough of this discussion in the mainstream media in these critical terms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The last significant exhibition
on architecture in India took place in 1986. Vistara was part of the Festival
of India, and brought new paradigms and a new vocabulary into the architectural
mainstream. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHTA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yes, no
doubt Vistara is important - it is a landmark, it is iconic, and the more we
view it with historical distance it emerges as a turning point. This event has
been visited at least at 3 points in the pages of Domus India. The other
exhibition designed and curated for the Festivals of India, curated by Raj
Rewal in 1985 called ‘Architecture in India’ was also very important. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Do you think that Vistara has
cast a long shadow (particularly on the SOA) or was that exhibition a product
of its time?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHTA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">We actually
think that SOA will compliment what the previous exhibition did in a productive
way by actually narrowing the lens to the time since independence where these
exhibitions more or less stopped. In fact, Vistara was also trying deal with
the confusions of its time, or dealing with the predictions of confusion in the
immediate decades to come- it established concepts and narratives as a way of
talking about architecture for India. Having recently revisited some archival
photographs of the exhibition, it is also clear that Vistara was a
manifestation of anxieties and ideas that many architects were concerned with-
in some way a community of architects contributed to the exhibition, in spirit.
The exhibition was possibly a manifestation of many collectively discussed
issues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHROTRA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Vistara was
very much an exhibition of its time. One could say it was the last significant
event in the history of architectural discourse in India that attempted, in an
extremely successful way, to construct a meta-narrative about and Architecture
for India, a pan-Indian identity construction. The State of architecture (SOA)
is about Architecture in India not for India as an instrument of national
identity construction. SOA, we believe will signal this shift and thus it
consciously takes the moment of nation statehood as a starting point</span> <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">but unfolds its narrative to show
how these deconstructs over the last few decades. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Of
significance is also the fact that Vistara was a state-sponsored show as part
of the Government of India’s exhibition for the Festivals of India held between
1983 and 1986.This was a nation attempting to reclaim its glory and traditions
after the devastation of its image through the period of the Emergency. These
exhibitions intended to show case the deep traditions of India to the world
outside and presented a narrative of India’s rich architectural traditions. SOA
on the other hand is clearly about internal introspection and reflection. It is
a critical stocktaking of the role of the architect and architecture in India</span>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">from, in a sense, within the
profession. We hope it will be the first of a series of events over the next
few years to interrogate the State of Architecture and the profession in India.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">What is the state of architecture
in India today? Does the exhibition offer us tools by which we can appreciate
or assess contemporary Indian architecture?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHTA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The precise
problem is that architecture is floating in murky waters, that is indeed its
'state'- fluid and ambiguous! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">From a point
in the early twentieth century when architects fought to stand apart from
engineers, and projected themselves as designers and thinkers, participating in
the cultural landscape of society, today architecture has slipped into modes of
luxury or vanity commodity - pretty houses and rich interiors! Today architects
are introduced as lifestyle-producers - handmaidens to a demand for style and
fancy living! This condition was the urge behind setting up tents whenever and
wherever possible to discuss architecture. Lack of valuable and critical
discussions on architecture and the simultaneous pressure on urban development
resulted in discussing architecture as an aspect of urban studies or
regional/rural studies (often as the counter-story)</span> <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">to perhaps symbolically embrace
the social sciences and their humanizing effects. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">But then,
what does it mean to bring architecture back into focus - and how would we
study this object-space which it is, as well as occupies? In framing
programming at Arbour: Research Initiatives in Architecture or the editorial
intentions within Domus India, one struggled on experiments to develop the
tools and system of understanding, analyzing, and discussing architecture, and
whenever necessary, to understand architecture in India!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Do these struggles imply that we
may be chronologically too close to making useful readings?</span></b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHTA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">It is now
important that we stand within today and talk about today! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">We have to discuss
our times as our experiences of political realities in everyday life - and here
we draw in architecture, as one of the primary modes in which everyday life is
lived and experienced. The production and consumption of architecture, as
function or symbol, it is an everyday lived reality. The task is then to
produce tools that will understand architecture as a material reality as much
as it is a cultural topography. So in fact to ask questions of 'today' while we
occupy 'today' - may indeed be the important position to adopt - to asses, and
make useful readings - and make architecture realize what it is, what it has
come to be, what it could potentially be, what it has missed or lost, and where
can it (maybe) recover!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHROTRA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Here is a
counter question to your question – how do we even decide when is a good time? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">We don’t
believe any time is right but different distances from the present give you
different readings. This is also why we have consciously constructed a
curatorial team that brings different pulses to our readings – one of an art
critic, architectural critic as well as a practioner. We bring different lenses
to view the trajectory of architecture in India and our perspectives will offer
different readings of time and distance. Each of these lenses is inherently
better equipped for different distances!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Besides this
multiplicity of curatorial lenses, we believe the structure of the exhibition
move from an objectivity of presentation in the first section to a
subjectivities reading or curatorial reading in the third section. The second
section is a bridge from where we can look at the past with some distance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">As a
generation passes it becomes in some ways easier to read the immediate past,
while in other ways harder because even for the immediate past we do not have
an adequate culture to archive, capture and reflect on the production of
architecture. So the chronological proximity can be used in both ways- to
construct robust links and a sense of the continuity with the past but also to
interrogate it with the ambiguity that the proximity to reality allows us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
exhibition will hopefully invite a discussion through provocative questions
that will try to clarify the ambiguity that naturally fogs our reading of the
contemporary and immediate past. The many events we are organizing around the
exhibition are as critical as the exhibition itself – in fact they are intended
to deconstruct the artifact of the exhibition so that more nuanced readings
emerge for the profession as a whole!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">What is the position of
contemporary Indian architecture in the larger discourse of nation building? In
the first few decades after independence there seemed to be a synchronicity
between the aims of the architects and that of the fledgling nation state. Even
private patronage seemed to follow a similar mindset. Now in the liberalized
present, there seems to be a greater priority on the rights of individuals
rather than on collective responsibility especially in the urban environment.
How do you assess this transition?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">HOSKOTE:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">This
transition in the nature and role of architecture in India clearly reflects the
arc of political change in the country, from the primacy of the State as engine
of social, economic and cultural transformation in the early decades after
Independence to the gradual withdrawal of the State from this dirigiste
position and the emergence of private capital as the source and reference point
for the formation of social values, the direction of economic policy and the
texture of cultural production. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In the earlier
phase, architecture was clearly aligned with the utopian, nation-building
ambitions of the postcolonial State, whether the patron was the State or
private enterprise. In the current phase, architecture is equally clearly
aligned with the aspirations of an emergent class of financiers, speculators
and investors, with the State often following this cue in any projects it
commissions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The premise
of the earlier phase was the Leviathan-like delegation of decision-making by
individuals and communities to the postcolonial State, which would guarantee
the greater good. The premise of the current phase is the contrarian equation
of individual liberty with private property, and thus with the individual quest
for personal happiness, with the greater good falling by the wayside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHROTRA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There is a
difference in the geographies of the location of the new patronage that has
emerged. There is an explosive growth of building in the southern states of
India. The traditions and cultures of building in these new geographies is very
different from the contemporary building culture that had formed in what has
been referred to as ' the spine of architectural awareness' stretching from Chandigarh
to Goa via Delhi, Ahmedabad and Mumbai, as well as Pondicherry which had, for
other reasons, a robust architecture culture developing there even before
independence. Interestingly this new form of patronage comes in a post-socialist
era where the individual is at the center of the decision-making through an
empowerment that is the result of capital accumulation.</span> <span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">So this is a new form of
patronage but also coming out of specific cultural and physical geographies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">What role does the globalized/liberalized
economy play in shaping the localized/socialized urban sphere?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">HOSKOTE:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
globalized economy operates through a complex circulation of global goods,
services and imaginaries that are threaded through a local set of conditions:
the relationship between these is parsed through a variety of modes including
translation, mistranslation, reflection and refraction. The urban sphere that
is thus produced is characterized by inchoate and often volatile aspirations, a
pursuit of images that seem always out of reach, and also a culture that
emphasizes the primacy of privatism rather than solidarities of any kind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHTA:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The last two
or three decades have been important times and a period that marks a turning
point in not only just the history and politics of India, but the world as
well. The fall of the Berlin Wall, demolition of Babri Masjid in India, 9/11 in
New York, the liberalization of economic policies in India and the shift from
manufacturing to service industry. These decades have also been characterized
by shifts in our cultural imaginations, aesthetic decisions, and political
choices as is evident in the material world we produce and occupy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There some
wonderful trends within the profession that are becoming evident, a new set of
architectural practices have emerged,
and have established a critical body of work that can be evaluated for
their different ideas and theoretical perspectives. At the same time, today
change occurs at an escalated pace- and to understand the present and future
trajectories for the profession we need to build conversations that can facilitate
this process. A nuanced, critical,
robust and rigorous discourse within the academy of architecture education and
more importantly the profession - we sincerely hope that SOA will be a
contribution to this broader aspiration.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Can you take a brief overview on
the quality of architectural writing today? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHTA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Writing on
architecture is in an abysmal state! But this statement does not take us far.
