// this came in the mail today, forwarding it (the author said
// "do what you want with it") because it happns to be
// the nicest architecture story i have read since
// Sverre Fehn's "Has a Doll Life?"
thinking more about correspondences, transcribing Deleuze's The Diagramme,
"We do not listen enough to what painters say. They say that the painter is
already in the canvas. Here, he encounters all the figurative and
probabilistic data that occupy and preoccupy the canvas. An entire battle
occurs in the canvas between the painter and his data."
I was struck by the similarities in his language and Le corbusier's, "...now
the plan is the plan of a battle, it is the determinition of all ... the
moment of architecture, a great moment ... volumes brought together in
light"
http://www.ab-a.net/index.cgi?Texts/The_Diagramme
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Rabbits and Jackals in Sector 17
Shireesh Deshpande
My 'tryst' with Chandigarh happened in its early stages of construction. The
only train to get there from Delhi arrived very early in the morning -
enroute to Kalka. The railway station then' had exposed brick walls and
cement sheet roof - an apology to what it is now. I was to spend some of the
most exciting years of my life in that city - but at that moment the future
looked very dark and cold! One could only reach the city by a ramshackle
city bus which one boarded alongwith baggage and all, but there were hardly
any passengers then. The bus dropped everyone in a market place, that was
the Sector 22. The road from the station, what seemed to be in the early
morning dark, a village road through some forest ! There was a panjabi folk
belief I had heard before, that if three cows were found grazing together,
it was a good location for a settlement. Was that how they chose to build
Chandigarh here, I thought ! First rays of the sun suddenly brought
architecture into life. There were some shops held together by a colonnade,
some billboards and hoarding in an orderly arrangement, pavements and
plantation and - lo - a cinema theatre too ! That was enough of
civilization, I thought, for my survival. I was to work as architect planner
with Architect Jugal Kishor Choudhury whose office was situated in Sector 8.
It was at the top of the Plan and sector 22 was way down. I made it to the
office without any difficulty. Choudhury introduced me to others in the
office - Gulzar singh his partner, Kuldip Singh, Romesh Khosla, Kamaleshwar
Sen and Rajinder Singh, both very good singers, were to be my company for
times to come. Kuldip and Romesh were to design some wellknown buildings
later - NDMC Tower in Delhi and Moghul Sheraton in Agra. All these and
others lived in two 'chummeries' in Sector 7 - ten minutes walk from JKC's
office. I got into one of these and started new friendships that lasted
long. It was Romesh who stuck me the addage 'sir' - I was the only post
graduate in the group then. There was hardly anything to do after office
hours. We usually cycled down to Sector 22 to while away time. On return we
cut across Sector 17 and in fading light a rabbit romping along or a jackal
scurrying away was a usual sight.
I was not a Corbu fan. But we at the SPA had a lot of input on his planning
philosophy. His 'Radiant City' proposal had moved me a lot, especially after
Ebenezer Howard's 'Garden City'. I had read the Modulor and made very little
out of it. His design for Chandigarh stunned me even more ! Corbusier's
biography, I found to be moving' , especially the League of Nations debacle.
