& then there are days

of clebration in waiting.
of immense joy and that fills every second.
of a happiness that surrounds your being.
of having to prove that you have been right.
of excitement.
of wanting to scream into the loneliness.
of vaccum.
of an solitary feeling which have no words or expression.
of loneliness.

There are days that bring people together and days that rip them apart.
And there are days that bring people together and separate them in the same instant.

amdavad / ahmeda-a-bad

Some will argue that the city built on the pride and power of Solanki kings was over-thrown and looted by Mughals who built a new capital on the ruins of an Ancient Gujarati civilisation. History however, has another story tell. The grandson of Sultan Ahmed Shah (not a Mughal) laid the foundations of this city on the banks of the Sabarmati near a forest close to the older city of Karnavati. The city he built was named after his grandfather and is therefore called Ahmedabad. 

A clear case needs to be made on how the name of the city of 'Ahmedabad' has been bastardised in to 'Amdavad ' before we forget the roots of a city founded by Islamic rule on the banks of seasonal river. It is only a matter of time before 'Amdavad ' becomes the official name of a city which is seen to be the seat of Gujarati culture. 


The city is being paraded on a world stage as a symbol of development not only for the stae but for the country as well. The city has been a canvas for radical change over the last decade. The case of 'Amdavad' requires particular attention. The city is a short drive away from Gandhinagar which is the State capital and the seat of Government for Gujarat. One would imagine that the state capital would be the site of development programs and growth, but, instead, it is a sleepy city where nothing has changed since the time it was planned. Ahmedabad on the other had. is the cultural seat of the Gujarati community and the site for massive institutional growth and urban development project in recent times. 

Ahmedabad is witnessing a change that is large scale, it is a rapid production and consumption of images that is largely misunderstood. We have here a case where urban development has become a tool for cleansing. The city is slowly burying its past under promenades, ring roads and flyovers. This phenomenon can be studied using three case studies: the riverfront development & CBD proposal, Kankaria lake precinct & the BRTS implementation mechanism. 

The riverfront has been a subject of hate for every architect who has visited the city in recent times. The problems with this kind of a development are obvious, but it is important to be able to step back from the obvious faults with the design. The Sabarmati was a stream which would swell during the monsoon. In the summer, the river bed would transform into a thriving public space. It was the site for any cricket matches, evening strolls and weekly markets and fairs. The river was in many ways the 'front' for the old city as it provided a relief from the density of the city that grew within fort walls. The new city which grew on the opposite bank has the Sabarmati Ashram built by Gandhiji, with steps which descended into the river bed. It is also the site of the Gandhi Ashram built by Charles Correa and the famous MIll Owner's building or ATMA built by Le Corbusier. The promenade today cuts off these spaces from the river to which they are connected. The rover bed has been flooded by building dams at either end of the city. The river is now a long lake that perennially holds water. The public space has been substituted by creating concrete walking paths against a two storey retaining wall. The remaining part of the reclaimed land will be converted into a CBD over the coming decade. This project has also developed communities who were residing on the river edge. These communities were affected by the annual flooding of the river. These communities have been displaced (maybe rightly) to make way for the riverfront development.

Similarly, Kankaria lake has been re-developed into a park of sorts complete with a toy train, a circular walking track & ducks in a cylindrical water tank. The issues with this exclusive development are best seen in the film, 'Progress Chaalu che.' 

The BRTS planning system is designed around an ease of implementation. It probably is the best way to execute a rapid transport corridor as it makes land acquisition for the state fairly simple. The routes that cut through the old city are mostly planned through areas that were most affected communities in the Godhra riots. Some of these routes become dividers on the basis of ethnicity, and this is a fact acknowledged by many a proud 'Amdavadi.' The method of implementation will throw some light on how big these dividers are. The development authority is very efficient, their working leaves very little time lags between route demands and implementation. Once the route has been decided, the first infrastructure to be built is the bus stop. These pop-up in the middle of narrow and busy streets. Bollards/ railings usually follow the bus stop. These cordon off a lane on each side of the street. These lanes are meant exclusively for the buses. This then follows by demolitions for the purpose of road-widening, sometimes 2-3 lanes wide on each side. 

