anisha shekhar mukherji

Figuring out the Economics of Design with Obelix and Co

2011-11-23T05:07:00.000-08:00

Obelix and Co, the 23^rd in the series by Rene Goscinny and Alberto Uderzo, first published in French in 1976, deals with the transformation in the ‘one small village of indomitable Gauls’, caused by the introduction of a market for menhirs– and how it affects the design sense as well as the values in the only part of Gaul not occupied by the Romans in 50 BC.

As part of a strategy to conquer the tiny Gaulish village that still holds out against the might of Caesar, his deputy, Caius Preposterous trained in the Latin School of Economics, proposes to use ‘the profit motive’ to enfeeble and corrupt the Gauls. He homes in on Obelix, ‘the big fat brute’ who is the terror of the Romans, convinces him that ‘having money is a good thing’ and buys the only thing he can from him–menhirs–in great numbers and for increasingly large sums of money.

To cope with this sudden demand for menhirs, Obelix sets up a company, employs fellow-villagers to turn menhirs, to stitch clothes for him, and even to hunt boars! This sets of a flurry of menhir-turning amongst practically everyone in the village, regardless of aptitude or training. So, Fulliautomatix abandons iron-smithy and Unhygenix stops selling fish, because the only market is for menhirs and boars. Tempted by the lure of money, the villagers lose their ability to think rationally and the leisure to do things properly – even to have fun. As Chief Vitalstatisx remarks to Asterix and the Druid Getafix, the only two to remain unaffected by the new economy, they are ‘the last sane people in the village’.

The Gauls no longer have neither the time or energy, or even an interest in beating up the Romans, who are after all business partners. In the bid to sell more and more menhirs to the Roman camp, they forget what is sensible and logical in their habitual way of life and lose all sense of balance and proportion. And Caius Preposterous’s strategy is successful. Meanwhile, the mounds of menhirs are rendered unto Caesar, who is not unnaturally, unhappy at the drain on his treasury for something that is ‘no good for anything’. So, Caius conceives of the strategy to sell them to the Roman public.

Since they are not ostensibly useful, comfortable or fun, he decides to milk the envy factor – “You own a villa, a chariot, slaves but…do you own a menhir?’. The menhirs are marketed in Rome with an all-out publicity campaign that endows them with values of ‘status’ and ‘exoticness’. The Roman public falls for the marketing strategy and laps up the menhirs that have neither any functional or cultural value in their context (which presumably, the menhirs do have for the Gauls – even though they do not quite know how).[1]

Everyone cashes in, with rival sellers promoting Roman vs. Gaulish menhirs. The artificially created symbolic value of the menhir plumbs absurd depths with superficial twists in appearance, and advertisements claiming the merits of Egyptian menhirs, or offering free slaves for every menhir! Finally, the market crashes, the Gauls are told that their menhirs are no longer required, and after trading insults and fighting with each other, good sense finally prevails. They go back to beating up the Romans and end with a grand feast to celebrate the restoration of their own ‘indigenous’ ways.

And how does their brief foray into ‘the market economy’ affect design? In various ways. Since they lose all sense of proportion in aspects of daily living, they are inevitably unable to apply a sense of proportion and balance in any design decisions, with respect to the attributes of the product as well as what sort of product they should be making. The only gauge of the necessity of making a product is whether there is a market for it, and how much money does it get them.

So, the overriding preoccupation is with numbers - “How many menhirs can you deliver?” This obsession with quantity, rather than quality, nor even with necessity, is akin to the influences in the industrialized large-scale markets of today, where the only emphasis is on ‘more’. Design offices today, are rated on their size, not on their ability - how many people do you employ in your office? Loans are given by governments or by investors based on ‘how much can you produce’? Contracts are given on the basis of ‘what is your annual turnover?’ Rarely are there any discussions about creativity, congeniality or craft.

Not only does this flood the market with superfluous non-essential designed items, it also creates a situation where standards of design are lowered all across the spectrum - in the producers’ world as well as the consumers’ world – to demonstrate notions of economic superiority. So Obelix dresses up in ridiculously ill-suited clothes to show that he is ‘the most influential man in the village’. Soon practically the entire village follows suit and dresses in loud clothes and absurdly ornamented accessories. This is similar to what is happening and has already happened in the Indian context, where the qualities of balance, proportion and appropriateness in design are giving way to kitsch. So an economy of money seems to lead to a dumbing down of design ethics and values.

Along with a devaluation of and deviation in design sense, this introduces standardization and reduces diversity. For a global market, everything has to confirm to a uniform standard. The only relief is in superficial changes. Thus, there is no great difference in mixer or refrigerator specifications, or automobile engineering. Instead, product designers are hired to introduce ‘styling’, cosmetic changes, features in the ‘dashboard’; colours of finishes. While all the emphasis is on profits, a lot of money is invested in publicity campaigns. This explains why innovative designs such as the ‘Mitticool’ refrigerator arise not out of the minds and hands of trained product designers, but a potter from a local context who designed this to fulfil the need of his fellow-Gujaratis after the earthquake.

[1] The depths that public gullibility can plunge to - and the frenzied commercial activity that this can lead to – are clearly evident from a reading of A Short History of Financial Euphoria, J.K. Galbraith’s excellent analysis of speculative economic debacles down the ages. In particular, the classic case of Tulipomania in Holland in the mid-1630s, where ‘people of all grades converted their property into cash and invested it into flowers’ - namely in the tulip, which first came to Europe from the Mediterranean in the 16^th century - shows that such hysteria not confined to the realm of fiction.

On the pitfalls, the possibilities, and the potential of language(s)

2011-11-05T04:41:00.001-07:00

“Mamma, your knees are looking”:

(Treya, age 4 years and some months)

The Incomprehensible Indian

Ours is a multi-lingual family.

Which means that when I speak to Treya in English, she will probably reply in Hindi. When Snehanshu asks her something in Bangla, she will often respond in English. And when Snehanshu talks in Hindi, I take the opportunity to practice my Bangla.

Of course, there are times when we all converse in the same language, but rarely do we achieve perfect synchronisation. Or do I mean coordination?

Anyhow, most Indian households will relate to this situation. Our daughter at 8 years, reads English extensively, Hindi a little less fluently - and the Bangla alphabets. Schools today give strict injunctions to read story-books in English (not any other language, please note), but conversations between students are generally conducted in a sort of Hindi. Back home, grandparents will almost certainly ensure that the family still speaks together in Marathi, Oriya, Malayalam, Telegu, Kashmiri or any of the other languages they have grown up with. That sounds pretty impressive. Except that, since there is no time or incentive to read in regional languages, and since despite several decades of trying hard, we have not been able to make ourselves English (or American) - we end up using a ‘cross-over’ of words and grammar from many different languages. Very amusing and exciting, and as analysts will tell us, it shows the vibrancy of Hindi/English/Bangla/Gujarati etc. in India. Even better, it reveals how cosmopolitan, pan-Indian and ‘global’ we are.

To me, it seems this is basically poor justification for bad language, and I don’t mean cuss words. Of course, I cannot be held up as a shining example of what the good Indian should sound like. Having more or less forgotten the smattering of Tamil, Punjabi, Sanskrit, and Hindi studied as Second and Third languages in different parts of the country –I unfortunately seem to be most fluent in English. That may be a result of the vast collection of books in that language (presumably left over from the days of the Raj) in the army libraries, which I must confess, I devoured eagerly. Or the fact that this was the only language common to the different parts of the country that we found we could converse in - whether in the markets of Mettupalyam or Mhow. Or maybe this is the outcome of the training given to us by the Irish nuns in the cantonment schools. I remember the soft-spoken receptionist at one of the architecture offices I worked at, observing with a smile that even when I began any of my sentences in Hindi, I invariably ended up finishing them in English. Since then, I have consciously tried to be consistent about speaking in one language at a time.

It is not a wholly successful attempt. But I try. So, we have designated exclusive ‘Hindi Time’, ‘English time’, and ‘Bangla Time’ at home. Of course, it is not possible to discuss profound truths about architectural and spatial relationships in Bangla or Hindi, as we explain to Treya. And I cannot really express myself coherently in Bangla when I am displeased with the performance of my cook. So, often the rule gets amended to, ‘Reply in the language that you are addressed in’. Which probably explains why we all race to start a conversation. Not surprisingly, this can get a little exhausting. So, the rule at meal-times, is ‘no conversation please’.

It is difficult, for most of us to think in more than one language. Snehanshu’s father, when he came to New Delhi from Kolkata to help in setting up the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, couldn’t understand at first why his head used to ache all the time – till he realised that instead of thinking and speaking in Bangla, he was sub-consciously constantly translating in his mind from Bangla before speaking in Hindi or English. All of us invariably think in our ‘native tongue’ and translate into the languages we have learnt later. The reason that Treya still confuses ‘yesterday’ with ‘tomorrow’ may be because, in Hindi the word for both is the same! And only those who have grown up speaking Hindi will realise (perhaps after a brief moment of blankness) what she meant when she once asked me with perfect seriousness in English: “Has your throat got up?” With repeated practice, we eventually grow out of such hazards of literal translations and the nuances between ‘Dikh rahein hain’ and ‘Dekh Rahein hain’. As when Treya, noting that I was going to answer the door in shorts instead of the long skirts I normally wear, primly pointed out to me, “Mama, your knees are looking”!

There is an Akbar-Birbal story about a visitor who arrives at the Emperor Akbar’s court and challenges anyone present to correctly guess which is his actual ‘mother-tongue’, and which part of the country he originally hails from. The entire court tests him, but he speaks all languages with the diction and fluency of a native. Akbar then turns to Birbal as his only hope. What does Birbal do? At night, when the tired visitor is in deep slumber, Birbal gets a servant to rudely rouse him from sleep (in one version of the story, by throwing water; and in another one by repeatedly making a din outside the window). The exasperated visitor responds by cursing aloud involuntarily in his mother-tongue. And Birbal triumphantly announces his discovery in court the next day. The story is as much about the ability of certain people to ‘pick up’ languages with ease, as about Birbal’s cleverness, as about the fact that in moments of great emotion – anger, joy or grief – we revert to the language we are most familiar with: invariably the language we have first learnt, traditionally at our mother’s knee - hence our mother-tongue.

Birbal’s plan may not have worked today. Certainly not in my case. I often wonder what language I would have shouted out in. Probably Hindi? Though it is primarily a combination of Hindi and English that I have grown up with. So, I may have yelled out in English and finished the phrase in Hindi or vice versa. But my mother-tongue is Garhwali. And originally my family - if I trace it by its patriarchal connection, which is usual in my part of the country - is from Kumaon. My father, apart from Hindi and English, is however most fluent in Gorkhali, because after leaving home at the age of fifteen to join the National Defence Academy, it was the Gorkha Rifles that he was commissioned in four years later. And till he was in his battalion, the language for communication amongst officers and soldiers was almost exclusively Gorkhali. Which makes me think how much more exciting - and confused - domestic conversations would be if I knew Kumaoni, Garhwali and Gorkhali.

That marriages in India are no longer confined to the same caste or region, should mean that we are enriched by a greater understanding of different cultures. But it seems to be working the other way these days. Instead of children knowing the customs, literature, languages or traditions of the regions of both their parents, they end up knowing neither - only Hindi and English. And so we have the great urban Indian, dressed up in clothes advertised on television or elsewhere (so what if they are designed for completely different climates and cultures?) speaking a combination of ‘Americanese’ and Hindi slang, getting larger and larger on a diet of Coke and McDonald’s. Their children mouth identical dialogues, believing only in the possibilities of Barbies and Ben-Ten like toys, unaware of the fast-disappearing plural and diverse traditions of the country they inhabit. As Ashis Nandy points out: ‘So, it is not only globally that the diasporas are producing one-dimensional national cultures, such national cultures also have clear links with pockets of national culture that are crystallizing within the countries’. [1]

Languages play a vital role in ensuring the continuation of local cultures. Each language ensures that personal, familial, local, regional memories and traditions pass on. It preserves memories and conjures up entire visual scenes, and retains the memory of local responses to climate, architecture, space. The word ‘roak’ cannot simply be translated as a plinth or a platform or a stoop. It is not just an architectural element in the town-houses of North Kolkata. It contains the entire experience of the habitual gathering of neighbourhood-men lounging there interminably, playing chess and cards; their animated arguments; their indolently watchful gaze guarding the neighbourhood from strangers.