Lack of writing indicates our lack of critical interest in architecture as a
professional community, as a culture (national or otherwise). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">To theorize
a subject for a field is to indeed appreciate its value and existence beyond
its mere need-to-be; and the discussions on architecture have happily slipped
into rhetorics of regionalism or climate, hate-glass or love-brick and stone,
outdated notes on power and architecture - in fact, they seem to be living in a
time-warp! The world changed drastically and rapidly in the 1990s - and we
could not as an architectural profession keep pace with it - unable to
understand what had hit us. Rather than developing newer languages and idioms,
and tools to asses and read the new architectural turns, we often resorted to a
denial of the shape of things, to a rhetoric of rejection, and misplaced
nostalgia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Politics has
become ever more complex, and architects from once being agents of social and
aesthetic revolutions, now maintain a technocratic attitude, where you fine-tune
your skills, but avoid addressing the very environment (social and cultural) that
you ironically depend on for your daily bread and butter! Until we address the
conditions of our reality, writing will not be effective or incisive - because
the drive to write, argue, shape/unshape will be missing! To write is to create
a world that furthers the meaning and role of architecture in a society. It
should not be imagined as a skill-task of decoding some hidden meaning in an
existing building; it is not supplementary to architecture, or to deliver
formulas for a 'better' design - but to enlarge the existing space and terrain
of architecture productively.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Are there contemporary texts that
can potentially become canonical in the future? Does the SOA exhibition reflect
upon architecture as a discourse?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHTA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I am not
sure if there are particular iconic essays - if we decide to identify some, I
am sure we will find them - but I would prefer to say there is a good enough
cluster of texts. One has also in the Domus experience got more interested in
exploring the forms of interviews and discussions, parallel to the essay format
- as that leads to a nurturing of many voices and many experiences - the
practitioner and the theorist both are heard. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The SOA
exhibition is an attempt to generate/develop the terrain and landscape to
engage with architecture - to produce accounts in a way, even at the cost of
repeating descriptions, to address what exists, to generate the network of dots,
a set of thought-images which will prepare us for a thesis. The final thesis is
the excuse to develop this density of thoughts - finely shaped clusters that
will help us understand fragments that shape a history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHROTRA:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yes, of
course, some of the contemporary texts on architecture have the potential to
become canonical text. These texts capture the conflicts and conditions of an
era today of amazing transformation and reflections of the emergent condition
will become the framework for any theoretical discourse in the future. Theory,
after all, emanates from insightful reflection of the conditions on the ground.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I think the
quality of writing that we see today is extremely good but there is just not
enough of it! There is such a dearth of writing that the few pieces being
produced today will be precious records of the contemporary condition. Contemporary
writing also represent the conflicts and struggles of the first couple of
generations of architects in post-colonial India – which itself holds the
potential to be a representation of a wider global churning. SOA will capture
the state of writing and the broader discourse on architecture. In fact this is
one of the core agendas of the show and its related events.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Is the architecture of India
today reconciled with its many pasts? As an ideological position, the early
Modernists could willfully reject history in the course of charting
architectural futures. However, considering that a lot of buildings are part of
brownfield developments, often in the heart of some of our ageing cities, what is
the possible positions contemporary architecture should take about precedents
and contexts?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHTA:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Both
positions are a problem - excessive sensitivity to a past or a denial/rejection
of it - and that somewhere is our situation today, to be oscillating between
two positions. Some of the interpretations of the past have also been
problematic - where often past is reduced to a monolithic imagination or simply
a set of images, to be cut-and-pasted. To the credit of many architects - some
in the generation that established studios in the 1970s as well as the younger
ones establishing studios between 1980-1990s there has been an expression of
this dilemma - where do I address the present time and its own material
reality, while also caring about a history and heritage we grow up to respect;
at times this has been a dilemma and it has been evident in the architecture,
at times it is purposeful expression of that struggle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The need is
to struggle in these times and see what languages of architecture will work for
us today, and suit or challenge our political and functional existences. Some
of the younger practices are indeed doing that - they may not be able to
express that all points in time - but they are intuitively struggling with the
present.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There is
also the shameless activity of building - which is more the real-estate end of
architecture - where you binge on building and construction, where architecture
is used to suit greed and some promoted idea of aspirations. Architecture in this
realm can only be countered when some well-meaning and ethically-sound
architects will enter this sphere of real-estate architecture, and try to push
the boundaries from within these specific practices. On the other hand, one
will have to work on the idea of public awareness regarding architecture. There
is no discussion on architecture in non-professional forums, or the popular
media; this is a big lacunae! Architecture is the most public of all arts - it
sits in your face - it has a strong public presence in everyday living space -
but there is no discussion on architecture in the public sphere. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Is Indian architecture today
political? Has it ever been political? Does this exhibition have an ideological
standpoint?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">HOSKOTE:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Indian
architecture certainly articulated a politics of rupture and compelling forward
movement in its heroic Modernist phase, when it presented itself as a force
that would clear away the residues of tradition and the compromises of the
colonial period, and would, both literally and figuratively, build a future for
the nation-state that had no precedent in what went before. Even when they used
motifs and devices, or redeployed typologies from the legacies of previous
times, Habib Rahman, Achyut Kanvinde B V Doshi, Charles Correa and Raj Rewal
embodied this spirit in their early work. And when some members of this
generation circled back to the retrieval of the embedded wisdom of regional
building, architectural and visionary lineages, as they did during the 1980s,
that was a political gesture as well– a gesture articulating a politics of
critical retrieval.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The State of
Architecture exhibition does not proceed from an emphatic ideological premise,
but it does bear witness to some of these shifts and transitions. It also, in
its choice of contemporary practices and projects, prefers to focus on work
that is socially oriented, is informed by the relationship between architecture
and other discourses such as conservation and ecological awareness, and in other
ways explores manifestations beyond what is possible in a developer-driven
domain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">MEHTA:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">This is
indeed a tricky subject- on the face of it there clearly is a lack of political
engagement that contemporary architecture has today. Having said that, in many
architectural projects today, one can feel the struggle some architects are
going through with this divorce of form, design, and politics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">What we need
is not to mourn this divorce but to try and figure out what is the current
engagement that form and design have with everyday life- politics and culture.
There are many formulaic references established about people and public life,
living and working, and often architects are simply reusing them again and
again. These are no more than rhetoric. However in some cases there are new
adjustments being made, to deal with the political and cultural negotiations of
life in India now. It is probably more writing, more studies that will make
this new forms of anxiety clear and understandable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">DALVI:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Is it still relevant to believe,
as the Modernists once did, that good architecture will inevitably lead to good
society? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">HOSKOTE:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">All the
Modernists who believed that good architecture– or noble art– would inevitably
lead to a good society have come to grief. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Mondrian
believed that his rectilinear, flattened paintings offered cues to the
spiritual refinement of life; mass culture has reduced them to shower curtains.
Le Corbusier believed that his ideal designs would enable the citizens of
tomorrow to lead lives of significance; his work was flawed from the beginning
by his desire to subjugate all individual will and desire to the absolutism of
the plan. There is no necessary connection between good architecture and a good
society– at best, the former can be an image of the latter; it can gesture
towards the latter. But the best architecture can be distorted by elites bent
on exacerbating the asymmetries in society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR-JE1KhuNBlWfNgGLcyIzq9LiNd-5VlROB9824Z-Q0REhdA1pXnAIpLCNS-nA86PsHc1ZR1l2Dr-dcjSOTRFzZPrfhs6we6L6ALHIcDEPVhYH7MPzWiW8I6tnmVnQs6DkuQIhDqR3es9l/s1600/soa2.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR-JE1KhuNBlWfNgGLcyIzq9LiNd-5VlROB9824Z-Q0REhdA1pXnAIpLCNS-nA86PsHc1ZR1l2Dr-dcjSOTRFzZPrfhs6we6L6ALHIcDEPVhYH7MPzWiW8I6tnmVnQs6DkuQIhDqR3es9l/s200/soa2.png" width="200" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><b>'The State of Architecture: Practices & Processes in India' </b>exhibition </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">opens at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai from 6 January - 20 March 2016.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The exhibition will present the nature of contemporary architecture in India within a larger historical overview since Independence. It will not only map emerging practices but also discuss the aspirations they represent and stimulate a conversation on architecture among the architectural fraternity, patrons and public at large. Embodying a spectrum of positions that characterize architectural production in India, the content is intended to be provocative and make explicit the multiple, and often simultaneously valid, streams of architectural thought and engagement that truly represents the pluralism of India.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-29738658125153170022015-07-04T10:29:00.000+05:302015-07-04T10:47:05.868+05:30The Agency of Architecture: In Conversation with Rahul Mehrotra<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRUTDmbv3DpW_WJX7-u7xIuVHyoRWhGl1s9tOhW4Xux7c5R_WC5cPHXgJFGSKU33GTeLTi3hL4_v5XJVEutOSj4KuYNNxITH5whGUSYtC6m7V8ZwJBbeQOTJb19rGXY58Y8VcRlqgqnGQ_/s1600/7.+Rahul+Mehrotra+and+friend.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRUTDmbv3DpW_WJX7-u7xIuVHyoRWhGl1s9tOhW4Xux7c5R_WC5cPHXgJFGSKU33GTeLTi3hL4_v5XJVEutOSj4KuYNNxITH5whGUSYtC6m7V8ZwJBbeQOTJb19rGXY58Y8VcRlqgqnGQ_/s640/7.+Rahul+Mehrotra+and+friend.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">Rahul Mehrotra and Friend<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">credit: RMA Architects<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This conversation was first published in </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Tekton: A Journal of Architecture, Urban Design & Planning; </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Volume 1, Issue 1, September 2014; pp. 106 - 119<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Published with kind permission from Tekton.<br />