The pictures of the 'Ronchamp' and the sections of the Unite de Habitation
surprised me for the range of his sensitivity. It was 'The Home of Man' that
gave me some insight into his philosophy and fathomless depths of his
creative mind. I wondered if I might chance a meeting. As time passed on we
made friends with Indian architects in the Capital Project and got to hear
stories on how Pierre Jeannette, E Maxwell Fry and his wife Jane Drew
designed the other buildings. The strong expression of exposed brick work
and bold white cornices, the random rubble from the river bed, bare concrete
surfaces and glass panes seemed then, to be a very potent palette to produce
an architecture for modern India. The vibrant primary colors, simple yet
imaginative furniture, sun control devices and an architectural frame
control seemed to tie the city together. Most of the government housing,
dense and orderly, that came up before our eyes, was to shake up the
monotony and insipidity of PWD housing in other States as well. A number of
plots were allotted to private individuals too. These were scattered in
various Sectors. The house in Sector 7 where we lived, however, looked as if
it was picked up from Hoshiarpur or Ludhiana from where its owner might have
migrated. Trees and shrubs planted and carefully located were now well-grown
and added significant edges to the vast open spaces. The Sukna lake and the
promenade was the 'Marine Drive' of Chandigarh . Bureaucrats, Businessmen,
Architects, men-women and children thronged to see and be seen. It was that
fateful evening when we had gone for a stroll that Corbusier and Jeanerret
came walking in the opposite direction. I almost froze in my place until
they passed us. Corb wore a loose khaki tunic and a baggy trouser and his
hallmark - a thick black frame spectacle. The image of the 'first encounter'
is still well engrained, although later there were opportunities to see and
hear him in the Architects office. During the gaps when he was in Europe,
Jeanerret was far more accessible. His hobby was to build plywood boats of
various types, row boats, catamarans, peddle boats etc. He would let us try
some of those in the lake. The Capitol Complex had come up quite a bit and
the High Court was completed, although it looked unfinished to most of its
visitors. That was my tryst with Chandigarh until I left after a couple of
years. My subsequent visits were few and far-fetched. But I kept track of
its rapid completion and population. Red bricks gray random rubble, white
cornices, and row housing with frame control and the gridiron streets with
large roundabout crossings were the visual elements that had filtered into
other new towns in the country. And yet, among the misinformed elite,
engineers and bureaucrats it was a fashion to criticize Chandigarh. The
Press and the Media highlighted its failure to be 'Indian'; its
inconsistency with climate; its unsustainability with nature and the weak
social fabric due to low density. Chandigarh was a failure, as it did not
care for the poor, the settlers and service population, they said. It had no
industry to speak of. I wondered then, if the rabbits and the jackals were
still around.
Celebrating Chandigarh - Fifty Years of the Idea - an international
Conference in January 1999 at Chandigarh , if not anything else, reminded me
that I was now 'old'. But the urge to be there was too strong to keep me
away. Some international, national and local names attracted attention.
Whether they were Corb fans, disciples or haters was not clear to me. So we
landed on a very foggy and cold morning but the train journey was excellent,
the railway station was neat and clean and a bevy of cars, taxies and
comfortable buses waited to take us to the city. That 'bumpy village road'
was now a four-lane highway. Glittering showrooms and shop fronts and
fully-grown blossom trees aligned on either side. We passed the Sector 17
and I fell back in old memories - I missed the rabbits and the jackals ! A
feature in the local supplement of a newspaper that was probably a few days
old caught my attention. A photograph showed two ladies in a cycle ricksha
and two men riding a scooter alongside within Sector 17 which was now the
city centre . It was a feature on the modus operandi of finding female
company for the night ! Yes, Chandigarh was coming-off age. These were the
new rabbits and jackals in Sector 17 !! Rest of the news could have been
from any other Indian city --problems of the poor, city bursting at the
seams, the doings and undoings of the wily politicians, the culturals and
the kitty parties of the well-to-do, etc. etc. At least, they were not
holding Corbusier to be responsible for all this, thank God for that, I
thought. Or have they forgotten him already ? Finally, it seemed to me, that
we had 'indianized' a foreign design.
The Conference was successful - as most conferences are. The highlights that
lingered in one's mind are the 'Sermon in the pit' under the Open Hand by
Kenneth Frampton and the 'agonies and ecstasies' of contemporary Chandigarh
by administrator bureaucrat Jagdish Sagar. It was hard to tell which side
the other speakers were actually leaning. The retired Chandigarh architects,
still under a nostalgic spell, defended the city hopelessly. Some leading
Indian 'outsider' architects coined new labels like 'a zanana city' to
satisfy their 'holier than thou' egos. The foreigners from east and west
sold packaged philosophies to a nation that lived by a 5000 year- old
philosophy! The conference venue was packed with delegates, students, press
and public. Anyway, it was too cold and murky to be outside. The obvious
facts were restated with inevitable hyperbole. The city was suffering with
plenty of wealth, too many cars, too many people, too many pedestrians
crossing the round-abouts, vast open spaces inviting encroachment, too many
outsiders wanting to be in Chandigarh !
"Yes" they said, "the city was wearing a shirt that Corb gave it 50 years
ago". It is now withered and tight so we advised them to buy a new Indian
shirt !!