This is why, when we do not understand or speak in the languages of our grandparents, we not only lose out on a different universe of sound and text, we also lose out on their connection with a unique and distinct landscape. This is why, while I insist that my students in the post-graduate course of design and architecture, have to work harder at expressing themselves coherently and correctly in spoken and written English, I also urge them to explore the ideas in their own literature, mythology, and folk-songs.

All languages have different personalities - they open up doors to newer worlds. The single Garhwali children’s rhyme and the Kumaoni folk-song I know, transmit a lilt and cadence, at once peculiar to the Central Himalayas and common to all mountains. In one, the conversation between a child and a dove, evokes equally the speech and the pace of mountain-folk, and the soft sight and sound of their birds. The other celebrates the image of the beloved Mountain-Goddess, Nanda Devi even as the song flits in and out of a recollection of the particular berries that fruit in different seasons in a part of Kumaon, including the tiny ‘kaphal’.

So, sooner or later I will learn Garhwali and Kumaoni, dialects thought they may be conventionally understood as, and read the Ballad of Malushah in the original and not in an English translation. Meanwhile, these days our afternoons are punctuated by my halting Bangla renditions of UpendraKishore Roy Choudury’s stories for children written a hundred years ago. I look forward to the day when it will not merely be silver-fish who will investigate Treya’s grandfather’s extensive collection of Bengali literature. Then she will read aloud to me and I will lie back.

[1] p. 138, Talking India, Ashis Nandy in conversation with Ramin Jahanbegloo, OUP New Delhi, 2006

How much and what sort of technology do you need?

2011-10-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

How much and what sort of technology do you need?

And what should we do with it?

The meaning of ‘technology’ according to the Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary[1] is: ‘the practice, description, and terminology of any or all of the applied sciences of commercial value’. ‘Technical’, on the other hand, is defined as: ‘pertaining to art, esp. a useful art or applied science’. The Compact Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus and Wordpower Guide, [2] defines ‘technology’ a little differently: ‘the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes’; ‘the branch of knowledge concerned with applied sciences’. The Dictionary notes that the word itself originates from the Greek tekhnologia ‘systematic treatment’. Further, ‘Technical’ here is defined as ‘having to do with the practical skills of a particular subject, art or craft’, and ‘having to do with the practical use of machinery and methods in science and industry’.

Thus, the Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary seems to stress the ‘commercial value’ of the applied sciences, while the meaning of technology in the Oxford Dictionary lays stress on its ‘scientific nature’ and ‘practical uses’. ‘Technical’ seems to have a more broad-ranging meaning in both dictionaries, encompassing art as well as science and their practical uses. Wikipedia clarifies the origin of the word further and extends its definition thus: ‘Technology is the usage and knowledge of tools, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization. The word technology comes from the Greek technología (τεχνολογία) — téchnē (τέχνη), an 'art', 'skill' or 'craft' and -logía (-λογία), the study of something, or the branch of knowledge of a discipline.[3]’

Based on this information, how would you club the above two images? Would they qualify as ‘technology’? If we look at the dictionary meanings, it seems that they do fulfill the criteria of ‘technology’? They illustrate scientific principles both in their construction and their use. Thus, the sil-batta or Grinder is an application of the principle of friction and the application of force to break down larger particles into finer ones; its construction and design heightens the effect of friction by deliberately ‘pitting’ the surface of the sil to increase friction. In the case of the lamp, it applies principles of metallurgy in its construction, and knowledge of convection and other forms of heating in its design and use. In both cases, the knowledge of scientific principles is used for commercial purposes, in the sense that both the sil batta and the lamp were obviously made and sold by specialized craftspeople/ technologists. They also exemplify ‘the usage and knowledge of tools, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization’.

However, despite the fact both these objects fulfill all the conventional definitions of ‘technology’ and ‘technical’, they are not conventionally or generally regarded as examples of technology. Instead we would think of the electric grinder or the CFL as examples of technology. Now that’s very intriguing. They fulfill comparable functions, so why is it that we do not regard the sil batta and the oil lamp as examples of technology, while we do regard the electric grinder and the CFL as examples of technology?

If we look at the differences between these two sorts of technologies, some interesting facts emerge. The first is, the sort of technology that the sil-batta and the oil lamp embody, require greater exertion of human effort (manual grinding in the sil batta) or greater involvement of human senses (preparing a cotton oil wick, rolling and forming it, filling the lamp with oil, lighting it and using it carefully to prevent spills and burns). In the grinder and CFL, however the human involvement is essentially limited to switching the devices on and off. They represent the ‘fill it, shut it, forget it’ sort of philosophy.

The second difference is in the volume – the amount of mixture that can be ground at a time in the mixer is much greater than that in the sil batta; similarly the amount of light that is emitted from a FL or CFL is much greater than that from an oil lamp.

Thirdly, the amount of energy utilized in both constructing and using the ‘modern forms of technology’ embodied in the CFL and the mixer, is far greater than that used in constructing and using the sil batta and the oil lamp – it is as if the saving of individual human effort while using these modern devices is compensated by a far greater energy invested in their construction and greater energy consumed in their use. In fact, such devices only work at the scale of large volumes. To make an electric grinder-mixer, highly mechanized systems have to be used - for which large factories or manufacturing-plants are required; such manufacturing plants can only be profitable if they make and sell large numbers of electric grinders-mixers; and the blades of the electric-grinder only work if large quantities of food are to be ground.

Where large volumes of food are required to be processed in this manner on a regular basis or large volumes of artificial light are required, such high-energy intensive and labour-saving forms of technology are both useful and appropriate. Where, however, they are not, such forms of technology have only a limited use which needs to be judicious, and not as a matter of course. This would be applicable for instance, in situations where the way of life or the design of the habitat ensures that most activities are done during daylight. Or in cases where the size of the family is small or there is manual help in the form of willing and able family members or staff. Here, the volumes of food required to make an electric grinder work are superfluous and the energy consumed in each use is wasteful and simply not justified. In fact, because the blades of an electric grinder will not work unless there is a certain minimum quantity, many families end up grinding in quantities larger than they need and then are forced to store these in the refrigerator – another high-energy product. Thus, in a restaurant perhaps or with limited domestic help, an electric grinder-mixer has a definite use and in a hospital, you evidently cannot have oil lamps lying around.

However, the other aspect of modern forms of technology is that since they depend on large and continuous volume of production and sale to make their manufacture profitable, they require large-scale use by all manners of consumers (not just those that actually require to use them), and they thrive on an economy of continual buying rather than one of reuse or repair. This is another essential difference between earlier forms of technology - now seen as backward, traditional or archaic – and modern forms of technology; that the earlier technologies were more sustainable and consumed fewer resources. In fact, the reminiscences of an architect friend about the making and maintenance of the sil batta, make for very interesting reading and show how traditionally, the ‘life’ of objects was extended through appropriate ‘technology’ and social practices.

'I fondly remember the "sil-batta banwaa lo..!" call of the crafts-man who used to visit our street/muhalla once every month looking for work. He used to carry a number of sils in his bag, different sizes but, still to be worked upon. He used to also 'repair' old sil-battas whose 'pocks & dots' had begun to disappear due to prolonged use.
A new sil bargain would discuss size of the stone, its thickness, colour of the stone etc. and…finally the chiselling..! Something I loved watching! The 'pattern' of chiselling the surface of the sil is an art in itself. The stone slab (shaped like a 'boat-in-plan') was divided into 2 distinct zones. Borders were chiselled in to frame the zones and the chiselling patterns decided. Spiral, concentric, herring-bone, arrow-like or simply parallel straight-lines…
The angle of the punch differed in different parts of the stone surface as also the size & depth of the punched dents. Density of the dents were different in the two zones and the rows of the dents were staggered for better grinding. Some craftsmen would also use floral patterns on the top end of the sil.' [4]

Of course, we haven’t even spoken about the quality of the end-product generated. An oft used term to market modern technology is the ‘quality’ of the product. However, it is a fact that the quality of the mixture achieved – the taste, texture and nutritional value – through hand-grinding is far better than that obtained through an electric mixer. Similarly, the soft, calming quality of light achieved through an oil lamp is incomparable, which is why it is still used for special occasions, especially sacred or ritual occasions such as pujas or religious functions.

Today, the meaning of technology as ‘the practice of applied sciences for commercial value’ has overridden all its other meanings, so much so that technology is often used for purposes and at a scale that is wholly unnecessary or downright harmful either to the consumer or to the environment. This explains the practice of rubbing petrochemical based wax on fruits to make them shiny and more attractive so as to increase their commercial sale, or that of wrapping naturally clean and ‘pre-packaged’ food such as bananas in plastics. The only purpose of such absurd practices is to make them appear more ‘presentable’ in order to increase their perceived value - and therefore their sale. The fact that such use of technology often reverses the very benefits that the activity is supposed to yield – in the case of coated apples or vegetables, their food-value which is the original reason for consuming them, actually reduces by ‘such application of science’ - is either disregarded or ignored by both the seller and the consumer, who blindly admire this as an instance of progress. In contrast, in many cases, the traditional technologies that such practices have replaced are actually better, more aesthetic and more beneficial.
Compare the familiar sight of 'bhuttas' - corn - wrapped and tied in their own outer leaves by local road-side bhutta-wallas (who may not be educated and do not talk about eco-friendly packaging, yet use a progressive, sustainable and pleasing way of selling their wares) with the manner in which
bananas, a fruit that nature has ‘pre-packaged’ for us, are wrapped in plastic and sold by Mother Dairy (a government institution that promotes itself as an organization that sells non-chemically ripened, ‘natural’ fruits)! This completely needless use of technology is especially strange, when the government itself has issued strictures regarding the perils of plastic, and actually banned the sale of goods in plastic polybags.

The biggest culprits in this unethical and useless promotion of technology are the seller and the maker (whether private companies or government institutions), since for them the only criteria is that the product should sell. In extreme cases such as in the cosmetic industry, the fact that there are lethal doses and cocktails of chemicals in most personal-care products, is never revealed to the customer.[5] Hence it is up to the consumer to be more vigilant and to make more intelligent choices. But very often, the choices are limited to variations of the current technology being promoted in the name of progress. This is where designers can step in to use their creative skills to promote appropriate green technology – which may already have been in use for many centuries. In some cases, these may need to be revived and extended, as in the effortless and beautiful packaging of mogra flowers - again by a roadside seller:

In other cases, they may need to be reinterpreted or re-styled to make them more acceptable today, such as this hand-made soap, now exported from India, which is made from, and packaged, in completely natural materials.

If we apply such a philosophy of reviving or popularising appropriate technology to the example of the sil batta, we may find that we need to make some minor changes, keeping in mind the size and occupation of most families today. Since there are an increasing number of nuclear single-child families with mothers working away from the house, the size of the sil may be made smaller so as to be more easily usable. The use of the floral and decorative patterns in the sil, could be reintroduced with advantage for an ‘image makeover’, so that it is no longer seen as a symbol of an archaic old technology, but is viewed as something that is not only useful but is also worth displaying and flaunting even in so called ‘modern’ kitchens. This may help to increase both its usability and its popularity, in a similar manner to what FabIndia has achieved, for ceramic and wooden vessels and jars.

It is also not as if all technology is bad. For instance, something like Wikileaks, a whistleblower website, could not have been possible without the freedom, connectivity and access that current technology gives. Julian Paul Assange, the Australian internet activist, spokesperson and editor in chief for Wikileaks, says that Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined. Assange was the winner of the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award (New Media), awarded for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya with the investigation The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances. Similarly, organizations such as Greenpeace and Avaaz who have raised awareness and garnered public support against powerful individuals or governments perpetrating wrong actions - on issues as varied as the barbarous stoning of Sakineh in Iran, or the introduction of Genetically Modified food in India, or the sale of community land to multi-national firms – could not have managed to reach out to so many people without computer and internet technology. Even this essay was composed and written on a high-end technology product. Finally, like anything else, technology is only as bad or good as the uses it is put to, and the individuals or individual who uses it.