I have been travelling to the city regularly for the last 15 months. Each time leaves me slightly more disturbed about how the city is growing. As a Gujarati myself, I find the investment in Ahmedabad to be quite disturbing. My fear is that eventually a generation of people will forget the histories that this city were built on.

tried/tired

There is a common problem that plagues this land and it's citizens. 

There is an idea of a time that once was, the glory days, the time of times, the best time, when we rose shining above the rest.
That time has long gone, and we still look back. 
We compare the day, 
every second since that long gone moment, is an utter failure only because it isn't. 

Has there been no growth? 
Have there been no other moments worthy of acknowledgement? 
Does every success have to be put down because it does not measure up? 

If so, then shut this all down! Burn it all up!

Let us start a-fresh. 

Interior Design

Many a fellow architect I know look down upon the work of interior design, the job of shaping one's immediate environments, homes, work spaces & others. As described by many of our responsible & leading seniors in the profession, Interior Design is the work that pollutes the pure space of architecture, thought & production in the offices of architects. 

One. The council of Architecture puts it very nicely, where it describes this work as Interior Architecture and not as that of decoration and design. It invests an ideology through the nomenclature that is an important responsibility on the shoulders of the members of the discipline. 
The one thing that I have come to realise after designing about 11 homes & 3 work-spaces is that the job of the architect is really just to design environments suited to the nature of occupation of space. The nature of the designed environment has a direct impact on its occupants (I say this with the confidence of having worked in two offices and having designed mine recently). Thus, I have taken a liking to the term 'Interior Architecture'.

Two. Discouraging young architects from taking up these jobs is irresponsible. It is difficult for just anyone to make it in this city as an architect (that's right, no capital A). The only jobs available in the field are those of Interior Architecture works. The work cut-out for architects is just that, as they are cut-out of the design and build processes at play within the city which are driven mainly by the economy. Sure, one might argue about new roles that one can adopt, but not everyone can afford to live here and have a philanthropic practice or have a really rich client base, and therefore build expensive homes outside. As Philip Johnson is known to have said, " There are only three ways of becoming a big Architect, 1.You are born rich. 2.You marry rich 3.There is no other way." 
So, for those of us who are content at leading ordinary lives in Mumbai, Interior Architecture is the only source of income. 

Three. Architectural work is a cultural production. The architect therefore cannot take to Tom Foolery and resort to hogwash. This pretentiousness and publicity can only take the work to the point before the bubble bursts and the shallowness of the mind is exposed for the world to see. 

Four. The new 'young' practices that are surviving are the ones which are small, that have dedicated, enthusiastic & exciting leadership (note: the hogwash mentioned earlier do not count). These are small firms operating out of small spaces & with limited staff. These practices sustain mainly through an array of Interior Architecture projects. They spend their resources and time in really enjoying research works (urban design, product design, etc) & architecture projects which come after years of being in the field. These are the leaders of tomorrow. 
The older guys on the other hand, are interested in the production of a labour force that will work in offices on their institution projects and compound walls all over the country. 

Office Office

Meanwhile, from the terrace of the office building, a body builder stands on the roof of a hybrid amidst the mixed landuse madness of Malad.

the past year

These are not the easiest of times.

The last year has been a mixed bag, a collection of all sorts of emotions, professional achievements and failures. The year will be remembered by two overlapping events that shaped it.

One. Nani’s Death

There have been many deaths in the family, but none as close as this one, in terms of physical proximity. When Dada passed away I was probably 15, still immature to deal with the physical aspect of death. Being the first child in our family I was thoroughly spoilt by him and his passing left a void in my life. After a period of about 40 days I started to realize his absence in the daily routine of my life, beginning from coming home from school, to catching an English film on the television, late at night. As I was probably protected from the event that surrounds death, his absence has had an effect for a longing that is physical since that day. Forty days after he passed away, I wept, for an hour, and I still do, at the times I miss his presence in my life.