www.tekton.mes.ac.in</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
All images published with kind permission from Rahul Mehrotra and RMA.</div>
www.RMAarchitects.com<br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: red; font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: large;">The Agency of Architecture:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">In Conversation with Rahul
Mehrotra<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="color: red;">by<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="color: red;">Mustansir Dalvi</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It is inevitable that any interview with Rahul Mehrotra
is going to be multi-disciplinary in nature. In his person and in his practice
Mehrotra straddles several spheres with ease- architecture, planning, urbanism,
history, conservation, research, social concerns, socio-urban activism, writing
and pedagogy, all this with a critical eye on the present. He has been an
initiator of the architectural conservation movement in Mumbai that set an
example for the rest of India and (with Sharada Dwivedi) the primary narrator
of the history of Mumbai. In his work, Mehrotra explores beyond the obvious,
‘beyond binaries’, as he puts it, making each project a transformative one for
the users and the immediate physical context. He has been teaching full-time for
the past decade and his practice and research come together and are forwarded
by his pedagogical interests. This conversation covers many of his interests
and becomes a dialogue of ideas and possibilities.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
DALVI<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>In your
architectural projects at RMA, you have frequently gone beyond the conventional
limits of site, even immediate context. You have tried to incorporate the
intangible, addressed socio-cultural immediacies, and sought new significance,
whether in projects like Hathigaon in Jaipur, the more globalized offices for
corporate houses or even single-family dwellings. </b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
For me understanding the ‘context of the context’ is the
starting point. I think the physical excavations of a site are the more obvious
parameters to extricate – climate, geology, materials availability, local craft
and building practices etc. The more challenging, but perhaps far more
nourishing excavation is making the relationships between this obvious set of
excavations from the site with the more intangible, the deeper histories,
implicit cultures, the broader contemporary flows etc. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA92rJudbWaaHTEoiMZBzAoPx9Xu11tgJXtoBYG5NXj5w-8aawaH2VM45lptyeAHgznTTpl6KckJraVwm2YtQewL5AH_-5WiFKbocWRQTe-MPrEgnzAsvblrMnBnQSEXvA0bMZBat1VmQB/s1600/1.+Kala+Ghoda+Art+District.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA92rJudbWaaHTEoiMZBzAoPx9Xu11tgJXtoBYG5NXj5w-8aawaH2VM45lptyeAHgznTTpl6KckJraVwm2YtQewL5AH_-5WiFKbocWRQTe-MPrEgnzAsvblrMnBnQSEXvA0bMZBat1VmQB/s640/1.+Kala+Ghoda+Art+District.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">Kala Ghoda Art District<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">Constructing new
significance for historic public spaces - the evolving Kala Ghoda art district.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">credit: RMA Architects<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
DALVI</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Could you tell
describe the processes that allow you to, as you say 'localize the global and
globalize the local'? How do these impact design?</b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This establishing of the ‘context of the context’ allows
one to go beyond simplistic binaries and, sort of, invert categories in an
exciting way. For me the questions of significance, identity etc. are not found
categories – these have to be constructed and the only way one can do that as a
designer is to situate the site and its reading within the larger, ever
evolving context. In this same way the global and local as a binary is not productive
and the challenge then is how we invert them, because by localizing the global
you get these flows to be more invested in the local. Inversely, the local as a
caricature of itself is less useful in comparison to when the local resonates
globally or is at least networked globally. Thus for me the exercise of
writing, research and teaching in that sense are completely part of the
practice as they become the forum for this kind of excavation and research
which becomes the basis for practice.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT2-e15tgEiQeGjUxIGexn0r_DOVxZbZyMtAPRKkZ-z2ilGyx9EslK1F4w_T5jN2mg7OsIuwR7s24DAVH0rhcn4pcQMol7MboGsyTe2EUYoyQbpUMHhD2wXPTF-EABnklKGrvwlq7eLMcl/s1600/2.+SPARC+Public+Toilet+Prototype.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT2-e15tgEiQeGjUxIGexn0r_DOVxZbZyMtAPRKkZ-z2ilGyx9EslK1F4w_T5jN2mg7OsIuwR7s24DAVH0rhcn4pcQMol7MboGsyTe2EUYoyQbpUMHhD2wXPTF-EABnklKGrvwlq7eLMcl/s640/2.+SPARC+Public+Toilet+Prototype.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">SPARC Public Toilet
Prototype<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">A prototype for
public toilets in Mumbai slums - project for SPARC and SDI.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">credit: RMA Architects<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
DALVI</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Can you elaborate
on the idea of ‘inverting categories’?</b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
At the urban level, an example of this inverting of
categories to blur binaries is the case of the Kala Ghoda Art district.
Situated within a historic district this zone was never an art district. If one
had approached the problem using the narrative of the culture that created this
environment – such as the canons that determine conservation practise in the UK
– we would have frozen this space in time – probably written up its significance
and been rather dogmatic about what we should allow there or not. However, when
the custodians of an environment are another culture – we have to find other
ways of engaging with this process – especially in the post colonial situation
of Mumbai. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
By constructing a new significance of the Kala Ghoda are as an Art
District allowed the historic and contemporary to blur. The symbolic and
ideological significance of the space was drained in a sense to allow the
occupation of new use– ones that ultimate drove the process of conservation. In
this condition the responsibilities that rest on the architect are even greater
as they have to walk the thin line between constructing a new significance and
keeping the illusion of the historic built form intact!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Another example is the Slum Dwellers international (SDI)
where its very local experience through its international networks resonates
globally in terms of lessons, approaches and attitudes emanating out of
something that is such a specific condition - life in a Mumbai slum! One could
have fetishized and caricatured the local as it is seen as specific, but the
moment it is ‘globalized’, in this case through a network, its resonance
amplifies in productive ways.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br />
DALVI<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>The millennium is
now almost a decade and a half old now. Do you see trends/tropes in Indian
architecture that will have a long-term impact on design, beyond quotidian
practice? </b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The kind of architecture we are seeing perpetuated by an
infusion of footloose capital is resulting a hardening of the disparities that
exist in our society. The built form manifestations of these inequities
actually create deadly polarities. Perhaps these inequities have always existed
but were less evident in the past. Sometimes the just the illusion of equity is
perhaps more productive in the long run in terms of how different parts of
society slip into each other’s domains in space. But when architecture begins
to play a role in dissuading and perhaps even preventing that blur, that
transgression– I think we are setting ourselves up for a highly polarized
society. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It is a condition where architecture becomes the
instrument to create forms of exclusiveness. In this condition, as architects
we have to be mindful of how we create expressions of form and spatial
arrangements that don’t get co-opted in a process that is exclusionary. If we
have to maintain our relevance to society as practitioners we have no choice
but to press architecture to the service of society in more rigorous ways. I
think questions of inequity and the role of architecture: place making and
dealing with orchestrations of the built environment more generally will have
to once again become the focus of both the teaching and practice of
architecture. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br />
DALVI<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Are you optimistic
about our architectural futures, or has 'impatient capital' overtaken us
completely?</b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The architecture of Impatient Capital is brittle – its
fault lines are already becoming evident – its obvious detachment from place
and its unsustainable consumption or resources. Surely as human being we are
more intelligent that to be seduced by this paradigm. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I think the greatest role architecture can play in the
coming decades in India is to resist strategically the remaking of our cities
and built environments in a singular image (like China has done). Instead I
think architecture will and should remind us in our daily lives about the
richness in India of the pluralistic society we live in.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br />
DALVI<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>We seem to have
opted for this singularity ourselves, as in this current election.
Overwhelmingly, or so it seems, those aspiring impatiently for capital, or
those impatiently wishing to express
themselves through their capital have elected a government that will attempt to
re-jig Indian plurality into a single image. </b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Thank you for this– an incredibly important as well as
complicated question! <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Whether we have opted for a singularity or not only time
will tell. In our system even a majority like this in terms of seats in
parliament does not indicate a popular vote of more that 35 or 40%. But yes, it
does indicate a singularity of power and its deployment. How this power will be
manifest in the built environment we can only speculate about for now. Clearly
the rhetoric of the elections has caught the imagination of the vast portion of
the country – where aspirations of stability and an increased role of the state
in delivering services is clearly what created such a majority for the new
government. I think this is more pointedly driven by middle class aspirations
for more stable and predictable services – all the way from education and
healthcare to mobility and employment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Thus as a response to this, I believe in this case, with
a BJP majority, it will be the deployment of centralized forms of
infrastructure- which will support the creation of these crucial services that
people aspire for in their daily lives. Completion of ongoing highway projects,
perhaps railways and other modes of communications, hospitals, Universities
etc. It will be the Chinese model of centralized power structures and the
infrastructure that supports that kind of operation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The effects of this will be two fold. Firstly, the
destruction of many existing urban fabrics and also the natural landscape. This
will perhaps make cities efficient in terms of mobility and basic
infrastructure like water and sanitation but will create many social
disruptions. The second will be through the new networks that will open up the
vast hinterlands of our many urban centres in the form of small towns growing
rapidly and new towns which will be fuelled by the rampant liberation of capita
deployment through real estate development in the these fragile locations. This
sort of development model can be transformational for a majority of the
country’s population but has some obvious disruptive tendencies – the