But it is nevertheless true, that the production and use of modern technology in many cases, is harmful both to people and to the environment. It is also a fact that the conventional production, promotion and use of technology increasingly removes the power of decisions from the hands of individuals and centralizes authority. After all, the very same tools of technology used by Wikileaks, are with other media organizations too. Which is why Assange has publicly clarified about his statement that Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined: ‘That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are – rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media. How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful.’[6]
Perhaps all of us like the famous actor and director Charles Chaplin, whose own films reflected his concern for the dehumanizing effects of the excessive use of machinery, are ‘somewhat confused’ about how to use technology. In a conversation with Mahatma Gandhi, he questioned the Mahatma’s ‘abhorrence of machinery’, saying that ‘After all, if machinery is used in the altruistic sense, it should help to release man from the bondage of slavery, and give him shorter hours of labor and time to improve his mind and enjoy life’. We need to be as clear as the Mahatma who replied: ‘India has a different climate from England; and her habits and wants are different. In England the cold weather necessitates arduous industry and an involved economy. You need the industry of eating utensils; we use our fingers. And so it translates into manifold differences.’[7]

Thus, I would imagine that in the climate, culture, society and economy such as ours, the way forward, is to: firstly, have a decentralized use of technology, where decisions about which technology to use and to use it, rest with the individual or the community rather than a centralized system where large scale private or public corporations decide which technology to promote. Secondly, to promote a situation where there is opportunity and encouragement for people to question and discuss what form of technology is the most appropriate for their needs. We must use technology that is appropriate – whether it is old, new or cutting edge is immaterial. It should first and foremost be appropriate for the purpose. Thirdly, we must discourage excessive dependence on complicated technology, and promote a controlled use of new technology – not to replace each and every human activity, but only where it is necessary. The obsession with newness or novelty factor needs to be questioned, since if we give so much value to ‘novelty’, redundancy will automatically set in and we will have a culture of ‘use and throw’ which is suicidal for the human race. To bring about such a change in the mindset of people, we will have to use skills of both design and marketing, in both function and image of the product and the activity - as explained in the example of the sil batta.

The levels that our current obsession with ‘novelty’ can take us to, may perhaps be best explained by the object below, which is promoted as ‘the most famous example of a lemon squeezer today’ and is lauded as an icon of industrial design and studied in design schools all over the world. Designed in 1990 by Philippe Patrick Starck, whom Wikipedia describes as ‘probably the best known designer in the New Design style’, this object termed the Juicy Salif, is a lemon squeezer, and has been displayed in New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Ironically Starck’s ‘iconic’ juicer that has had record sales and is now a collectors’ item, seems to garner more points for the way it looks than for its efficiency in squeezing juice! Though some users claim that it both looks and works well, even the more starry-eyed write that it ‘doesn’t stop pips going into the cup; that ‘in terms of functionality, it works reasonably well but is difficult to keep balanced when pushing down on it’; that ‘the style of this one outweighs any ease of use issues,’ that ‘it can be messy and needs to be cleaned right away as it marks really quickly.’[8] The conventional logic that the squeezer itself must be so designed as to resist the manual pressure to extract the juice - and so soft, easily deformable, non- acid-resistant materials should not be used, seem to have been abandoned for the sake of novelty. So while Starck’s original version is made from cast and polished aluminum manufactured by the famous Italian kitchenware company Alessi, the 10,000 squeezers manufactured to mark the tenth anniversary of its launch, were individually numbered and gold plated. The gold plated version was described as an ornament because the citric acid in a lemon discolors and erodes the gold plating. Starck is even rumored to have said, "My juicer is not meant to squeeze lemons; it is meant to start conversations".[9]

A case of making a virtue out of a vice? Whether or not, this much we can certainly deduce: with appropriate promotion even an object which does not necessarily fulfill the function that it is touted to perform, can be successfully sold. Surely then, we can think of ways in which we can also successfully market our home-grown skilful, useful, and sustainable examples of traditional technology?

Image Credits:

Oil lamp from Sankho Choudhuri’s Private Collection, Courtesy: Ira Chaudhuri

Juicy Salif: Source: http://flickr.com/photos/43671130115@N01/137575863 licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_squeezer; accessed 13 July 2011.

All other images © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji; Text © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

[1] (Edited by William Geddie, first published 1901, revised 1952, this edition 1959, W. & R. Chambers, Ltd., Edinburgh and London) i

[2] Oxford University Press 2001,

[3] Accessed on 28 August 2010

[4] Comment by Tapan K Chakravarty on June 27, 2010 11:27 PM to ‘Who Designed the Sil Batta - and why should we care?’ by Anisha Shekhar Mukherji posted at anishashekhar.blogspot

[5] Annie Leonard, storyofcosmetics.org,

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org.wiki/Julian_Assange#cite_note-smh2-15, Accessed on 29 August 2010

[7] My Autobiography, Charles Chaplin, pp. 371-4

[8] http://www.designaddict.com/design_addict/forums/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread_show_one/thread_id/529/

[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_squeezer

The article also states that the oldest known lemon squeezers are found in Turkey, and are individually made ceramic presses in the traditional style of Turkish pottery of the 18th century.

The Exalted Citadel and the Royal Observatory

2011-10-11T23:16:00.000-07:00

The Exalted Citadel and the Royal Observatory

Text, Drawings and Photographs © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

October 2011

What makes a city? Its buildings and streets? Or is it the people who live in it? And how would you recognise a world heritage city?

In my understanding, what ultimately makes a city is its people. A city does not spring out of the landscape overnight. It is people who—literally and figuratively—construct the city over time, its monuments, its artifacts, its roads, its memories. And if the range and diversity of skills amongst the people that a city fosters, contribute to exceptionally high standards of art and science, to dynamic architectural and spatial articulations, to just and equitable systems—it becomes a living repository of accumulated knowledge that the entire world can learn from. In short, a world heritage city.

Is our city of Delhi then, a world heritage city?

I am going to demonstrate that it always has been one, through the examples of two unparalleled remnants from its history which also happen to be two of its most visible symbols, the Lal Quila and the Jantar Mantar. Created in the 17^th and 18th centuries respectively, during the days of the Mughal Empire, both these are unique in the history of the world. They have always given, and still give, Delhi an identity and values that set it apart from other cities of the world. I shall now briefly explain how and why this is so. My understanding is based upon long-standing research as well as my own work on the enunciation and development of an appropriate conservation philosophy for these two sites.

Many people are aware that Delhi was a centre of habitation even in Stone-age times. From early historic times, it has also housed not just ordinary urban settlements but the royal capitals of different rulers. These rulers of successive dynasties developed portions of land in the region of Delhi each with their distinct walls, forts and supporting fabric—creating over time its various cities. These cities—fragments of which we can see still see today—respected the topography and ecology of the region and coexisted with the earlier settlements even when they supplanted them. Rarely can there be found anywhere in the world, so many contiguous manifestations of the city form—shaped by, and resulting in, a unique density of human interaction—as in Delhi. Later Western visitors unfamiliar with its antiquity, compared it to the only other city they knew which had a similar density of grand ruins, calling it the Rome of Asia. To residents of Delhi from that time and earlier, familiar with its manifold references in tradition, song and history, it may have been more fitting to call Rome, ‘the Delhi of Europe’.

The imperial capital of Shahjahanabad, established in 1648 CE at the behest of the 5^th Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, is a surpassing example of the historic tradition of cities of Delhi. And its crowning glory, christened 'The Exalted Citadel' at its founding, today more prosaically called the Red Fort - is the climax of the urban-design sensibilities of this tradition of the Delhi region. Devised as the perfect setting for the Emperor of the World, it is also the epitome of the eclectic experiments that set apart the architecture of the Mughal Empire. Inscribed within Shah Jahan’s sleeping chambers, the Khwabgah or the House of Dreams, is the wish that directed the founding of the Red Fort: that the Emperor 'In the royal palace with great magnificence, Ever be like the Sun in the Sky. May the palace of his good fortune touch the highest heaven.'

For years after its founding, the fame of 'the palace of his good fortune' attracted adventurers, kings, artists, and seekers of all hues from the far limits of the Mughal Empire and beyond. The symbolic and actual power of this imperial Fort and the beauty of its remaining fragments, earned it the epithet of the ‘The Most Magnificent Palace in the East, by the pioneering British historian-explorer James Fergusson, much after its heyday. And led King George and Queen Mary on their State Visit to India in the early 20^th century, to re-enact the rituals that characterised its original use, such as the ceremony of darshan, between the Mughal emperors in their riverside pavilions and their subjects assembled on the banks of the river.

Recorded in the writings of many travellers from the time of its establishment, the Red Fort was also the subject of the drawings of practically all the visiting European artists who, from the 18^th century onwards, descended on India in large numbers. Yet its huge size, and the complexity of its planning and use, made it impossible for any of these visitors to comprehend or access the Red Fort in its entirety or to completely and correctly depict it. In later years, its exquisite buildings, repeatedly plundered, were shorn of much of their decoration; and their formal designed setting was diluted with additional structures constructed in an inferior architectural style. But such was the potency of the Red Fort's original design, that even then it was impressive enough to be universally admired - by not only the inhabitants of the Mughal Empire for whom the Red Fort symbolised much more than its physical appearance, but also visitors from different cultures and regions.

Even the marauding British soldiers in the mid-nineteenth century,who roamed the Fort after its last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar was defeated and imprisoned, recollected with awe, ‘the vast size of this castellated palace with its towering embattled walls’, and its ‘gorgeous domes and minarets’[1]. Just a decade before the British plunder and sacking of the Fort, Lady Emily Bailey, the daughter of the powerful British Resident in Delhi, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, wrote of its ‘sublimely beautiful buildings’[2] which she saw after her return from England in 1848. In these panoramas, probably drawn around the same time the Red Fort’s proximity and response to the Yamuna river is clearly visible, as is its interface with the city and the vibrant multitude of activities and structures within. Photographs of the Fort from this time , also show the impeccable proportions of its spaces, and their stunningly intricate craftsmanship. We may do well to remind ourselves that these date from almost exactly two hundred years from the date when the Red Fort was inaugurated by Shah Jahan. At this time, the fortunes and power of the later Mughal rulers were vastly reduced; their resources and empire were a fraction of Shah Jahan’s. The Fort, when it was inhabited by Shah Jahan, thus, would have been many, many times more fascinating.

Just as it was the reputation of Delhi as the seat of royal capitals, which impelled Shah Jahan, three hundred and fifty years ago, to site his ambitious venture of building a new Fort and city here; it was the reputation of the material, artistic, and intellectual riches of the Red Fort, the foremost seat of the Mughal Empire, and of 'Darul-Khilafat Shahjahanabad, the abode of peace and prosperity', which in turn made it the centre of other unusual creations. Thus, about eighty years after the establishment of Shahjahanabad, Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh undertook to showcase in the capital of the famed Mughal Empire, what he recorded as a ‘...mighty task, which during a long period of time none of the powerful Rajahs had prosecuted; nor, among the tribes of Islam…since…more than three hundred years, had any one of the kings, …turned his attention to...'.[3] This mighty task, in the reign of Muhammad Shah, Shah Jahan’s great-great-grandson, was the daring experiment of the Jantar Mantar Observatory, a venture unusual not just in the subcontinent but also in the world. Today we see the Jantar Mantar, located as it is in the heart of New Delhi, differently from what it was in the 18^th century when it was situated on the outskirts of Shahjahanabad - the new Delhi of that time. Its foreground was taken over in the beginning of the 20^th century by the location of British Imperial New Delhi, which appropriated much of Jai Singh’s land, Jaisinghpura to make Connaught Place and the roads leading up to Parliament House. Today, the landscape has changed further with the skyline taken over by tall trees, and even taller buildings. While these interventions have reduced the area, the function, and even the perception of the Observatory, its fantastic forms are so discernibly different from all the famous pieces of architecture built before, during or after its time ―that it is still one of the most photographed of Delhi’s built heritage. It has inspired – and continues to inspire–all sorts of creations around the world, ranging from a structure ‘erected in the early 19^th century in the pleasure park at Neuilly near Paris’, [4] to the official logo of the IXth Asian Games held at Delhi in 1982, [5] to contemporary high-profile sculptural installations as well as urban street-art. Nearly all visitors to Delhi for the past three centuries have made it a point to see this ‘curious group of buildings’. Catalogues of drawings, paintings and photographs by many European artists who visited India in the 18^th , 19^th and 20^th centuries depict this. Captain Peter Mundy, Aide-de-Campe to Lord Combermere, arriving in Delhi in February 1828, on tour with his commander-in-Chief, recorded his impressions of the Jantar Mantar as ‘...the gigantic astronomical observatory…[t]hese enormous instruments appear as though they had been manufactured by the Titans, in order to take a reconnaissance of the heavens, before they commenced their siege of Olympus.’ [6]