I was not so close to my Nani, but over the last five years since she began living with us on & off, I grew attached to her. The last three years she was not in the best of health and had become dependent for her daily needs. She was a proud lady, who had lived by herself for over thirty years, and I could tell she did not like this period of her life one bit. There was a question that she used to ask me, only me, “When will this all come to an end?” and every time the answer would be the same, “When it has to.” In some strange way, I always felt, she asked me, because she knew that I knew how she felt through the last years of her life. One fine day, last year, on the eve of Ganesh Chaturthi, she called up and spoke to me. She mentioned that she would not be spending the festival days with us, but with Masi & Jinali, and also that she is sorry as she would not meet me ever again. Two days later, we got the phone call! A perfectly timed death, she breathed her last, comforted by her elder daughter, my mother, as Nani died while sleeping with her head resting in mum’s lap. I maintain that the lady knew what was happening to her, she knew that she was dying, and she knew when death would come, or rather, she chose when she wanted to depart. I have had to deal with Nani’s death physically. Nani had two daughters, and I am the only grandson. It was her wish, that I perform the cremation.

The cremation rituals seem absurd. The last of the rituals involve transferring the body onto a pyre prepared by laying wood and then applying ghee all over the body. I was told to put extra around the pectoral & pelvic girdles, knees and forehead, post which you start the ‘burning’ by attempting to set the body on fire, from the left toe, and later setting the wood below it on fire. The cremation ends with a long wait for the body to burn down completely and the removal of fragments of bones that have been left. I carried her pieces of her bones wrapped in a handkerchief all the way to the beach where they were immersed in the sea. For however weird these rituals might seem, they have provided a sense of closure for me. Sure I miss her, and I will continue to do so, but, I know that she went on her terms and what she desired has been fulfilled.

Two. Office Project

Masi & Masa bought a new office, and they were keen that I design and execute the Inerior Architecture work for their new space. The budgets and scale of work was of the kind that was a first for me, professionally as I had never taken on work of this scale by myself. Backed by my team of young, experienced & enthusiastic team of contractors, I took the project head on.

My uncle is a sort of a tyrant, or at least he likes to portray himself as one. There were all kinds of paperwork and rules and deadlines that he had set out along with a very tight time for the work to be executed and a hefty fine for the delay. He made sure that I was in a tight box, enclosed and engulfed and kept under pressure through-out the duration of the project. The involvement of Masi & Jinali is what made it a lot of fun and a relief from the tyranny of Mr. Mehta walking around on his home turf. This project came with a lot of hope, an opportunity to prove myself to my harshest critic and a promise that if this one goes well, more work will follow.

A short while into the execution of this project, Nani passed away. I had to take on the role of transforming myself into a source of strength and calm in the mad weeping and sadness filled atmosphere that engulfed the family, all this while Mr. Tyranny himself was trying to deal with it, by hiding from public view. He could not appear to be vulnerable, an emotional mess, weeping at the loss of his mother-in-law in front of family and friends for whom he is a figure of discipline and professionalism. This man resumed work a few hours after the funeral and so did I. I remember him walking up to me as I watched the pyre burning and reminding me of a meeting that I had to keep with him for one in the afternoon the very same day. I cremated my grandmother and got back to work after having written the obituary for the newspapers. I kept the appointment.

Looking back, I feel that I was never given a moment of time to internailse her death. I was supposed to be the strong one for the family, on whose shoulders everyone would cry and a responsible professional working non-stop for the family, the hard-working committed individual who doesn’t allow anything to stop him.

Anyway, I kept to the date of hand-over, a day earlier in fact. This was a project that was executed against all odds to the satisfaction of the company. But, I feel that this project has been a failure. It failed to live up to my expectations of bringing in new work and new opening new doors. A section of my peers thought it was too conventional, or safe, etc. I however, disagree with them, as I think that the design has worked with the material limitations that surround the making of such a space, and yet created a new aesthetic in terms of use of material, spatial configuration, etc. I created a wonderful, joyous & happy working environment, but, it is a failure.

It has been a year since I started the process of work on the office, and no substantial work has come in since then. With the cynicism setting in slowly, I am thinking that maybe becoming a good & successful architect is subject to your position in society and how you position yourself to the world. Maybe it is a dream that would be left un-fulfilled. Dadi is in the last stage of Cancer and probably living out her last few days or months.

This July, life has come full circle.

The Great Indian Circus

The Janmashtami of politics:

Regional parties of an indigenous people are out on the streets sponsoring and promoting an indigenous youth to participate in a festival that comes from a culture and celebrates the birth of a God of the very same culture they have learnt to detest. They celebrate Krishna janm but can beat up people of the very same culture, every now and then, to push their regional identity agendas.

‘Hindutva’ is the unification of many cultures under one religion. So a political party can be Hindu, but beat up and threaten non-indigenous people?