trade-offs and the contestations that involve these trade-offs is what will
characterize our politics in this coming decade.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br />
DALVI<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Do you think
architecture has a role of resistance in this current dispensation? How should
it function?</b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Naturally, the question for us is- what is the role of
architecture in resisting or facilitating this process? It is here that the
role of education becomes critical. Erasing the plurality of our landscape can
be resisted at many levels – local and national. So more than ever before we
are going to need the profession to simultaneous play many roles: of
practitioners, of well organized large scale practitioners, of activists, of community
organizers, of inter-disciplinary facilitators, etc. Pluralism can only be
reinforced through architecture by encouraging multiple modes of the practices
of architecture through a spectrum of scales across the nation. The several
hundreds of small town across in India, for example, don't have architects even
living and working there– if at all we have any influence currently on these
places, it is through professionals in our megacities – this will have to
change if architecture has to have any agency as an instrument to resist the
rampant remaking of our cities in one image.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br />
DALVI<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>You have lived,
researched and practiced out of Mumbai for several decades now. You continue to
be Mumbai's foremost architectural and urban chronicler. In our complex and complicated
present, is it possible to effectively preserve its urban integrity, and to
function as a cultural custodian of our city?</b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It is. I think the challenge is to not worry about the
parts of the city but focus on how one facilitates connections between the
parts – makes the adjacencies of disparities and of plurality to cohesively
coexist. It is this in between spaces of connections that will lie the most
fecund possibilities and potential. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
These spaces also become the site of the construction of
new cultures and this where the role of architecture and that of the
construction of new cultures, new significances in our society and finally
identity is formed. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The spaces that I am alluding to more particularly in
Mumbai are the post-industrial landscapes, the public spaces that we are
reclaiming and safeguarding (all the way from the green spaces in the city and
waterfronts to the spaces around our railway stations and public institutions)
and more importantly in the interstitial spaces that approximately half our
populations resides.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjnB60Fw7ovrjRHvLD8hySi4Xmt8tBTGUQuP7ffhX3jAZMeZSztFtYkJAmGAMy20Ce1wM3SxbYSHl8iYdK_kDmvM-5sjjQBV601DeXrGVYUf3BnHdq0m5hMY7ZXARdsQFOxu7L-zueeAOc/s1600/6.+Hathigaon-+Home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjnB60Fw7ovrjRHvLD8hySi4Xmt8tBTGUQuP7ffhX3jAZMeZSztFtYkJAmGAMy20Ce1wM3SxbYSHl8iYdK_kDmvM-5sjjQBV601DeXrGVYUf3BnHdq0m5hMY7ZXARdsQFOxu7L-zueeAOc/s640/6.+Hathigaon-+Home.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">Hathi gian- Elephants
and keepers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">Image from
Hathigaon - Project for Elephants their Keepers. View showing a mahout arriving
home to his family after a day of work with the elephant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">credit: Rahul Mehrotra<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
DALVI</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Where is the place
and relevance of memory in the post-industrial city?</b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It is scattered and fractured, but it does exist. The
form and space takes in this post-industrial condition in Mumbai is at two
levels. One where the fracture becomes more acute – work and living gets
situated in multiple locations and this is not a neat category. Memory takes on
a more temporal form in this condition– not necessarily through architecture
only. That’s why I believe festivals have now an amplified role in the life and
identity formation process of the city of Mumbai. The second (and probably
polar opposite) is the creation of
exclusive gated communities in the city, sometimes in the form of extreme
imaginations that have been facilitated by the cluster development idea and at
others just as vertical gated communities in the heart of poorer
neighbourhoods. In both cases, it is about the occupation of interstitial space
within the city, not at the perimeter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfA80IZ2WGzNr7RbO7mmw3-JYWykgUyORy5ps-G0T7cWeTuYzR355Tq0xKKReqwpkCJfLtYC2eUd_OWXjM-8liKQoOA9qt0f8cX2TPD3O5xkBi6IK4CT-lxxuchNONJ7eUU2wCCM7EEUCx/s1600/5.+Hathigaon-+Elephants+and+Keepers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfA80IZ2WGzNr7RbO7mmw3-JYWykgUyORy5ps-G0T7cWeTuYzR355Tq0xKKReqwpkCJfLtYC2eUd_OWXjM-8liKQoOA9qt0f8cX2TPD3O5xkBi6IK4CT-lxxuchNONJ7eUU2wCCM7EEUCx/s400/5.+Hathigaon-+Elephants+and+Keepers.jpg" width="295" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">Hathigaon- Home<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">Image from
Hathigaon - Project for Elephants their Keepers. The intimate relationship of
the elephant and mahout drives the scale and layout of each home. One of the
many considerations to balance was to accommodate the elephant's requirements,
while providing a safe environment for children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">credit: Rajesh Vora<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
DALVI</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Your current
research is focused on evolving a theoretical framework for designing in
conditions of informal growth. In a city like Mumbai, which seems to be
slipping into a 'post-planning' phase, what strategies emerge to deal with such
conditions? </b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I believe the State cannot absolve itself the
responsibility of planning. Planning in fact is intrinsically a state subject.
Having said that the question is how can state reengage and at what scales?
Naturally the obvious scale for the state’s involvement would need to be
infrastructure and facilitating the governance structure that make possible
urban form at local levels. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
However the state’s imagination about what the city
should be limits any effective intervention at any scale. Essentially our
narratives about the city set up non-productive binaries – the rich and poor or
formal and informal city etc. These force us as designers to ally with one or
the other imagination. I think for design to be effective it must consciously
dissolve these binaries and I believe design can play a crucial role in doing
this. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbbBtqr8f-5tEMx7BtNVhn-7TwrX4l_8OVUgQ8h88brq-fN_j0MibWOWT8TUAEduGT8MSqWtAt36FMsxjXv6mMBuZmEqeGu5Q2mfc1EbIJUsWGDjMb1cFNcCx6T5LFczL0YiyJS1VuSDSP/s1600/4.+Ganesh+Immersion+in+Mumbai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbbBtqr8f-5tEMx7BtNVhn-7TwrX4l_8OVUgQ8h88brq-fN_j0MibWOWT8TUAEduGT8MSqWtAt36FMsxjXv6mMBuZmEqeGu5Q2mfc1EbIJUsWGDjMb1cFNcCx6T5LFczL0YiyJS1VuSDSP/s640/4.+Ganesh+Immersion+in+Mumbai.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">Ganesh Immersion in
Mumbai<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">Architecture is
not the ‘spectacle’ of the city nor does it even comprise the single dominant
image of the city. In contrast, festivals such as Ganesh Chathurthi shown here
have emerged as the spectacles of the Kinetic City. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">credit: Rahul Mehrotra<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
DALVI</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Has your research
given fresh directions to address issues of inclusivity, and to redress the
polarization that is the consequence of the state outsourcing those processes
that we traditionally associated with welfare or socialist governance?</b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
My current research looks at this condition of dissolving
or blurring these binaries and I describe the current condition of urbanism in
India as the Kinetic City. This Kinetic City framework has the potential to
allow a better understanding of the blurred lines of contemporary urbanism and
the changing roles of people and spaces in urban society. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In most Indian cities, the increasing concentrations of
global flows have exacerbated the inequalities and spatial divisions of social
classes. In this context, an architecture or urbanism of equality in an
increasingly inequitable economic condition requires looking deeper to find a
wide range of places to acknowledge and commemorate the cultures and
environments of those excluded from the spaces of global flows. These don’t
necessarily lie in the formal production of architecture, but often challenge
it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Here the idea of a city is an elastic urban condition,
not a grand vision, but a grand adjustment. The Kinetic City obviously cannot
be seen as a design tool rather a demand that conceptions of urbanism create
and facilitate environments that are versatile and flexible, robust and
ambiguous enough to allow this kinetic quality of the city to flourish.
Architecture and design more generally play a massive role in how this happens.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In fact we should not use the word ‘inclusive city’ –
what we should ask is how through design we can make our cities less exclusive
or excluding of people and especially the poor. I am hoping to capture and
articulate these observations and approaches in a way that it might useful for
the next generation to intervene in these spaces more effectively. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">Inequalities in Mumbai<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">As can be seen in
Mumbai, architecture and urban design can heighten inequalities that exist in
society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 9.0pt;">credit: Rahul Mehrotra<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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DALVI</div>
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<b>The state seems to
abhor elasticity, and, as you say, is comfortable within binaries. Will
architects therefore have to go beyond their current limitations as interveners
in the urban landscape, and establish new roles for themselves?</b></div>
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<br /></div>
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MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Absolutely! </div>
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Architects will have to find new modes of
engaging with influencing the built environment. Naturally this will depend on
if architects are motivated to change the polarization that might occur with
the state perpetuating the binaries. It will depend on how idealistic we want
to be. In a boom economy architects can also get very comfortable with lots of
easy projects and a general affluence which is seductive. So as a community we
have to construct the correct narratives that will keep us engaged, responsible
and connected to the realities that will evolve around us. I believe society
invests in us to safeguard and imagine the best spatial possibilities for a
society to exist and thrive in. So it is contingent, if we are concerned about
our relevance, to not forget this essential role we play in society.<o:p></o:p></div>
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DALVI<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Could you give us a
brief history of your career as an academic? What are your main concerns in
architectural pedagogy today? </b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
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I entered academics rather accidentally through a chance
meeting with the Dean of the University of Michigan who offered me the
opportunity to come teach for a term. I loved it! Essentially could not believe
I had not done this before and I subsequently returned a couple of years later
to the University of Michigan and one thing led to the other and brought me to
my current position. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In retrospective my 11 years of teaching have been the
most satisfying moments in my career as an architect. In some ways I am glad I
went into the academy after a good 15 years of practice as this besides giving
me some experience to talk from also allowed me to reflect on a body of work.