But the gigantic architectural effort of the Delhi Jantar Mantar— as indeed of the Red Fort and of the city's other historic components, were 'manufactured' not by the Titans, but by the skilled eyes and hands and the creative spirit of the populace that Delhi attracted and nurtured—a fact recognized even by invaders. So, when the Persian Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739 CE, he not only took its fabled material treasures as booty, but also the hundreds of craftspeople who practiced their trades here. After this plunder, the city's celebrated poet, Meer Taqi Meer (1723-1810 CE), in his famous lament of the desolation of Delhi , extolled it as a place ‘where only the chosen lived of every trade’ and ‘once a select city in the world’,.[7]

Indraprastha, perhaps the oldest capital in the Delhi region, is described in the Mahabharata as ‘…the envy of all Bharata-varsha, for it was a prosperous city with fields and orchards and pastures and markets and river-ports...’ where ‘Priests, warriors, farmers, herdsmen and artisans from all over came to make this their new home.’[8] The willingness to accommodate different kinds of people, and the recognition of the value such people lent to the city, gave the past Delhis a sense of kinship beyond just their immediate boundaries. And the awareness that 'a prosperous city' is as much because of its 'fields, orchards, pastures' as 'its markets and river-ports', gave them a humane scale.

Thus, the Red Fort and the Jantar Mantar, though established on the initiative of royal patrons, were created as much to accommodate the requirements of ordinary people as of their famous patrons. So, for instance, the complex planning and the variety of the original spaces and structures within the Red Fort, (as may be seen in one of its most detailed representations, a map dating from the mid-1840s) were derived from the requirement to house and give access to a wide spectrum of people. Similarly, the very reason for the arresting size, form and location of the large masonry instruments of the Jantar Mantar was because Sawai Jai Singh wanted to popularize observational astronomy and make it accessible to ordinary people in the Mughal Empire. Even his decision to construct these immovable masonry instruments despite being familiar with the new invention of the telescope, was activated by this concern – quite contrary to recent claims that this was ‘a case of a headstrong monarch looking to construct huge and extravagant monuments for himself’[9]. Sawai Jai Singh explicitly states: 'Since the telescope is not readily available to an average man, we are going to base our rules of computation for naked eye observations only, which, in turn, are based on earlier texts.’[10] We owe the unique design of the Yantras at the Delhi Jantar Mantar– which were extremely complex to devise and construct, but whose use conversely was relatively simple even for non-experts (as recent programmes with schoolchildren and amateurs have demonstrated[11]) – to this fact.

The cultural, architectural, associational and artistic attributes of the celebrated original design of the Red Fort too, an icon of our city as also of our country―arise, as I hope to explain, out of similar human values. The ramparts of the Fort and its Lahore Gate with the Indian Flag atop from where the Prime Minister of India addresses the nation each Independence Day, are familiar to all of us in this country—even pre-school children. However, we little realise or appreciate that this view is actually the antithesis of the Fort’s design. The entrance to the Lahori Gate, in the reign of Shah Jahan was straight and open to view, not hidden by a wall or a mound, in keeping with the Mughal Emperor’s actual and metaphorical accessibility to his people—and this is of enormous significance in the original spatial and architectural relationship of the Red Fort and Shahjahanabad.

The isolation of the Fort from its city, which we inadvertently continue to perpetuate, was first begun by Shah Jahan’s son, Aurangzeb, who ordered the construction of a second line of gates at right angles to the Fort's main public Gateways, and introduced architectural and actual barriers between himself and the people of his city, and indeed his Empire. These were heightened many times over by the British who constructed more barricades in and around the Fort and swept away everything within 300 yards of its walls as a no-man zone. A photograph of the area from the top of Jama Masjid, shortly after this demolition by the British in 1860 following their victory over the last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar, shows the empty spaces around the Fort (1870, photo 2/3 (76) OIOC.BL). This radically changed the environs of the Fort and transformed it into an island severed of its connecting spatial and social links to Shahjahanabad—reversing the very basis of its establishment. Equally importantly, this also did away with the beauty and bounty of the public gardens, orchards and trees that yielded fruit, shade, and verdure to the Fort’s foreground and afforded a place of repose and relaxation to the people of Delhi. These public gardens and orchards are visible in maps and drawings from the 18^th and 19^th centuries[12], a record of the ‘...peculiar pleasure’ that a landscape of luxuriant and green foliage yields ‘in a hot and parched country,’ as noted by the mid-17^th century French traveler, Francois Bernier.[13] Within the Fort, too, its beautiful gardens along with more than eighty percent of its interior was completely effaced. In an onslaught even worse than that under Nadir Shah, the Fort was also looted of its valuable decorative effects, stripped of its gilded copper domes, of its inlay of precious stones, its delicately carved marble panels. The structures that were spared from demolition after the looting, were used as military prisons, canteens, refreshment rooms, mess lounge, and hospitals for the British army.[14]

The only extant part of its celebrated design which escaped the demolition by the British, is a miniscule number of original Mughal pavilions and gateways. Of immeasurable value, and representative of the creative heights that Delhi, as one of the foremost cities of the world, has historically fostered, they are highlighted in this redrawn version of the 1840s map made for my book, The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad. They embody the qualities that make the Red Fort not just an epitome of urban architectural patronage in Shah Jahan’s reign, but the culmination of the experiments in architectural forms and spaces in the earlier imperial Forts and cities of the Great Mughals. They also represent one of the finest examples of a sustainable way of planning, building, and living, that we can learn from and apply today, in our cities and towns.

The design of the Red Fort—the only urban Mughal palace complex of its kind to be planned and built together as a holistic venture with its city of Shahjahanabad—not only addressed all the problems of access, and overcrowding in Mughal cities and Forts such as in Lahore and Agra but also catered for future expansion in a setting befitting one of the richest and most cultured medieval empires in the world. It set the trend for domestic as well as ceremonial architecture all over the Mughal empire; and for subsequent and contemporary kingdoms in the sub-continent. The Fort and much of its city were ready in just 10 years. In itself this is a huge venture, as we can all appreciate especially when we compare this to contemporary construction. There are thus remarkable managerial and construction skills embodied in the method of planning and building of the Red Fort and Shahjahanabad, that invest them with a huge significance.

The Red Fort was therefore the grand finale to imperial Mughal forts, just as the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan’s most famous act of patronage, was the grand finale to imperial Mughal tomb-gardens. In its original form, much of the Fort had the same quality of refined luxury as the Taj Mahal still does. Like the Taj, the Fort was crafted and built with perfect proportion and detail. When the Fort’s foundations were marked out on 29^th April 1639 CE, during the second decade of Shah Jahan‘s reign, its design was reportedly led by the master-architect Ustad Hamid and his brother Ustad Ahmed Lahori, who, some sources claim were associated with the building of the Taj Mahal. The same care that Shah Jahan expended on the mausoleum of his beloved wife, was used to craft his living areas and those of his family. Shah Jahan’s official court-histories record how he often made detours in his administrative or political visits, so that he could himself inspect the construction at the Fort. Fatehpur Sikri sandstone, the finest Makrana marble, glass imported from Allepi, and a range of semi-precious stones, gold and silver from all over the trade-centres associated with the Mughal empire, were used in its construction. Shah Jahan grandly celebrated the completion of his magnificent Fort and its city in 1648, barely two years after the completion of the Taj. The Red Fort and the Taj, along with many key buildings of Shahjahanabad were thus created at the peak of Shah Jahan’s patronage, a period universally recognized as one of the pinnacles of world art and architecture. They represent the highly evolved design consciousness of the Mughal emperor and his team of an imperial array of master-craftsmen, architects, masons, artists, overseers, trusted aides, and administrators.

The Fort was however simultaneously far more complex and intimate than even the Taj Mahal. Not just a tomb or a garden, or even a mere imperial residence, which is the ordinary western conception or definition of a palace, the Red Fort was composed of many kinds of buildings, gardens, spaces and functions, like a city within a city. It was designed to function simultaneously as a showpiece of the empire, the residence of the imperial household, an administrative centre, a recreational node, as well as a cultural focus for Shahjahanabad. To put this into context, we can compare it to the Escorial, one of the largest palaces in Europe, constructed in the reign of Philip II in the mountains above Madrid in 1563, about eighty years before the Fort. Its size at 204 metres by 162 metres (670 feet by 530 feet), made it closer than most other Renaissance royal buildings to the scale of a small city. Yet it was five times smaller in area than just the inner palace of the Red Fort!?[15]

The Red Fort thus contained palace pavilions, imperial gardens and art objects to cater to the daily needs of the Emperor, his queens and his daughters, as well as administration halls, courts of justice and formal halls of audience. Additionally, it also housed more prosaic functions such as offices, retail markets, mosques, kitchens, elephant and horse stables, orchards, living quarters for the resident soldiers, maids and attendants who worked within the Fort, and karakhanas and workshops for skilled craftspeople who made objects specifically for imperial use. Kings, noblemen, petitioners, soldiers, ambassadors, stone-setters, jewellers, maids, weavers, even the poorest of the poor residents, came to work, to seek justice or to pay audience to the Emperor as part of the daily ceremonial custom at Shah Jahan’s court. The true significance and the scale of these activities can be appreciated when we realise that this is akin to it being a combination of the Rashtrapati Bhawan, North and South Blocks, Parliament House, Supreme Court, Secretariat, Cantonment, Crafts Museum, etc.

Despite the huge flow of traffic, daily, of visitors-great and small, from within the city and beyond the boundaries of the empire – nobody got into each other's way within this mini-city. This was possible because of the Fort's ingenious design in which it accommodated public, semi-public, semi-private and private spaces. The public ceremonial areas were clearly and centrally positioned, marked out by straight axes, with formal courtyards that increased in size and magnificence, a succession of compelling gateways which no visitor could miss or ignore. On the other hand, the private areas, whether those of the Emperor and his family or of his attendant work-force, were located such that they were practically invisible. Shah Jahan’s living areas were atop the river-side wall, furthest from the Lahori and Delhi Gates of the city. Instead of being conventional huge towering vertical complexes, they were single-storeyed pavilions, their imperial status signaled not by size but by their proportion, refinement and detailing. His private entrance to the Fort was also from the banks on the river, which in those days was an important means of transportation and as a space for recreation. In fact the siting of functions throughout Shahjahanabad celebrated the presence of the river, something which should give us pause for thought today. The Fort’s imperial pavilions were not only located to afford stunning views across and cool breezes from the river; they were equally part of a grand spectacle from the river, their privacy unimpaired behind intricate marble jalis. These river-views were continued in the large havelis of noblemen and Princes, public and private gardens, and ghats, all of which lined the length of the Yamuna.

In contrast, the living and working areas of the craftspeople and attendants were located between the Fort’s Main Gates and its towering outer walls adjacent to the city. They were densely built around twisting streets, resembling parts of Shahjahanabad; and positioned in such a way that they were shielded from the view of state visitors and even of the Emperor and could thus develop freely as independent territories. This can be more clearly understood through these plans developed to clarify the different domains of use and areas of movement of the main categories of people within the Fort - the Emperor, a nobleman, a Mughal queen, and an ordinary inhabitant of the city. The Fort was thus a microcosm of the Mughal way of life–not merely the Imperial Mughal way of life.[16]

In the design of the Fort, open space was fashioned such that it was used as an extension of built space—and built structures were devised to shade or enclose open space, so that they could together be used effectively in all seasons. Each sub-area within the Fort had its own courtyards bounded by gateways and continuous arcades that provided shaded areas to work, sit or walk in, as also privacy from the other spaces adjacent to them. As the Fort’s original design shows, the proportion of open spaces in it is far greater than the amount of built structures. A large amount of these open spaces were gardens, designed to provide pleasant and cool spaces, beautiful to see as well as to provide fruit and vegetables for the kitchens; they are described by contemporary historians of Shah Jahan as being planted with, ‘...fruitful trees of diverse kinds...interlaced with each other in such a way that they sky is not anywhere visible from under them’.[17]

The open courtyards and gardens also had the advantage of flexiblity. If there were larger crowds on special occasions, such as on the Fort’s inauguration ceremonies or at Shah Jahan’s birthday celebrations or during festivals, more area could be covered easily and quickly by spreading canopies and qanats in these courts. It was also because of these open areas sited in between built areas, that many of Shah Jahan’s original pavilions could stay virtually unobstructed and untouched, despite a greatly increasing population in the Fort during the times of his descendants. The later Mughal rulers got more structures built around the boundaries of the main courts and gardens or within many of the less visible ones.

The built spaces too, whether the grand entrance gateways or the Emperor’s own pavilions, were multifunctional in use. All the buildings that the Emperor stayed or worked in were not enclosed buildings but pavilions, a series of verandahs, which could be hung with carpets and covered with qanats, or left open to let the river-breezes in.The palaces of the Emperor and his family as well as their grand entrance sequences which were a succession of forecourts and gateways were all multifunctional in use–they could equally be used for people to gather, for administrative work, for court ceremonial, as well as circulation spaces. So, the Lahori and Delhi gateways contained living quarters for soldiers, the Naqqar Khana Gateway not only provided a regulated entrance but also contained chambers for musicians; the Emperor’s Hall of Private Audience from where he dispensed justice also doubled up as a reception on the occasion of private celebrations. Actively and almost continuously used as an imperial Mughal Fort for almost two thirds of its life—the multifarious activities within the Fort continued to work practically as they were originally designed, without intruding on each other.

Thus while the different layers of history which have left their mark on the Fort, undoubtedly make it a site of great interest, it is nonetheless, the value of its original design which invest it with an overriding significance in terms of world and Indian heritage. From its conception, to its ingenious construction and detailing to its continued efficient functioning, the Red Fort is unrivalled anywhere in the world. It embodies important lessons for everyone –architectural and art historians, contemporary designers and their clients, administrators, planners, leaders. What are these?

First, that despite being the favoured residence and the prized patronage of arguably the richest ruler in the medieval world, the Red Fort was planned and detailed to be socially inclusive–It was designed not just as a residence of a monarch but as a miniature city with all the positive opportunities for economic, social and cultural interaction that a city affords. Everyone, even the poorest of the inhabitants was a stake-holder in the Fort. Visually, and spatially too there was no bar between the direct axis linking Shah Jahan to his people–instead of the ramparts and barbicans that block the Fort from the city today, originally a bridge lead straight from the Chandni Chowk to the Lahori Gate, and further to the Emperor’s Throne of Justice in the Diwan-i-Am Secondly, that the Fort’s design was ecologically and environmentally considerate–there was no unnecessary wastage of resources-instead of the stretches of high-maintenance lawns that pass for gardens today, the Fort’s vast gardens were essentially orchards; they worked as productive areas as well as places of pleasure, entertainment and repose; they moderated the micro-climate and used only the optimum amount of precious water. Even the water in the fountains used to cool and decorate the Fort’s pavilions and its gardens, or in the imperial bathing chambers was recycled–either for irrigation, or for watering animals, or for cooling the public parts of the Fort.

Thirdly, the Fort’s design was an example of further development of the traditional indigenous courtyard typology; where not only were the proportions of the built and open spaces of the highest order but where utilization of space was maximized despite constructing a minimum number of built structures.

And finally, the Fort’s design displayed those qualities which make design truly great, where no element is superfluous or extraneous. None of its structures and spaces was designed as simply utilitarian or purely decorative. Each component of its design—whether the form or detail of its gardens, pavilions, forecourts, gateways or colonnades was practical, useful and beautiful; the form, structure and decoration in them could not be separated from each other. The location and orientation of the buildings, gardens and courtyards that housed different activities, as well as their size, height and overall proportions, had ecological, functional, and aesthetic reasons. They were designed not only to impress a viewer or a user but also to be practical, easy to maintain and to be lived in during the different seasons.

The Red Fort, symbolizes and exemplifies above all, a celebration of life–in its establishment, in the ceremonies that marked the Emperor’s sojourn in it, in the artists, painters, poets and singers that it patronized, in its gardens and in its trees that made life beautiful and pleasant even in the sweltering summers of Delhi. The complex multiple spatial uses of the Fort and its environs, and the bustling inclusive activity in them, and the manner in which they transformed at different times of the day and year, were a development of – as well as an influence on - the efficient and overlapping uses of built and open space in the Indian tradition, and the value that the administration and built form of this imperial city placed on the activities of common people.

The intriguing architectural forms and detailing of the Delhi Jantar Mantar, the first in the series of the five Jantar Mantar observatories located in other cities, are also a direct outcome as well as a continuation and representation of these inclusive attributes of the Indian tradition, which elevate its value beyond their physical form and function, unique though these may be. Though many of the masonry instruments in the Delhi Jantar Mantar, originally titled simply 'Jantra' or 'the Instrument', are essentially new inventions of Sawai Jai Singh and his builders, they were inspired by, and devised after exhaustively studying existing prevalent instruments - not just limited to Sawai Jai Singh's Hindu inheritance, but also from other schools of astronomy from different cultures and regions.[18] Jai Singh, conscientious in acknowledging his sources as well as confident of his original contributions, clearly writes of the initial instruments at the Delhi Observatory ‘such as had been constructed at Samarcand agreeably to the Mussalman books’ as well as of ‘instruments of his own invention’.[19] The construction of the Delhi Jantar Mantar represents therefore, not only the will and energy of Sawai Jai Singh involved in each stage of the ambitious venture of this extraordinary observatory, but also the centuries old practical and theoretical tradition of Indian astronomy and architecture, that Sawai Jai Singh inherited, as well as the knowledge of astronomy from around the world that he gathered and analysed. These were translated into the instruments of the Jantar mantar by the efforts of the expert state-astronomers, mathematicians, gurus, and master-masons that Sawai Jai Singh patronised and honoured.

The Jantar Mantar also represents a method of astronomy, which is now no longer conventionally followed. Even when it was built, it was extremely unusual, the last notable observatory of this scale having been built in Samarkand in 1424 AD by Mirza Ulugh Beg, grandson of the mighty Mongol warrior Timur Leng from whom the Mughal emperors also traced their ancestry. There were no surviving examples of large instruments even at that time—either in India, despite an ancient and accurate system of astronomy, or elsewhere in the world.[20] Of the original extant range of instruments devised and built for the Observatory between the years 1721- and 1724, the three main ones—the Samrat Yantra, the Jai Prakash Yantra, and the Rama Yantra—are all inventions and innovations of Jai Singh and his advisors, and represent the spirit of enquiry and innovation which distinguishes true scientific endeavours. These were all built for the first time in the Delhi Jantar Mantar—a daring intellectual exercise and as a remarkable architectural feat—giving it an immeasurable scientific and historic value. The last masonry instrument to be built at the Delhi Jantar Mantar, the Misra Yantra which dates from the 1750s, is unique to it; like the Harrappan script it still evades complete understanding, and represents a challenge to our ingenuity.

These Yantras, designed to accurately measure solar time,(especially at sunrise, sunset or noon—important times for daily religious rites) or to accurately measure positions of celestial objects (especially at the juncture of seasons and the solstices—important times in the yearly religious rites), are also important in that they represent a continuation of the oldest traditions of observational astronomy in India, which can be traced far-back to the requirement for such rituals in Vedic times. A temple dedicated to the child Bhairon, the Bal Bhairon Mandir, which still exists and is positioned on the east-west axis in line with the earlier entrance of the Observatory and its most important Yantra, the Samrat, is part of this holistic link between the spiritual, the creative and the scientific aspects of the Indian tradition.

Apart from being important for Jai Singh’s personal ritual practices as well as that of his traditional inheritance, the Delhi Jantar Mantar also had a wider use and involvement with all the people of the Mughal Empire including its Emperor. A revised set of astronomical tables was prepared primarily on the basis of recordings made at the Delhi Jantar Mantar continuously over a period of seven years. Dedicated to, and named after the reigning Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah, the Zij-i-Muhammad Shahi was presented to him with ceremony, and used throughout the Mughal Empire, to formulate the yearly calendars used to plan important religious, political and administrative events as well as social, agricultural and cultural activities. The information in the Zij, the numerical tables and accompanying explanations to measure time and to compute planetary and stellar positions, was also utilized in the Pancangs, the traditional Hindu calendars listing different festivals, seasons, positions of the moons, eclipses and other such information. In the larger cultural context, such ritual worship of gods and ancestors and celebration of festivals in accordance with planetary events, were in turn used to predict seasonal weather changes relevant in day-to-day life. Even till much after Jai Singh’s time, the knowledge of astronomy was put to practical use, not only for marking time and seasonal changes, but also for accurate foretelling of natural calamities.[21] Additionally with the observations made with the help of these instruments, Jai Singh and his astronomers were also able to discern errors in existing tables such as the Tabulae Astronomicae of the French astronomer, Phillip de la Hire. As Jai Singh himself writes in the conclusion to the Zij compiled sometime between 1728 to 1732, ‘with the help of our own new instruments, we have observed five well-known satellites and other heavenly bodies; we have revealed a number of new data’. The Jantar Mantar generated knowledge of the larger world, the universe in fact, and made this knowledge accessible and useful to a huge section of populace, beyond the boundaries of the city it was situated in.

Thus, instead of seeing the Delhi Jantar Mantar merely as a collection of archaeological remains, it must be appreciated for its immense relevance as an educational, scientific and cultural resource for India and the world. Unlike the later Jantar Mantars, the instruments of the Delhi Observatory contain much of their original built components. And even though the Observatory has not been used for purposes of astronomy for more than two hundred years and most of the calibrations made by Jai Singh’s master-masons have been lost—due to weathering, replacement or imperfect maintenance, it is still possible to revive the function of its Yantras.

The standard reference so far for the Jantar Mantar, published in 1918 and written by George R. Kaye, terms its Yantras ‘archaeological remains’, their primary worth deriving from their association as ‘noble monuments of a remarkable personality’. This has undoubtedly influenced its conservation for the past hundred years as an urban garden in the tradition of an English landscape. Rather than as a medieval Indian observatory; its Yantras presented as a collection of ‘architectural follies’ amidst a plantation of tall palm trees rather than as precise instruments of astronomy. However, as Dr. Rathnasree, the Director of the Delhi Nehru Planetarium, has said: 300 years after they were built—they are still the easiest access...of doing celestial co-ordinate measurements’. They can be effectively used to measure local solar time, observe stars and calculate positions of celestial objects. No other instruments anywhere in the world can demonstrate the movement of the earth and the planets with such clarity as these Yantras. No other instruments are so easily accessible to an ordinary person. They are particularly suited not just to observe the skies, but also to demonstrate principles of spherical trigonometry, physics, mathematics and geography. The readings with them, once the principle is understood, can be done very rapidly even by a schoolchild.

Their conservation, as that of our city's other historic structures – in a continuation of the original spirit of their construction and use – has an implication thus not just on their repair and maintenance but also on their beneficial use by communities living around them, and indeed by all the people of our world. Ironically, today this awareness seems to evade our collective imagination. From tourist brochures to government signages, we repress and reduce Delhi’s long and complex history into a mere ‘postcard’ image—an empty stage set viewed from the outside, focused on a limited period, and completely excluded from its people and the context of its urbanity. My most telling metaphor for Delhi is that of an onion—multi-layered, veined and coloured with many shades. The hidden vapours of the pasts that lie within its layers, rise unbidden to sting you into an awareness of a different time—but they are being forcibly prised apart and scattered into forlorn stray wisps even as we speak. All but a few prominent fragments of the wealth of our city's diverse historic spaces as well as its colourful historic traditions, have disappeared under the guise of ‘development’. Even the architectural landmarks we extol, are dwarfed or hidden behind purdahs of railings, walls, offices, malls, flyovers and highways, so that they cannot literally be approached—forget about being understood or appreciated. And so, let me say that Delhi is a world-heritage city in acute danger of losing its heritage, and the very human-skills which produced this heritage.