And in fact this has been the single most valuable thing for me – that is
reflect on my practice as I teach. As a teacher you have to make your talk
walk.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
But more critically, coming from India after 15 years of
practice also gave me a different perspective on pedagogy. Coming from a highly
pluralistic conditions where many cultures, ways of doing things and many times
exist simultaneously, made me think critically about the simultaneous validity
of this difference. The way this extended itself into my approach to teaching
was to think about different models of engagement and practice and how one
might actually build that into a curriculum. Of course this is a complicated
and an ongoing project and I do hope I can share this when it’s evolved a
little more. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br />
DALVI<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>How do you approach
the teaching of architecture and urban design in India, as opposed to teaching
abroad, as in the Harvard Graduate School of Design?</b><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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MEHROTRA<o:p></o:p></div>
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In today’s world I think we see similar challenges
whether it’s in India or the USA. In fact in India, you see the same conditions
in extreme form and thus testing these Ideas in India would actually create
better or at least more extreme conditions. I believe theory comes from action on
the ground and it is in places like India, China, Latin America and Africa that
the action is today.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 9pt;">credit: RMA Architects</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
RAHUL MEHROTRA</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Rahul Mehrotra is a
practising architect and educator. He works in Mumbai and teaches at the
Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, where he is Professor of Urban
Design and Planning, and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design
as well as a member of the steering committee of Harvard’s South Asia
Initiative.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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His practice, RMA
Architects (www.RMAarchitects.com), founded in 1990, has executed a range of
projects across India. These diverse projects have engaged many issues,
multiple constituencies and varying scales, from interior design and
architecture to urban design, conservation and planning. As Trustee of the Urban
Design Research Institute (UDRI), and Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and
Research (PUKAR) both based in Mumbai, Mehrotra continues to be actively
involved as an activist in the civic and urban affairs of the city.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Mehrotra has written and
lectured extensively on architecture, conservation and urban planning. He has
written, co-authored and edited a vast repertoire of books on Mumbai, its urban
history, its historic buildings, public spaces and planning processes.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
He is a member of the
Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture and currently serves
on the governing boards of the London School of Economics Cities Programme and
the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS).<o:p></o:p></div>
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-23856176230853639552015-05-04T11:46:00.000+05:302015-05-04T11:46:00.996+05:30Goethe’s ‘Wandrers Nachtlied'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheKIZijd9NaaxpFlAwrH6b8aEEdpqOwAUpSWB4J2sHof14KxK51QVnLJMlM1yHKwRHCvb_pPegvk2bk0wMx2U9hBCQsH7NJ2I1-kWSHZmwJdPU2VZKFaty_9HRMrckEqVhiM4JEGAnrlSv/s1600/Die_Gartenlaube_(1872)_b_657.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheKIZijd9NaaxpFlAwrH6b8aEEdpqOwAUpSWB4J2sHof14KxK51QVnLJMlM1yHKwRHCvb_pPegvk2bk0wMx2U9hBCQsH7NJ2I1-kWSHZmwJdPU2VZKFaty_9HRMrckEqVhiM4JEGAnrlSv/s1600/Die_Gartenlaube_(1872)_b_657.jpg" height="376" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
My translations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ‘Wandrers Nachtlied I & II’, considered his most beautiful (and well known) work.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Wandrers Nachtlied I</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">by</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Johann Wolfgang von Goethe</span><br />
<br />
Der du von dem Himmel bist,<br />
Alles Leid und Schmerzen stillest,<br />
Den, der doppelt elend ist,<br />
Doppelt mit Erquickung füllest;<br />
Ach, ich bin des Treibens müde!<br />
Was soll all der Schmerz und Lust?<br />
Süßer Friede,<br />
Komm, ach komm in meine Brust!<br />
(1776)<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Nightsong of the Wayfarer I</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">translated by </span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Mustansir Dalvi</span><br />
<br />
You, who art from heaven descended,<br />
every pain and sorrow stilled;<br />
while I, doubly wretched<br />
am twice with sustenance filled;<br />
Oh, I am tired of this hustle and bustle!<br />
Why all this pleasure and sorrow?<br />
Sweet stillness,<br />
come, oh come to me!<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Wandrers Nachtlied II</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">(Ein Gleiches )</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">by</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Johann Wolfgang von Goethe</span><br />
<br />
Über allen Gipfeln<br />
Ist Ruh,<br />
In allen Wipfeln<br />
Spürest du<br />
Kaum einen Hauch;<br />
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.<br />
Warte nur, balde<br />
Ruhest du auch.<br />
(1780)<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Nightsong of the Wayfarer II</span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">(Another one)</span><br />
<span style="color: red;">translated by </span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Mustansir Dalvi</span><br />
<br />
On every peak<br />
there is peace,<br />
through all the trees<br />
you barely sense<br />
the breath of breeze;<br />
not a peep from birds in the woods.<br />
Wait a bit, soon<br />
you too will be at ease.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Goethe apparently wrote this second poem on the walls of a wooden shed on top of the Kickelhahn mountain near Ilmenau on the night of September 6, 1780. The image is a facsimile.<br />
<br />
(For Arif Dalvi)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Translation (c) Mustansir Dalvi, 2015. All rights reserved.</span></div>
as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-31996729505317712712015-02-24T15:15:00.000+05:302015-02-24T15:29:22.296+05:30Why building smart cities is not a smart idea<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6hrsztQrAe6nR8x8uRU2Q6gXn9VSmQEggOchSdvqG-kajzzro8MtJK8rTE5Td0FiI6uvzzbQdfGjisC_ZkIjExib2a_UNODIZ9q6gAd5a0_70-Zq015E08tCdOGaHYOhvXD3E1LA10CF6/s1600/simcity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6hrsztQrAe6nR8x8uRU2Q6gXn9VSmQEggOchSdvqG-kajzzro8MtJK8rTE5Td0FiI6uvzzbQdfGjisC_ZkIjExib2a_UNODIZ9q6gAd5a0_70-Zq015E08tCdOGaHYOhvXD3E1LA10CF6/s1600/simcity.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Why building smart cities is not a smart idea</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Instead of trying to build 100 new cities with doubtful futures, the government should attend to the many places in India that are on the verge of becoming important urban centres.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
In the 2014 Union budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley allocated Rs 7,060 crore to the development of 100 new cities in India. This was in keeping with the BJP manifesto for the Lok Sabha election this year.<br />
<br />
“We will initiate building 100 new cities,” it promised, “enabled with the latest in technology and infrastructure – adhering to concepts like sustainability, walk to work etc, and focused on specialized domains.”<br />
<br />
If the budget allocation is divided equally, each potential new city will get around Rs 70 crore. This amount does not build a city, but can presumably allow a feasibility study.<br />
<br />
The refrain of “one hundred” had to be a rhetorical device. In the budget speech, this number became a mantra, with a number of projects given Rs 100 crore of funding. Then came the announcement that 100 new cities would be built.<br />
<br />
What background data or realities of our country is this based on? There are eight metropolises in India, 26 Tier-II cities, 33 Tier-III cities and more than 5,000 Tier-IV towns. Current villages with the potential for future urbanisation number more than 638,000. All these are already in existence. These are not the new cities being referred to.<br />
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Those fresh, dynamic, extremely smart cities are greenfield developments, laid on land previously untouched. Development would, therefore, be swift, smooth and unhindered by the pesky and cantankerous citizenry that resides in every existing urban set-up.<br />
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The potential new cities are to be “based on integrated habitat development – building on concepts like twin cities and satellite towns”. Custom-built cities, emerging in the shadow of older towns, can be sterling examples of progress and best practice, undertaken, no doubt through the currently favored mode of public-private partnerships.<br />
<br />
Will this simultaneously breathe new life into the older city, while helping the new one reach its stated potential? As one possible answer, consider Mumbai’s favorite means of redevelopment – hire a developer, erect a shining tower, sell it at market rates. Accommodate in afterthought the original users in a runt, a lesser endowed cousin to the skyscraper built in one corner. Now imagine this at the level of a city.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: red;">Urban Renewal</span></b><br />
Does urban renewal have to be imagined only in terms of new cities? Such an approach gives up on any possible transformation of existing cities from within as too difficult and unlikely to yield the lucrative returns envisaged in any outsourced enterprise.<br />
<br />
The reverse does not stand: if existing cities are to be developed well, then given the number of present urban settlements in India, new cities are not needed at all. All that land that is now rolling nature can remain just that. The new city can only be at the expense of the old.<br />
<br />
New cities are designed swathes of infrastructure, imaginary spaces awaiting occupation. What attractors do they offer as potential? In our liberalized, liquidity-based, aspiration-fuelled present, their primary potential would be as investment, not occupation.<br />
<br />
I overheard a commuter describing his acquisitions in the upmarket node in Navi Mumbai. “We have three flats in Kharghar”, he said, “but we've never once been there”. Spaces with market rather than social potential are built for instant gentrification, displaying all the hallmarks of new Edens and Elysian Fields, but keeping out Babel. They lack for nothing except life.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: red;">Mutant Impositions</span></b><br />
New towns are fundamentally unnatural entities. They are vast, mutant super-impositions on landscapes devoid of habitation. Historically, cities grow organically, through accumulation and accommodation, where people come first, not infrastructure. Over time, through largely iterative processes, common law practices coalesce into traditions of urban behavior, remaining inclusive, and then through osmosis with other cities turning cosmopolitan. First settlement, then design. Every great metropolis is testament to this, located next to bodies of water, along caravan trails, next to natural resources. They grow by attracting migrants who see the value in those who have come before them, and learn from it.<br />
<br />
Even new cities need a reason for their existence. Jamshedpur and Bokaro Steel had heavy industry to attract workers in the socialist 1950s. Chandigarh, Gandhinagar and Bhubaneshwar were new capitals. Navi Mumbai, on the other hand, envisioned as a twin city to the grand metropolis, took more than three decades to become viable. Lavasa and Amby Valley, exclusive by their very mandate, and despite their large publicity budgets, hardly appear to be urban transformers.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: red;">Smart City, Sim City</span></b><br />
Planned cities take as much time to come into their own as unplanned towns. In the same manner of towns that grow organically, the individual potential of a planned urban settlement will be reliant on regional transformations, socio-economic and political processes and sheer blind luck.<br />
<br />
You might remember Sim City, a vastly popular video game in the 1990s, where you played the mayor of a city. A large part of your time was spent laying out the city – its roads, networks and infrastructure, its public buildings and amenities. You then allowed users to move in, who came like ants chasing honey. Soon you would receive either praise and accolades from your citizens, or – if they did not like your layout – you would face strikes, rioting and arson. Good intentions are never enough.<br />