The most recent instance is that of the temporal traditional Flower Markets in Chandni Chowk, Mehrauli and Connaught Place, which vividly preserved and celebrated our spatial heritage of using urban space in multiple, efficient and sustainable ways. The marigold flower-market on the pavements of Khari Baoli, echoes the memory of the many-layered activities recorded in the mid-18^th century in 'The Chandni chouk, the fruit market, the Daribah Bazaar, and the buildings around the Masjid-i-Jama'?[22] The reputation of Delhi, as recorded by travelers from other parts of the subcontinent, such as Dargah Quli Khan from Hyderabad, who visited Delhi with his patron, Nizam Asaf Jah I, during Emperor Mohammad Shah's rule (1720-48 CE), was as much due to the sights and sounds in its streets and forecourts, its aromatic baghs and orchards; its canals and trees - as in its grand edifices. His recollections of Delhi are alive with dancers, story-tellers, astrologers, doctors, jugglers.[23] Cities like Jaipur and Mysore recognise the economic, cultural and social value that such vibrant activities and historic street-markets lend to their cities, and their attractiveness for visitors[24]—but we relocate these to huge centralized wholesale markets in Ghazipur on the outskirts of the New Delhi in a continuation of the model of development we have been following in Delhi since the past 100 years.

Such a development only works with a colonial scale investment of resources, and negates the very qualities inherent in the shaping of our historic city, manifest most brilliantly perhaps in the building of the Red Fort and the Jantar Mantar. It instead continues one strand of Delhi’s history, ‘the bungalow ’ first introduced in the Civil Lines and then used to build British Imperial New Delhi; which unfortunately has never been “urban” by design and has always been a collection of “villas” with trees in their gardens. It is also a theme of separation—between different parts of the city; between the street and the building; between older structures and contemporary ones; between traditional building practices and current mechanized ones. The isolation this has wrought, rings Delhi into wastelands of empty roads and desolate greens, pushed out further and further to satisfy the diet of developers and maneuverable only on the backs of machines, denying basic living services in the historic parts of our cities, and reducing them to ghettos.[25] Engulfed by the expanding modern Delhi, yet discounted as significant partners in its development, these are ironically often given the official status of ‘urban villages’. The last time that the heritage of Delhi underwent such large-scale interventions, was probably when the British mowed down and refashioned so many parts of it after the Great War of 1857, both to gain control as well as to alter the memory of its inhabitants.

As far back as 1987, the fact that historic cities ‘…are being threatened, physically degraded, damaged or even destroyed, by the impact of the urban development that follows industrialisation in societies everywhere’, as well as the belief that: ‘…to be most effective, the conservation of historic…urban areas should be an integral part of coherent policies of economic and social development and of urban and regional planning at every level’, has been enunciated and publicized in the Washington Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns and Urban Areas. If we wish to conserve Delhi's heritage, which we must, we need to do more than get it declared a world-heritage city. We need to forge a living identity with its complex history. To take cognisance of the greater levels of social interaction, safety, and climatic comfort in our historic architecture[26]; to derive lessons from them in building newer parts of our city; to provide economic and social conditions where we simultaneously accommodate our past creations, as well as the positive spirit and the human skills that that gave rise to them. If merely declaring and receiving world-heritage status was enough, we would not have countenanced the conversion of Shah Jahan’s private river-side entrance to the Red Fort, into a crude sunken pit next to a standard municipal garden - reducing the sublime to the ridiculous. We would not develop swathes of gated, fenced and manicured, water-guzzling lawns in a reiteration of its devastating ‘colonial intervention’. We would not contemplate the ‘restoration’ of its parts, as communicated in the newspaper report printed in The Hindustan Times of 2nd February 2009, into an evocation of a colonial Victorian market. In another hundred years from now, this refashioning may well be mistaken as the work of Shah Jahan’s builders, and with reason lead to the conclusion that its title of the ‘Most Magnificent Palace in the East’ is more fancy than fact.

We can still realise the promise of the different cities of Delhi and its unparalleled heritage - contained together, yet growing and green—but only when we re-look at the linked diverse human past of our immediate and larger worlds. And when we restore the same qualities of inclusiveness, of concern for people, for the environment, for material and human resources—as Shah Jahan and Sawai Jai Singh and their builders did. When we envision and define a 'world-class' city that has space to nurture and harness the skills of our diverse and rich traditions—instead of promoting a uniform and elite society derived from the western world. When we truly include instead of disregarding the citizens of Delhi and this country—poor and rich alike, professionals and laypeople. It is only then that we can communicate, conserve and continue the attributes of Delhi that make it part of the heritage of the world.

[1] Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 193; as quoted in The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, O.U.P. India, 2003, p.199

[2] M. M. Kaye, 1998, The Golden Calm, p. 168

[3] Introduction to the Zij-i-Muhammad Shahi

[4] Penelope Chetwode, Architectural Review, London, 1935. p. 59

[5] The multi-sport event held every four years among athletes from all over Asia started at New Delhi in 1951

[6] The Journal of a Tour in India, Peter Mundy, p. 56.

[7] Dilli jo ek shahar tha aalam mein intakhaab; rahtey the muntakhib hi jahan rozgaar ke, Eng.Trans. S. Kalidas with Sohail Hashmi, The Hindu, February 6, 2011

[8] Jaya, An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata, Devdutt Pattanaik, p. 114, Penguin Books 2010.

[9] A. Volwahsen, Cosmic Architecture in India, p. 103, p. 111

[10] ZMS, Ms. Add. 14373, Dept. of Oriental Manuscripts, The British Library, London f.189, as quoted in

V. N. Sharma, Sawai Jai Singh and his Astronomy, p. 243

[11] Conducted since 2004 by the Delhi Nehru Planetarium, the Science Popularization Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE), and the Delhi Amateur Astronomers Association.

[12] See for instance the 18^th century map of the Fort (Add. Or 1790, OIOC, BL), the mid-19^th century map of Shahjahanabad (X/1659; OIOC, BL); ASI 1904 map; reproduced in The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, O.U.P. India, 2003, pp.7 and 105.

[13] Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, p. 285

[14] For a comprehensive account of the manner in which the British used, abused and transformed the Red Fort and Shahjahanabad, refer to Chapter 7, ‘Assault’, pp.189-211, in The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, O.U.P. India, 2003

[15] The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, O.U.P. India, 2003, p. 26.

[16] For a detailed spatial analysis of the Red Fort, see The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, OUP 2003

[17] Ibid., p.148

[18] V. N. Sharma, pp. 85-6?

[19] Introduction to the Zij-i-Muhammad Shahi,

[20] Even in medieval times, and in the reigns of rulers with an interest in this science, as for instance the 14th century Tughlak ruler, Firoz Shah at Delhi, the range of instruments essentially consisted of astrolabes, a sundial and possibly a clepsydra for telling the time.

[21] A letter, written by Colonel Pearse in the late 18^th century, four decades after Sawai Jai Singh’s demise, records how he received in Bengal the prediction of three comets and an earthquake some three months before the earthquake desolated extensive regions around Lahore; ‘On the Sixth Satellite of Saturn’, Letter from Col. T. D. Pearse to Secretary, Royal Society London, dated Madras 22 September 1783; p.111 in Dharampal, Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century, Collected Writings.

[22] Tazkira of Anand Ram Mukhlis', Eng. trans. eds. H. M. Elliot and J. Dowson, The History of India By its Own Historians, The Muhammadan Period (Vol.VIII), p. 88, Kitab Mahal Pvt. Ltd. 1969.

[23] Muraqqa-i-Delhi, The Mughal Capital in Muhammad Shah's Time, Dargah Quli Khan, pp. 21–5, Eng. trans. Chander Shekhar, and Shama Mitra Chenoy, Deputy Publication, New Delhi, 1989.

[24] .See Red Earth - Walk – Flower Markets of Delhi, redearthindia.com; www.thegendaphoolproject.com.

[25] See for details, Finding Delhi, Loss and Renewal in the Megacity, Ed. Bharati Chaturvedi, Penguin Books India, 2010

[26] ‘Jama Masjid is safest, Dwarka most crime-hit’, Dwaipayan Ghosh, TNN, Sunday Times, November 23, 2008

Damned If You Do? Damned If You Don’t.

2011-08-11T20:44:00.001-07:00

On Negotiating Democracy in 21^st Century India

We were taught in school that we are an independent democratic republic; that this is a great leap forward from the days of old when kings ruled at whim and subjected the poor to misery and starvation; that our country with the mighty Himalayas crowning its beautiful form was almost a continent – a self-contained, ancient, and bountiful land of diverse people and languages. This was the prescribed content in History, Civics and Geography, and we believed it.

During and after my post-graduate research on the historic Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, I read of the weekly durbars for the poor in the court of Shah Jahan - arguably one of the richest rulers of the medieval world, and ostensibly a self-indulgent aesthete. The poorest inhabitants of Shahjahanabad and the Mughal Empire could walk in right to the courtyard of the Diwan-i-Am-o-Khass within ‘The Most Magnificent Palace in the East’, for audience with their Emperor and seek redressal of their woes. This was in feudal times.

In present-day India, such concern seems surprising, especially since we value foreign relations more than the lives of our people. When the Prime Minister of India claims that the country does not have the wherewithal to distribute excess food to its starving millions - that there is no option but to let it rot - yet finds the resources to give huge sums of money to bail out other countries from economic collapse, it is not easy to make sense of the truths of history and geography and democracy.

In the name of the new god of democratic progress, the poor must acquiesce unquestioningly as their forests, fields and waters are poisoned to make way for factories, power-plants or cities. They must rejoice if they find their names in the list of the compensated few resettled miles away from their own lands; celebrate if they get a job as a factory-hand or a labourer. And resign themselves in any case to sermons, excuses, insults and beatings. For those of us who have been spared such a fate in this birth, there are smaller everyday indignities, which belie our childhood myths of a free, glorious and independent society.

Democracy and freedom in India today is essentially for some powerful people, by some powerful people, and of some powerful people. Free to bestow all the money of the country in the banks of other countries; to morph India into a giant urban fiasco; to dispense justice and reform – or not. With such unmitigated freedom, there is little time and certainly no space to set aside for ordinary citizens, not even in the capital city of independent India. The one little stretch of road, named after the Jantar Mantar – the Observatory established on the initiative of another of our feudal ancestors in pre-democratic times – designated as a token site of protest, is also not available if too many people have the temerity to gather there.

Most politicians and political analysts say such peaceful protests by civil society constitute a threat to the democratic process, even if it is for a purpose that no one can fault – to demand punishment for the corrupt and justice for the wronged; that these are tantamount to holding our legislators, politicians and administrators to ransom; that they disrupt traffic and our economy. So what is ‘civil society’ to do? Continue to put its trust in elected representatives who have repeatedly failed to live up to their promises? Hope that self-realization will come to the mighty? Miracles do happen and most of us still believe in miracles or we would not survive our gross governance. Wait with the proverbial patience of the meek and the underprivileged? But then, three generations is already a pretty long wait.

Now that even the tradition of non-violent protest propagated most famously by the Father of the Nation, is unacceptable in our democracy, does it mean that it encourages its people to do the opposite? To take to violent protest? It would seem not. That would make such protestors enemies of the state, even if they are Indians. And enemies of the state must be exterminated, as our ministers declare. No wonder that for so long the Indian public has been accused of being uncaring beyond their immediate selves and families.

So is there another way to participate in governance, besides being one of those elected representatives who are above the law? How can we negotiate democracy in the 21^st century? As some Indians with integrity and will have shown us, it is by making the powers-that-be realize that they cannot fool “all the people all the time”. That they will not be allowed to utterly efface, mine, dam, and level all the mountains and rivers sacred in memory and tradition; and to continue to shelter the corrupt. That democracy is about majority opinion.

As yet another 15^th August approaches, as Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal among many others unite in expressing our determination for a free and fair country, it is time to tell our new rulers that we, the people of India, are the majority and we have an opinion. They would do well to open their eyes to this reality – and to read the cautionary words of an illustrious Indian whose 150^th birth anniversary we officially celebrate with such fanfare this year:

‘Politicians calculate upon the number of mailed hands that are kept on the sword hilts: they do not possess the third eye to see the great invisible hand that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless and waits its time.’[1]

[1] ‘The Modern Age’, p.541, The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Two; Edited by Sisir Kumar Das, Sahitya Akademi, 1996; This Edition 2008

Doves on the Landing

2011-06-27T06:07:00.001-07:00

Doves on the landing, squirrels on the parapet…and other such sights

I cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be called an industrious gardener. Indeed, I cannot be called a gardener at all. I don’t particularly like examining the soil and its contents at close quarters. But, the combination of a family affinity for plants, a childhood spent in green cantonments, and a dislike of combining vegetable and fruit peels with the rest of the garbage, means that our terrace garden is always full of plants. Some of these elude recognition not only by rank amateurs of my kind, but also the malis who profess to know more and who, occasionally deign to climb up to our third-floor flat to disapprovingly survey the mad profusion in our pots.

The more direct of them, tell me outright, that I simply must not grow more than one plant in a pot. Snehanshu, who likes method in all things, and expends much effort in buying and hauling pedigreed chandni, bel, juhi and other such lovelies up the long flight of stairs, heartily concurs. But there’s the rub. I don’t actually plant anything. The nearest I have got to deliberately planting, is when I pushed in the seed of a particularly sweet mango in one of my seemingly unoccupied pots. And nothing has emerged as yet. But then, like Contrary Mary, How does my garden grow?

I attribute it essentially to luck and laziness. Since I do not have a compost heap, I liberally distribute tea leaves, apricot shells, fruit and vegetable peels and other such things in all my pots. And nature does the rest. So, we are constantly being surprised by new vegetation. The four pomegranates which are now taller than me, sprung up themselves. I have also, in various stages of growth among the bougainvilleas, hibiscus, champas and lilies, three jamuns, two chikoos, lots of musk-melon plants, beans, pumpkin, and one tenacious green which has been variously identified as bathua, jakhia, and a wild non-edible. This summer, we had an exciting time tracking tomatoes as they changed from yellow flowers to green to yellow to orange to red fruits. All in all, we harvested about 70 tiny ones, and they were a great attraction to the children in the neighbourhood, and very sweet to eat. They grew themselves in pots designated for statelier plants, who have now reasserted themselves. I myself think, it’s a more efficient use of space, though this arrangement cannot strictly be called tidy.

The birds and beasts, at least, seem to like my casual scattering of seeds – and crumbs. The regulars in our terrace are a rakish bulbul with a particularly endearing tousle-head and his family, three polite doves (who incidentally were born and grew up on the old deer-antlers on our landing, and have merely moved further in, I suppose), many nameless blue-rock pigeons (I understand that is the attractive name they go under) who ponderously upset whatever they can, and one vociferous crow. On occasion, we have also been privileged by the visit of blue sunbirds, brown sparrows, bright green parrots, and once even a family of little weaver-birds who built their nest in one of our larger plants. And then there are of course, the squirrels, baby lizards, moths, butterflies and wasps who have adopted our terrace, and like the Camel with the Arab, now believe that our rooms are as much theirs as the terrace.

So altogether, it’s a full house.

Plain Tales from Doon - Third Instalment

2011-06-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

Some Further Exchanges Between Garhwalis and Kumaonis…Telephonic and Otherwise

My father, belying Onial Mausaji’s general pronouncements on the differences between the Kumaonis and the Garhwalis, fits in quite contentedly with the vagaries of the Ghyldiyals. His military training may have something to do with it. But it seems to me that his motto of “Quick march”, (without any attendant fear of where he is marching to!) is only partly due to his life in the army. For it seems to have been his creed even before he joined the NDA. As a fairly little boy, Papa was once on his way home with Bhawani Chacha - his slightly younger brother – when he spied a ladder-seesaw contraption. It was hanging from a tree, part of an obstacle course for training soldiers. Before Papa could finish his very natural investigations into its possibilities, Chacha’s hold gave way. From his position half-way up the swaying rope-ladder, Papa found himself whizzing through the sky. Landing a great distance away with a nasty cut over his bleeding lip, he needed the imperative attention of several surgical stitches. That, he explained disarmingly, was the reason for his attractive lop-sided smile.

Since, neither that experience nor others that followed have ever shaken Papa’s impatient fascination for the new and the curious, he continues to have varied and exciting experiences. His nonchalent optimism rivals and occasionally complements Mummy’s characteristic concern for cleanliness, to produce some interesting situations. One recurring object that he never ceases to tire experimenting with, is the cell phone. His cell-phones retire sooner rather than later under the pressure of his random punches or their outdated technology – depending on Mummy’s interpretation or his. While drawn to their mysterious charms, Papa resolutely refuses to take them seriously – or indeed take at all, whether on his daily walks or his round of golf. Conversely, when he is in the vicinity of his phone, it is generally switched off. So, the family knows better than to call him on his cell phone – which is just as well. He also changes the phone companies he patronises, adding greatly to the custom and confidence of salespersons.

Once, we all went to visit Deepa Chachi - Bhawani Chacha’s wife - after her knee replacement surgery. She was at my cousins’ house, 25 kilometers away from ours, a fair distance in the NCR. We all sat without worrying, since my father, as the more frequent visitor to that house, had assured us that he would direct us. As we neared our destination, he casually said that he did not know the house number, but that was all right. He remembered the route perfectly.

After we had circled the colony a couple of times, Snehanshu at the wheel tersely requested that we call up my cousins’ so that we could check the sign-boards announcing the house numbers. Mummy dug out Papa’s phone from her handbag and handed it to him in the front passenger seat. A couple of hasty tries later, Papa declared there was no answer. Luckily, I had in the meantime, managed to get through from my phone. We drove up, amidst my parents’ animated discussion on the proper way to use cell-phones and directions.

Halfway home in the evening, at the conclusion of an afternoon of much conversation, tea and dosas, Papa suddenly enquired, “Aruna, have you got my phone?”

“No,” answered my mother. “You took it from me just before we reached. Remember when you tried to call - but couldn’t - for directions to the house? What did you do with it?”

“I kept it in my pocket…and then on the table next to where I was sitting. I thought you would have picked it up,” remarked Papa in an imperceptibly aggrieved tone. “Never mind if you didn’t. It is safe enough there.”

After a minute, he added “Just call and check. It is there of course, but just let them know”.

I called again. My cousin Vimal, promised to look for it. He found it almost immediately, reposing quietly on the table, and asked if he should come down to give it to us. We were nearly at Noida, and considering my father’s frequency of using the phone, I firmly declined to let him come so far on a smoggy winter’s evening. Anyway, as Papa reminded us, Bhawani Chacha was going back to DehraDun in a few days time. He could carry it there with him, from where Papa could easily collect it since he was planning to visit DehraDun as well.

We all agreed that this was the best thing to do. Almost immediately, he thought of another idea. Arvind Bhai, Papa’s sister’s son, who also lived in Noida, was planning to visit Deepa Chachi the next day. “Arvind can get it back. He is just a few kilometers away and we can arrange to pick it up.”

I duly called up both sets of cousins to inform them of the handing and taking over of the bag. “You can switch off the phone,” I told Vimal. “No, I’ll keep it on – that way Tauji will have a record of his missed calls.”

“Don’t bother”, I told him. “He doesn’t”.

He obviously did not believe me. In due course, the phone came back, still switched on, just in time for my parents’ forthcoming visit to Dehra Dun. I advised my father to keep it handy, and answer phones, to enable coordination of station-dropping and picking. “Don’t worry, I have it with me,” he said brightly. “Yes, the charger too.”

I finally tracked my elusive parents in one of the numerous houses at Dehra Dun the next day, after many phone calls to the houses of aunts and uncles from where they had just left or were just expected to reach. “Why don’t you switch on your phone,” I demanded, justly irritated. “Oh you know, the battery had drained off, and I found the charger I was carrying did not fit,” was the equable answer.

Two days later, we arrived at DehraDun as planned. “Of course, I don’t really need it now that you all are here and we will travel back together,” Papa said, after he had thanked us profusely for restoring his charger to him, retrieved from its hideout inside the cabinet in his study. “Your mother, as usual, must have tidied it away - you know she can’t bear to see anything lying around”.

“Indeed? You must have got mixed up with the charger of one of those innumerable phones that you persist in buying.” Mummy countered.

And they steadfastly stuck to their individual explanations.

More Plain Tales from Doon

2011-06-10T23:01:00.000-07:00

The enumeration of the eccentricities of the Ghyldiyals was received rather enthusiastically by those in the family who were ‘half-and half’. Most of the full-blooded Garhwalis reacted by a studied silence or by retrieving superior anecdotes from their own store of tales worth telling. My father, from his Kumaoni vantage point of an objective onlooker, was the most appreciative.

“But you haven’t written about our Ghyldiyal”? he encouraged hopefully.

Our Ghyldiyal, is of course my mother, Aruna - or ‘Urhna’ as she complained her mother-in-law, my Dadi, insisted on calling her. The youngest of Nani’s three daughters, the family traits are not immediately apparent in Mummy. Her brief and acute comments bear little resemblance to Saroj Mausi’s detailed drifts from corruption to Chaucer. Or to Guni Mausi’s enigmatic utterances, darting between gardening lore, unusual recipes, child-rearing, and much else. Mummy’s adamant adherence to a clockwork schedule, come rain or shine, is also rather different from the untrammeled space and time-cycles of her elder sisters.

It takes the privilege of proximity to realize that in Mummy, the Ghyldiyal connection manifests itself more in deed, rather than in word (though she has not entirely escaped the particular family feat of carrying on a conversation quite independent of the listener’s response). Having apparently inherited all her seven siblings’ share of my grandmother’s legendary order and neatness, as well as the clan’s ‘do-it-yourself’ motto, she is akin to an extraordinarily efficient whirlwind. You have only to say something. Like Maggi Noodles, Mummy has already done it in what seems like 2 minutes. You need not say it either - and she will still have done it.

“Chotti didi bahut jaldi karti hain”, Nani spluttered with laughter as she remembered the resigned comment of a harassed family servant in her father’s house years ago. My mother, all of perhaps nine years old, had passed through the room on her way out to play. With an already characteristic quickness of eye and hand, in the short interval that the servant returned with some matching thread, she had tidied away the special buttons lying around, destined for the coat of Pandit Haridutt Shastri. This was Nani’s father, the head of the household, the Rajguru of Tehri Garhwal, and from all accounts a stately and stern personage. Then with a useful ‘out of sight-out of mind’ philosophy, she forgot where she had put them, or even that she had put them away.

Mummy’s energetic efforts at ensuring neatness in her neighbourhood often leave me at a loss too. Within the space of the half-hour that it takes me to pick up my daughter from school, I return to a sparkling and unfamiliar kitchen bereft of its usual merry mix of organic dals, herbal teas, powdered orange-peels, and dried neem leaves. Mummy - instead of reading the many interesting books that I have pointed out for her edification and entertainment, or admiring the squirrels on my terrace – has been ‘clearing up’. The empty bottles and jars which jam my cupboards (owing to my reluctance to add them to the garbage heap, and my ambition of someday using them to make interesting ‘bottle-walls’) are now suitably stuffed with useful things – or packed outside to be thrown. The kitchen is wonderfully clean, but it takes me rather longer than usual to find what I need. And since our notions of necessities don’t really match, where and when I find them is often a surprise.

Such as the one I got on a damp morning several years ago. My brother and I were about to resume our progress on Delhi’s roads, after unsuccessfully sheltering under a bougainvilla bush during a brief burst of rain. It took me an instant to realize the identity of the blue bundle, with which Vivek was briskly mopping up the seat of his mud-spattered motor-cycle. By then, it was too late. Dust and grease stains had joined together to render my much cherished T-Shirt emblazoned with the memories of NASA – National Association of Students of Architecture - unfit for wear. Which, it always had been, according to my disdainful parent. I feebly drew attention to it, whereupon Vivek turned surprised. “Oh is it something you use? Mummy gave it to me to clean my bike.”