<br />
Why not focus on the urban centers that already are? If only the government could overcome the fear of resistance and inertia from existing populations, overcome the desperation to show instant results, be patient, work for the long-haul well beyond their terms in office, then existing towns, from Tier IV to Tier I can be transformed – first through public participation, then through inclusive policies and the provision of social infrastructure, and finally through “enabling technology and infrastructure, and specialized domains”.<br />
<br />
No one can deny that our big cities are overburdened. But for every one of those, there are already a dozen more on the cusp of becoming future cities with potential. If attention is lavished on these instead of the chimeras of a hundred new cities with doubtful futures, new India, with its changing demographics, may still benefit.<br />
<br />
As Rahul Mehrotra, architect, academic and urban conservationist recently remarked in a discussion on urban change: “We do not need 100 new cities. What we need are 100 great cities.”<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://scroll.in/article/670991/Why-building-smart-cities-is-not-a-smart-idea">First published in scroll</a>.in, Jul 19, 2014 • 07:00 am</div>
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-11988534207811076262015-01-15T13:39:00.000+05:302015-01-15T13:51:22.227+05:30New Spaces in Old Cities<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">New Spaces in Old Cities</span><br />
<br />
After a considerable hiatus, after the late 1980s really, we now have a few public institutions chosen from international designs.<br />
<br />
Ralph Lerner's monumental IGNCA design in Lutyens' Delhi was greeted with a lot of fanfare in 1986. Its blueprints were displayed in several parts of the country and a coffee table sized book made of the whole competition. That was, of course before the internet age. The project itself was later subject to various dilutions and what has now come up can hardly be called monumental. Lerner's built edifice is a shadow of its own pale shadow.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3GjChUMDMSKDvAA624IXOjWqB1792uv9Q2qwdEnSHvnF46PfNa-SlTzqH2HYGJVEnR48Q9XTEHzBa2KAlk3UokLZDHJKRmpP5O3tG6z5Q7Mezdeh8wBwD7ES17mCx4IX-vPKBL4hLkDMC/s1600/lerner+book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3GjChUMDMSKDvAA624IXOjWqB1792uv9Q2qwdEnSHvnF46PfNa-SlTzqH2HYGJVEnR48Q9XTEHzBa2KAlk3UokLZDHJKRmpP5O3tG6z5Q7Mezdeh8wBwD7ES17mCx4IX-vPKBL4hLkDMC/s1600/lerner+book.jpg" height="400" width="297" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ralph Lerner's Design of the IGNCA, New Delhi</td></tr>
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There were lessons to be learnt then. Unlike several other cities where a contemporary public project has had a transformative influence, this kind of imposed internationalism seems to have a limited currency in our country. Lerner's design in the late 80's was textbook PoMo (in its least complimentary sense), using the colours and materials of the Delhi's other grand buildings in a kitschy pastiche, and having little to do with the life of the city. Gautam Bhatia's second prize winning design did a much better job localizing the design, conceiving the complex as a promenade.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlnZ5lgTC-KEFeP86jwRB-9ay4a2Wikul5axhX1ybpGWKacMSS71PNl0p0gviPzDfOgLIZM9FF7HsTVhcdIlwhkTSd4ffiHDjfo8rpMRHTzQC8sJeea4U6AkxaE6any0HIgHrP-dBkSog-/s1600/ignca-pic7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlnZ5lgTC-KEFeP86jwRB-9ay4a2Wikul5axhX1ybpGWKacMSS71PNl0p0gviPzDfOgLIZM9FF7HsTVhcdIlwhkTSd4ffiHDjfo8rpMRHTzQC8sJeea4U6AkxaE6any0HIgHrP-dBkSog-/s1600/ignca-pic7.jpg" height="416" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The IGNCA, New Delhi, today</td></tr>
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Projects like Lerner have become exclusionary, both at an urban and at a cultural level. A foreign firm, bringing in a foreign form in a city filled with the architecture of the past has inherent contradictions. Unlike Chandigarh, Delhi is no tabula rasa.<br />
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In the past two years, two projects, one, museum and the other an extension to a well-known city edifice, also a museum, have awarded to 'starchitects'. The Patna Museum and the extension to the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Bombay are both updated expressions of contemporary internationalism, that in the very act of their conception (the result of international competitions) exude the virtues of fair play and transparency.<br />
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The New Museum, worldwide is metonymous with contemporary presence and awareness, much as the New Town had been iconic marker with the post war generation of the 1950s. Projects with this kind of public profile also offer the potential for future footfalls, an enhanced cultural scene in both cities and a chance to parade global credentials in from of literati and glitterati alike. Criticism would be churlish, but some issues emerge from both projects that need consideration, even debate.<br />
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The Design for the <a href="http://www.maki-and-associates.co.jp/details/index.html?pcd=141">new Bihar Museum</a> was won by the Japanese firm (Fumihiko) Maki and Associates, along with Opolis Architects from Bombay. The new museum is now being developed at the Bailey Road in Patna and has a far more ambitious brief than its predecessor. The older Patna Museum was built in 1917 in the Indo Saracenic style, which at the time was riding the wave of short lived dominance in architectural fashion. The new site for the new museum is already contentious, as it entails the razing of several colonial bungalows from the early 1900s, and even the relocation of the well-known Mulana Mazhar ul Haq Arabic and Persian University.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maki & Associate's design for the new Bihar Museum in Patna</td></tr>
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The older Patna museum is still the place to go to today to see the wealth of Buddhist and Jain bronzes and terracottas from Nalanda and Gaya and other Ancient and medieval historical sites. By far the most important piece in the museum has to be the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didarganj_Yakshi">Didarganj Yakshi</a>, a creation that, in my opinion is the single most beautiful sculpture in the world. This five and a half foot tall monolithic polished sandstone female form holding a whisk is the best example of Mauryan Art we have and dates back to the 3rd century BCE. This and some of the other Buddha figurines are, apparently, to be poached from the Patna Museum to grace the space of the new museum. But has the new museum been designed with the knowledge of specific artifacts to be displayed within its walls? Or will the lovely Yakshi have to comfort herself with whatever corner is allotted to her?<br />
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Consider this: the Venus de Milo has an entire room in the Louvre to herself, and is the focus of a long corridor. The Winged Victory of Samothrace has pride of place at the peak of a grand stairway and dominates the space. Any one of these sculptures could have an entire museum dedicated only to them. But cultural relevance can only be achieved with the knowledge and specificity of the museum's collection. Otherwise as many contemporary museums do, the focus is entirely on the event, on temporary and passing collections on tour, and on other spaces like restaurants, amphitheatres and souvenir shops, while the permanent collection is either not on display or collected together like the <i>ajayabghar</i> of the past.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP5vILmaoCcklJNR23dZuIyfAK2-VQXwooJLE75aNNRQF3hw0HkJ6SwZOt7e-XZ5R3TqBoZXAiWu1yvlPMDRl00uu3RzkX8UpwfapZEYn8m4teZpJH9hk1FMS_U34vg_U5zcU6__9Pwfa9/s1600/bhaudaji+lad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP5vILmaoCcklJNR23dZuIyfAK2-VQXwooJLE75aNNRQF3hw0HkJ6SwZOt7e-XZ5R3TqBoZXAiWu1yvlPMDRl00uu3RzkX8UpwfapZEYn8m4teZpJH9hk1FMS_U34vg_U5zcU6__9Pwfa9/s1600/bhaudaji+lad.jpg" height="424" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bhau Daji Museum, Mumbai</td></tr>
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The <a href="http://www.bdlmuseum.org/">Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Bombay</a> was already an ajayabghar or House of Wonders. Conceived as a City Museum in 1872, formerly the Victoria and Albert Museum, it was built in fin de siecle decorative neo-Renaissance styling. The international competition for the new wing was won by New York based <a href="http://www.bdlmuseum.org/about/museum-expansion.html">architect Steven Holl</a>, with Opolis Architects once again as associates. The new design is made of red Agra stone and white concrete interior spaces. The building is made to bring in light through a series of diagonals and curved cutouts evoking calligraphic flourishes. Looking nothing like the older museum in whose direct proximity it is planned, the new wing is a Steven Holl building in Bombay, rather than a Bombay building designed by Steven Holl.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTc-JKsD6d_9zwMNmHMg5ARhvPa_SqJmTKr-7GDOcRvPIFolaZLy8YTQLI6Ac0S4uvIP1dsWL8b_XJ7GuOzB0ECNDbMEXF1ZZES2S1pI4Dy14DyXYuKGpE6EkxRglPAjcsj38SPHLH0zK/s1600/bhaudaji+lad+steven+holl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTc-JKsD6d_9zwMNmHMg5ARhvPa_SqJmTKr-7GDOcRvPIFolaZLy8YTQLI6Ac0S4uvIP1dsWL8b_XJ7GuOzB0ECNDbMEXF1ZZES2S1pI4Dy14DyXYuKGpE6EkxRglPAjcsj38SPHLH0zK/s1600/bhaudaji+lad+steven+holl.jpg" height="240" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steven Holl's design for the proposed extension of the Bhau Daji Museum in Mumbai</td></tr>
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Here too internationalism triumphs over the local, creating fresh semantics where none existed. What implications will the changed context bode for the surroundings, for Byculla to the West, and the zoo to the East? Will the new building be seen behind fencing, available for all to look at but not touch (not without a ticket, at least)? And what is the collection that is to be displayed within its vast modernist caverns?<br />
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The old museum has a complicated presence that the new just does not seem to acknowledge. Built to celebrate the former queen and consort, it chose sides in the ongoing Battle of the Styles. The flavour of the age was the Indo Saracenic, in Bombay at least. Being a city museum, it was populated with contemporary (manufactured) artifacts, commissioned to the Sir JJ School of Art. These were both dioramas of everyday life in Bombay in the late 19th century, as well as several figurines depicting through colonial eyes and essentializations the several denizens of the city, differentiated by caste and religion. In a sense, this museum of Bombay was already a meta-project to start with. After nearly a century and a half it takes on several interpretations as artifacts as seen through post-colonial perspectives. How does this context square up with the current design that seems to operate in a cultural amnesia?<br />
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This, then is the problem of the new productions of space in old cities- the larger ecology of redevelopment that the State, not so metaphorically both Centre and State, are presently obsessed with. Change is brought in irrespective of context and in spite of history. Even if we keep heritage values aside for the moment, these new buildings erase rather than encompass urban memory. They impose their presence on us.<br />
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Our cities are left the poorer for it.<br />
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(This essay was published in an edited form in Architect and Interior India, Vol. 6, Issue 10, January 2015)</div>
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as any fule knohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015841942317556802noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1232658873881353872.post-10008014413829582112014-09-28T23:26:00.001+05:302014-10-02T11:50:25.868+05:30Bo0mbay- in conversation with Kamu Iyer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><i>Bo0mbay: from Precincts to Sprawl</i>- </span><br />
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;">in conversation with Kamu Iyer</span><br />
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Architect Kamu Iyer’s most recent book is <b><a href="http://popularprakashan.com/English/BOOMBAY-From-Precincts-to-Sprawl">‘Bo0mbay: from Precincts to Sprawl’</a></b>, in which he dispels the notions of the city growing only organically. Right from early childhood, he talks of growing up in a ‘planned precinct’, where the city held back its chaos, while order, inclusivity and contemplation ruled. In these areas of Bombay, planning order and social order went hand in hand. This allowed for the absorption of migrants from several parts of the Indian sub-continent to come to the megapolis to seek a life. The buildings which came up in these several precincts defined the urban fabric of the city for almost fifty years, until very recently; where they are being systematically undermined by what Rahul Mehrotra has called ‘impatient capital’. But in their heyday, from the late twenties to the late fifties, the architecture that emerged was open and expressive and self-similar, not hidden behind gates, watchmen and CCTV’s.<br />
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Iyer’s childhood, as he describes in his book, was spent in the areas of the Hindu and Parsee Colonies in middle Bombay. In the fifties, he went to architecture school, where he was taught and later worked with the very architects whose designs made these precincts. The 'planned city' that emerged from the initiatives of the City Improvement Trust was a tram ride away from the imperial piles of South Bombay. The colonial expressions in and around the erstwhile Fort had run out of steam by the first decade of the last century. In a sense, it is urban design, rather than architecture that forms the final contribution of the colonial state to the city of Bombay.<br />
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In 2000, Iyer edited ‘Buildings that Shaped Bombay’, a monograph on the work of G. B. Mhatre, whom he had as a teacher in college and whom he briefly worked with. Mhatre was perhaps the best architect whose canvas was the planned precinct, whether the Oval Maidan stretch, the Marine Drive, the Pherozeshah Mehta Road or indeed the Five Garden developments. Iyer has lived in a G. B. Mhatre designed building for the large part of his life, and the lessons learnt, both subliminally and through active critiques and debates on what architecture is appropriate have governed his professional life and his practice.<br />
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His education stood at the cusp of change from the slow decline of (locally adapted) Beaux Arts practices, when the architectural education was still ensconced in the Art School, to the emerging Modernist possibilities being explored by the various practices prolific at the time. Iyer’s practice continues in the present, more than half a century after he started his firm ‘architects’ combine’ with friends from architecture school. He is both prolific and critical in his designs. He has, in this book, several sharp observations about the present, the city turning from a fabric of precincts to the bo0m of sub-urban sprawl, where real estate monetization and self-help appropriations exist side by side.<br />
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I am very pleased to engage Kamu Iyer in the conversation that follows where he elaborates on several of the themes I have mentioned. While his new book tells us the tale of the Bombay of over three quarters of the last hundred years through his perspective and reminisces, his observations also present us with an alternative genealogy to understand the city as it is today.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Published by Popular Prakashan, 2014</td></tr>
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<i>“I have always lived in apartment buildings that stood on individual plots but I had friends who lived in other types of houses. Arun Ranade lives in a chawl at Girgaum, Vinodini Gajaria ,till her end, lived in a chawl among a group of them in a gated community called Halai Bhatia Mahajan Wadi, Jehangir Choksi lived at Cusrow Baugh, a housing enclave for Parsees and J.B.Fernandes, an architect associated with Ridley Abbot the designer of New Empire and Liberty cinemas, lived at Khotachi Wadi, an urban village in the heart of Girgaum. </i><br />
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<i>The variety in house typologies, all of which exist even now, make layers that add to the richness of the city. Bombay is a palimpsest in which the imprints of successive typologies of housing and their individual histories overlap. They did not evolve in a sequence. Most grew independently and simultaneously. But the apartment building which, appeared first in Bombay, has changed the most. It is constantly outgrowing it's form.” </i><br />
(excerpted from ‘Bo0mbay: from Precincts to Sprawl’)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Dadar Matunga planned precincts, from Google Earth</td></tr>
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<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>What are your earliest memories of Bombay? We take a lot of its urban fabric, especially the developments of the thirties and the forties for granted. Even today, they form the backdrop of our lived experience. Was that also true for your growing-up years or do you have memories of the city 'filling up', as it were?</b><br />
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IYER:<br />
My earliest memories are from 1938 when I was six years old. I lived in Hindu Colony at Dadar till my ninth year after which I lived at the northern end of Parsi Colony. Both areas were part of a planned neighborhood. The areas I lived and studied in were planned but many parts of Bombay that I saw from an early age sitting in a tram appeared crowded and disorderly. Buildings were close to one another and there was little or no space between them. The streets were sometimes winding and buildings were higher than in my neighborhood.<br />
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In contrast both Hindu and Parsi colonies had houses and spaces between them placed regularly. Houses stood on individual plots and there was space outside the house to play in. This made me feel that the city was not the same all over and there was more to it than what I was used to in my locality. What Bombay might have been before the thirties is, for me, a matter of speculation.<br />
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<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>You studied architecture in the Sir JJ School at a time when the most prolific and significant architects in Bombay were also its faculty and driving force. There has perhaps never been a time in the city when academia and practice were so synonymous. What do you think has been the lasting legacy of the Sir JJ School?</b><br />
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IYER:<br />
In the 50's, when we were students, the school of architecture itself was small and it was a part of the Art school. The number of professionally qualified architects was also small- there were more engineers practicing as architects, because you needed only a surveyor’s license from the Bombay Municipal Corporation to sign building plans for approval. I read many years later that the school was always short of teachers and Foster King, during his tenure as (acting) head of the school, encouraged senior students to help their juniors in their studies. He also sought the help of professional architects to teach in the school. Whether it was for survival in a profession inundated with engineers or love for architecture, most felt duty bound to teach.<br />
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The profession, represented by the Indian Institute of Architects, also took interest in students because most of its prominent members were teaching at the school. The Institute also had its nominees in the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) examination board. The institute's concerns were largely with the profession, unlike the present day when the emphasis is on conference jamborees.<br />
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As students, we got the benefit of the experience of the practicing architects of the city. The school, from its inception, had luminaries like George Wittet, Claude Batley , Foster King and in later years G. B. Mhatre, Durga Bajpai , Jehangir Billimoria and a host of others. The situation in other professional colleges was similar, especially the medical colleges attached to hospitals. The best doctors were 'honorary' in public hospitals and their services were available both to students and patients who could not have otherwise afforded it. Over the years the custom of having practicing professionals teach ceased but fortunately the school of architecture continues the tradition of inducting professionals in design studios, juries and lectures. This is good for the school.<br />
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<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>Was Modernism taught by default when you were in architecture school? It certainly was when I studied in Sir JJ in the eighties. The Modernist agendas and processes, fueled by the works of the Modern masters and their manifestos had got normalized by then. Was there debate over what architecture was appropriate when you were a student?</b><br />
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IYER:<br />
When I was a student, the Beaux Arts system adapted to Indian conditions by Claude Batley was prevalent. Teaching was centered on the study of classical and Indian orders, their proportions and details and drawing them up skillfully. There was also study of historical styles. For instance, there was a subject called composition in which you composed on sheet elements of a style and rendered it to make an attractive drawing. The emphasis was on drawing and rendering and little else which was frustrating to most of us. We found it easier to understand what we were drawing only when we actually saw the building. We could understand the Doric Order only when we saw the Town Hall.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJhIh4QP7YK7vJBIgyKNuw1q3pzyvsxupnDkNuzTDGFmxT2U9Zq6mju7RXWjuMPZoav4aRhBNALsilgv5A-C8E0T0LMM19kmK4huEVVCCH6aRiRx5ApPzzGo_TKeHZ09Hy0C53JTYCIa-n/s1600/roman+positive.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJhIh4QP7YK7vJBIgyKNuw1q3pzyvsxupnDkNuzTDGFmxT2U9Zq6mju7RXWjuMPZoav4aRhBNALsilgv5A-C8E0T0LMM19kmK4huEVVCCH6aRiRx5ApPzzGo_TKeHZ09Hy0C53JTYCIa-n/s1600/roman+positive.jpg" height="640" width="449" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Study of the Basilica of Maxentius' History Composition at the Sir JJ School of Art, circa, 1940, by G. S. Kalkundri</td></tr>
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We realized that drawing had limitations and there was more to a building than what appeared on its front. In the design studios elevations carried more weight than plans and if there was mismatch between the inside and outside it did not matter as long as the elevations were attractive. The elevation had to have 'elevation features', which meant embellishment. This system was done away with in my second year at school.<br />
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By the time we came to the third year, though the earlier method of teaching was discontinued, the approach to design continued in which the plan and elevation of a building were different elements designed separately. We also had a studio in the third year called Specialized History in which you had to design a building for a modern use but adapt and modify, if need be, a traditional style of architecture for the design of the facade. This was a dichotomy difficult to comprehend.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFdVdu7P__nePmPjCo2UYBXpzSsEv78hY4-93ONhVisMojCMZ6HLZe4JzH3WyoY7x16Yj1enT7QHibpEbgv5TEJSDga2wGo_6rapq2_wwOMAsPe7t3IszNU-XIc7NV9euhXdNBi2eUPS0U/s1600/museum+positive.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFdVdu7P__nePmPjCo2UYBXpzSsEv78hY4-93ONhVisMojCMZ6HLZe4JzH3WyoY7x16Yj1enT7QHibpEbgv5TEJSDga2wGo_6rapq2_wwOMAsPe7t3IszNU-XIc7NV9euhXdNBi2eUPS0U/s1600/museum+positive.jpg" height="427" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Design for a Small Museum' Specialized History Drawing at the Sir JJ School of Art, circa, 1940, by N. D. Desai</td></tr>
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We were a group of friends who felt differently though we did not quite understand Modernism. But examples of early modern architecture in books then, reading about the Bauhaus, Howard Robertson's books and seeing Frank Lloyd Wright's work in magazines convinced us that we needed to understand Modernism as a movement. We realized soon that a movement becomes one only when people also think similarly in their respective fields. We looked around us. In the Art section of the school some students were moving away from pictorial art, a set of artists formed the Progressive Group and exhibited their work in the city. T.S. Eliot was a departure from the romantic poets on whose works we grew up and J. Krishnamurthy, who used to give public lectures in the school compound during winters, was telling us to set aside all gurus and their teachings and instead find out for ourselves.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Le Corbusier at the High Court, Chandigarh</td></tr>
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<br />
<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>You were witness to Le Corbusier’s buildings coming up in Chandigarh. What kind of influence did his work have on students of architecture in Bombay?</b><br />
<br />
IYER:<br />
The biggest impact was Le Corbusier. His design for the Chandigarh High Court stunned us all because it was a major departure from the 'box' and the modernism of the Bauhaus which we had by then become familiar with. We argued among ourselves whether a building can be seen as an object by itself or as a part of a larger picture of the street and the city. To find out we spent time walking around the city and cycling in the suburbs looking at buildings and streets, market places and other commonly used places and discussing in the canteen. This taught us more than making drawings in the studios.<br />
<br />
There were debates but these were more between those in favor of Frank Lloyd Wright's organic architecture and those supporting the International style. Le Corbusier appealed only to a few and his work was a topic for discussion among them. The transition in the school was gradual. At the same time, modern architecture was also emerging in the city.<br />
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<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>There has not been an adequate assessment of the architecture of the sixties and the seventies. The influence of architects in Bombay as a dominant force nationally was already in decline by the end of the fifties. Delhi and Ahmedabad had become the new capitals of modernist expression. </b><br />
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IYER:<br />
On the contrary, Bombay in the sixties and seventies saw a boom in building activity. The high rise buildings in Nariman Point, industrial complexes with sophisticated buildings for advanced processes and apartment and office buildings for ownership were all coming up at a brisk pace. The typologies of the apartment building and the high rise towers are ' Bombay Firsts'. Delhi and Ahmedabad appear as leaders of modernist expression but buildings that came up there were mostly institutional, built for the government and public bodies. Most architects were heavily influenced by Le Corbusier at first and Louis Kahn later. The buildings that came up were monumental, each vying with the other for attention.<br />
<br />
In Bombay, the situation was different. Clients were demanding. They insisted on strict adherence to programme, cost and time schedules. They also said that a building had not only to be good to look at but also to live in, the latter being more important. In other words their demands were exactly what modern architecture exhorted- the rational use of space, structural clarity and no mismatch between interior space and external expression.<br />
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<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>These decades also witnesses the withering of the post-independence/republic euphoria. Your practice was already into its second decade by then. How do you remember those times, and in retrospect today how do you assess their influence?</b><br />
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IYER:<br />
The spurt in building activity in the 60's gave young architects work. Clients recognized the need for an architect's services in a project. That itself was a departure from the past when an architect was appointed only to ' beautify' the facade. Young architects got projects for designing interiors or industrial buildings or for apartments promoted by developers. As young practitioners we got industrial projects which instilled in us a discipline of keeping to time and cost schedules. We also did some houses in Ahmedabad and Bangalore as also a residential school and many small projects. The variety of work and interaction with clients added to our 'experience bank'. We discussed our work in the studio and we learnt soon enough that every project, regardless of its size, had its own complexities and no job was too small for the office to handle.<br />
<br />
The sixties and seventies were still idealistic and euphoric though it started waning towards the late 70's. Cynicism crept in when some architects saw architecture more as a business than as a profession. Developers were largely responsible for this perception. Architects who looked at their projects as a search and introspected on them when they were completed could not reconcile with the commercialization of architecture that was getting rampant.<br />
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Modernism took different forms. In Delhi and Ahmedabad architects educated at CEPT and SPA did serious work though most of them adapted the language of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. In Bombay, commercially oriented architects blindly copied western models without thinking about the suitability of such buildings to Indian conditions while the others plodded on, attempting to create architecture that evolved from past understanding of materials and ways of handling them, construction methods and forms suitable for the context in which they were situated.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CIDCO Low Income Group Housing, Vashi, New Bombay, 1991 by architect's combine</td></tr>
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<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>The constant clamor today is that the housing stock in the city is inadequate. But there have been mass housing projects in the past, generated by the state accommodating all levels of housing. You have designed mass housing projects in New Bombay as well as in Karnataka. Is there still a future for projects of this kind?</b><br />
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IYER:<br />
Housing is generally affordable if it is done by public bodies because developers and their architects are not interested in housing other than that for the affluent. Their argument is that land costs are high due to scarcity and it does not make economic sense to construct smaller flats. Architects who are on the bandwagon argue that since land is scarce FSI has to be high and buildings tall. This puts those needing affordable housing out of the reckoning. So it becomes the responsibility of government and public bodies to supply housing for the have-nots.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately the housing authority does not have enough land since almost all land is owned privately. Despite that there is a future for public housing, cooperative ownership and self help groups. But for this to happen there must be concerted effort and political will. Providing affordable housing is a daunting task but it is not insurmountable but the political class and bureaucracy need to know that just as a society is only as strong as its weakest section, a city's quality depends on how its poor live.<br />
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<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>How do you assess the decline of both the rental paradigm as well as the cooperative movement on housing in Bombay?</b><br />
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IYER:<br />
Affordable rental housing is nonexistent and is not likely to revive even if the Rent Act, which is always unfairly blamed for the shortfall, is repealed. Today cooperative ownership of property which, again, is a Bombay First, is a viable solution. In this system either a cooperative society is formed before a site is purchased and a building is built on it or is formed after a developer hands over a building to individual buyers of flats in the building. Flats become more affordable when a society is formed before a building is constructed because it eliminates the developer's profit margin. Moreover he bases his price on the current cost of land which keeps varying all the time. Forming societies before construction has declined in recent years because all land in the city is cornered by developers and getting approvals is time consuming and cumbersome.<br />
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<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>How would you address the symptom of swift gentrification that seems at affect inclusive growth in the city? I see aspiration fulfillment through ownership and the inevitable influence of the developer/ speculator as the main factors. Would you agree?</b><br />
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IYER:<br />
Gentrification is a recent phenomenon.<br />
It is a part of a vicious cycle of inflated land prices, a typology of housing that is inherently expensive to construct, maintain and live in and a marketing strategy that lists exclusivity as one of the unique features of a project.<br />
<br />
Gentrification is in built into the way housing projects are designed, which basically are gated communities containing stand-alone, high-rise towers with large floor plates. The open space in these gated communities is developed as gardens for the exclusive use of the community. The contrast between these high end towers and Dadar/Parsi Colony is palpable. In the Parsi Colony most of the apartment blocks are exclusively for the Parsis. Yet segregation is imperceptible because the streets, gardens and spaces around the buildings are for all. In earlier developments gated communities were for people belonging to a caste or religion or a sub culture group but within the wadi or Baugh there was no class division. The rule was “you are welcome to stay here if you belong to my caste or religion" now the rule is “you are welcome to live here if you have the money".<br />
<br />
Gentrification distorts social balance. Bombay, unlike New Delhi, was not stratified. It was more egalitarian than most cities and gentrification does not fit in Bombay's ethos. Interestingly, when the Greater Bombay Plan was being drafted the British Government appointed a panel to advise on housing. The panel, in which Claude Batley was a member, stressed that neighborhoods should be inclusive and segregation of people into income or social groups should not be encouraged. Planning should provide for mixed housing in neighborhoods. The suggestion has been overlooked; instead distorted land prices and investable surplus funds with a few have resulted in ample built space for investors but not for housing the majority of the people living in the city.<br />
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<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>Your book <i>‘Bo0mbay: from Precincts to Sprawl’</i> has been several years in the making. I have been privileged to read some of its early drafts. Could you describe the processes that went into settling upon its final form? </b><br />
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IYER:<br />
My book has taken years to write. I had no intention to write because my observations of the city over the years were subjective and I did not think anyone would be interested. I used to share them with friends now and then. People would tell me to put down what I saw or knew in some form or other. My friend Shekhar Krishnan and Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar planned a series of conversations which would be recorded and made available as oral history. This did not happen. Charles Correa was largely responsible for taking it further. He insisted on my writing a book. That is how I started.<br />
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The first version was structured around three frames through which I looked at the city. It was illustrated in the usual manner. People I showed it to said that the book was a personal view, yet I was in the background. I was not sure if a first person account would be taken seriously. That doubt took a long time to resolve.<br />
<br />
When I started, I wondered what type of book would convey my view without a bias. I also found that books about Bombay were either coffee table books with nostalgic imagery or academic books with references and substantiation of every other thing. Most of those books were awfully boring because only words do not tell the story of a city. Likewise, pictures alone cannot tell you why a city looked the way it did. A city as a living entity consists of so many things which have to be lived through. The ideas I was putting down were also visual and I thought the book should have both words and pictures to tell the story. The difference would have to be that the words and pictures tell the same story. It would be parallel narrative.<br />
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<b>DALVI:</b><br />
<b>I find this most interesting as it is a book that defies genres, being a document, a chronology, a critical assessment and a subjective viewpoint all in one.</b><br />
<br />
IYER:<br />
Since I was writing in the first person it was easy to structure it like a journey through different stages of my life. It takes you from my schoolboy days to my time in architecture school and later, my professional life. I thought it is important to find out why and how a city grows or metamorphoses. I could do that through analysis, diagrams, maps and sketches. That is what makes it difficult to classify the book. It is like the <i>Bombay Bhel </i>that has a little of everything.<br />
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(interview with Mustansir Dalvi, October 2014)</div>
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© Mustansir Dalvi, 2014, all rights reserved.</div>
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