I therefore, like the rest of her family, regard my mother’s skills with admiration tinged with trepidation. One of her self-imposed tasks is to bring some order into her busy sisters’ houses whenever she is visiting Dehradun. The methods she uses to transform an untidy room into a marvel of neatness at lightning speed, are direct but effective. The results are a bit like a conjuring trick. She simply bundles unsightly things into bags, under beds, and inside cupboards. From where, as my cousin Manishi giggles, they roll out when least expected.

Naturally enough, it is in combination with her sisters that Mummy manages to make most of her memorable moves. As on a visit to DehraDun a summer ago. We were at Saroj Mausi’s digesting a lunch of delicious Garhwali dishes accompanied by her quintessential turns of speech. It was then that Guni Mausi called up in a state. She could not find her phone anywhere – either in her own house or in the one across the lichi trees where Nani stayed with my younger uncle’s family. Had any of us seen it? We diligently scoured Saroj Mausis’s overflowing house to no avail. Sometime later I heard a low buzzing in the background. Recollecting my frustration at getting through to Saroj Mausi on the phone, I firmly directed her attention to it. But, both hers and Onial Mausaji’s phones were lying decorously silent on the table.

“It is coming from Sarojdi’s bag,” observed Mummy. We fished out Mausi’s black capacious bag, which she contrives to fill, like Mary Poppins, with an array of surprising articles. After some delving, we discovered a phone, ringing insistently. A visibly astonished Saroj Mausi, expressing wonder at this Mystery of a Strange Phone, tentatively answered it. “Hallo? Who??”

Audibly excited tones carried to us. “Your phone?”, said Saroj Mausi. “But how did it come inside my bag?”

Almost immediately, an indignant Guni Mausi arrived in person down the two short lanes and little length of road that separated her house and Saroj Mausi’s. “Everyone knows how absent-minded you are - but to put my phone in your bag and to not remember it even when I ask whether you’ve seen it, is really the limit”!

They were still trying to reach a satisfactory explanation, when Mummy who had been exclaiming with us over the discovery, was struck by a possibility.

“Sarojdi, I put a phone inside your bag in Guni’s house. I spotted it on the divan when I was tidying up at the time that the maid was sweeping the floor.” she explained.

“Since you say it isn’t yours,” she added wisely, “then it must have been Guni’s.”

“Though really, I did not expect Guni to be as careless as you.” By the time her sisters could collect their answers and their bags, Mummy was on her way out of the room, pausing to point out thoughtfully in passing - “Just as well that I kept it away safely. What if the poor maid had been tempted to take it?”

Holding Fast with Anna Hazare

2011-04-07T21:58:00.001-07:00

A volunteer meeting was organized by ‘India Against Corruption’ on the 27^th of March 2010.

We’d come to know about this campaign spearheaded by Anna Hazare, through SMSes forwarded to us - which we were asked to send on to others if we supported the causes espoused in the campaign.

As we arrived for the meeting, slightly apprehensive about being half an hour late and not knowing what to expect, the sight of four college students walking up to the gate, and of two ladies who alighted from an auto-rickshaw looking for the same address, reassured us.

We walked into the premises, our architectural training as usual manifesting itself in a quick appraisal of the building. Clad in buff and red sandstone, its proportions were pleasant; the entrance doorway to the building was clearly marked out without being intimidating; the windows in reflective glass, past the side entrance that we were directed to, were neat and rhythmic. The fact that the meeting was being held here and not in the supercilious glass-boxes that pass for so much of contemporary architecture, seemed to us appropriate.

Our pace unconsciously quickened, as walking past the building and up the stairs, we heard the sound of someone speaking forcefully. Kiran Bedi? On the first floor, in a packed conference hall, we saw it was a young girl, head covered in a green chunni, kurta and jean-clad. We stood at the back, wondering how much of the discussion we’d already missed, indescribably glad that there were so many people there that we had to stand.

The energy and enthusiasm in the room was something we have never experienced. It became evident that we had come at the end of the first part of the meeting in which people had been talking about what they had personally gone through, the menace of corruption, the absolute necessity of doing something – letting off steam and gathering momentum as it were. Now it was time for ideas about how to do that something.

“Idealogy ki bahut baat ho gayee, ab ideas ki baat karein”, as the girl – who one of the older gentlemen present called ‘a Lakshmibai of today’ – said.

And ideas poured in– both for and against jamming the roads of Delhi and the NCR akin to the Jat Campaigners, to forming human chains, doing street-plays, fasting at homes, at Jantar Mantar, distributing pamphlets, speaking to people in buses, metros, local trains, resident associations, sending chain-emails, door-to-door campaigns. From an autorickshaw driver, from retired army officers and ex-servicemen groups, from a librarian, from college students, union leaders, Art of Living practitioners, teachers, even serving government officials - not just from Delhi and around but from Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra. And it seemed to us, that this was truly another Freedom Struggle. The will of the people there; the complete commitment and confidence with which the young leaders channelized the concentrated and sometimes divergent outburst of feelings; the fact that so many people of such diverse backgrounds had gathered there as Indians who cared enough about what was happening to their country, is something that will always remain with us.

We fasted on the 5^th of April. And again on the 7^th. It was not easy, and we can better appreciate what it must be for Anna Hazare to go on a continuous fast while being in the public eye. We feel blessed that we have at least one person like him who can give direction and inspiration to us when so many of our so-called leaders and public figures do nothing but shame us and the idea of our nation. We hope to be able to go to the Jantar Mantar Road to express our solidarity with Anna Hazare and with the extraordinary courage and unity of so many Indians there and elsewhere in the country, who give us reason to be proud and hopeful for today and tomorrow.

Much Ado about an Anniversary - A Hundred Years of New Delhi

2011-03-16T01:50:00.003-07:00

I have been thinking about this widespread interest in the 100th anniversary of the establishment of New Delhi.
And I have been wondering why this occasion should generate such an interest. After all Delhi itself has a much older urban built tradition. Even if we disregard the archaeological fragments which point to a built history of more than a 1000 years, there are substantial remains of historic cities in this region, including Shah Jahan’s 17th century city of Shahjahanabad—the ‘new’ Delhi at the turn of the 20th century. Why are we then getting so excited about a mere 100 years? What does New Delhi mean to us that we celebrate the 100 years since a British monarch and his Queen laid down a foundation stone in what is now the North Campus of the Delhi University area, with such concentrated attention in our newspapers, our magazines and our media?
One reason perhaps for such an interest maybe the fact that the establishment of a capital at New Delhi, in purely political terms meant that active political power was ‘returning’ to Delhi after being centred in Calcutta after 1857 and its aftermath. So, Delhi, which had shrunk in political terms to a provincial city, was again after a gap of half a century regaining its historical status of a capital city once again. So, perhaps the celebration is not just the 100th anniversary of New Delhi, but a celebration of the reinstatement of Delhi’s political status.
The second reason may be the fact, that at the level of city-planning, New Delhi looms large on our physical and mental consciousness. New Delhi has had a huge impact on the growth and ‘development’ of towns and cities throughout the country. Again, perhaps one reason for this is the political baggage that it carries. And I find this a bit of a paradox. That a city which quite frankly turns its back on indigenous principles of urban planning and architecture and takes western models as its inspiration, should have been accepted so whole-heartedly by the political leaders of a newly independent India. And the fact that the image and form of such a city continues to be promoted by most of us today—administrators and professionals alike. I do not remember the 350th anniversary of the establishment of Shahjahanabad being commemorated on the same scale. And even though its urban form is actually climatically, culturally and socially better adapted to the Delhi region and its recorded crime rate is lower than that in the newer planned parts of the city, Shahjahanabad is not the inspiration for newer cities. Maybe there is an associational value of Shahjahanabad with the last Mughals as a spent force; by the same argument, however, New Delhi should have an unpleasant associational value with the British as the seat of our erstwhile colonial masters.
There is no doubt, of course, that at many levels, New Delhi is very pleasant. I have stayed in many parts of it, including the large bungalow allotted to my father when he was the Vice Chief of the Indian Army Staff. To live in the midst of trees, with the luxury of large gardens and verandahs, is no doubt very attractive. But there are two issues here. The pleasance of New Delhi comes at a huge cost. It is the rest of the city which pays the price so that New Delhi can afford to be green and luxurious. Historically, cities have always been dense. Of course, they have had public parks and limited private gardens—as was the case even in Shahjahanabad, the ‘new Delhi’ that preceded the British Imperial capital. The British and Modern New Delhi, on the other hand, is actually the reverse of a city. It is sub-urban—the garden-city idea of Ebenezer Howard imposed many thousands of miles away.
It aims to combine the advantages of country-life (trees, fresh air, houses far way and virtually invisible from each other) with that of city-life (opportunities for intense interaction, mingling of minds, concentrated and varied activity). Evidently, reconciling both is not easy—and is generally unsuccessful. So, New Delhi in physical terms is unsustainable. The sort of densities here are one dwelling unit per acre as compared to 35 dwelling units per acre in DDA flats or over 60 dwelling units per acre in ‘unauthorised colonies’ and developer flats.
So, what it means is that to keep New Delhi looking spacious and green and uncrowded, the rest of the city is squeezed and crowded in; and they have to forego the amenities of both city and country. A plan such as New Delhi’s is also unsustainable because if you push dwelling units so far apart and if you isolate residential and commercial activities, you are immediately dependant on vehicular transport of some kind to negotiate distances. So, you cannot really do without cars within New Delhi. And since the centre of the capital city of India is so spread out and is retained as a low-density area, it is the periphery of the city which is made to accommodate the increasing numbers of people who come to live and seek work here. Travelling from the periphery to the centre of the city – where administrative and many business interests are centred – means that you are again dependant on either the inadequate and crowded public transport, or if you can afford it, in private vehicular transport. And so, like the circular layout of New Delhi, life within it too becomes a vicious circle.
Safety—personal and community—also comes a cropper in a layout like New Delhi’s. Since the dwelling units are bungalows pushed back from the street, screened by trees, bereft of landmarks apart from the tombs, temples and structures of older historic Delhis (which are also being razed down or taken over)—it is easy to get lost, waylaid, mugged or murdered in Delhi. Other parts of Delhi cannot afford to replicate the planned form of New Delhi with ‘bungalows in gardens’, but they follow it in different ways. Plotted houses setback from the road and screened by high walls in colonies; housing societies and developer flats with their version of ‘vertical bungalows’ behind boundary walls. In that sense, New Delhi and the development that it has spawned is very much a colonial city—distanced, isolated, aloof, heavily dependent on natural or native resources.

Jantar Mantar, Delhi

2010-11-12T02:58:00.000-08:00

JANTAR MANTAR

Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh's Observatory in Delhi

by Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

Price: Rs. 680, First Edition: 2010

ISBN 81- 903591- 1- 8

Published by Ambi Knowledge Resources Pvt Ltd

Address: Lower Ground Floor, C4/5 SDA ND 16

Telephone:011-49562700 email ambi.knowledge@gmail.com

Jantar Mantar: Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh's Observatory In Delhi

is available from:

21 B Pocket C

Siddharth Extension

New Delhi 110014

Ph: 01126341039

"Jantar Mantar" can also be bought

directly from the publisher.

Anisha Shekhar Mukherji's new book, an informative history and field guide, explains the enigma that is the Delhi Jantar Mantar. Based on over a decade of extensive research, it uses archival images, photographs, drawings and sketches, to unravel how the 300 year old Jantar Mantar Observatory looked and worked in the past. Carry this book to the Jantar Mantar and walk around the instruments with it. Or read it before and after your visit to understand one of the world’s most unusual and intriguing works of architecture.

Each instrument of the Jantar Mantar is explained separately as a guided ‘walk’. The book includes information on traditional Indian astronomy, and on the political and cultural background of this ‘royal observatory’ established by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II. It not only traces its transformation into ‘an archaeological monument’, but also charts the way ahead by which the Delhi Jantar Mantar’s historical function may be revived and conserved for future generations.

For Reviews see http://swblogs.blogspot.com/2011/02/astronomical-architecture.html

http://www.stagebuzz.info/PAGES/Books/Book_Mark8.htm

For online purchases, see http://swb.co.in/store/book/jantar-mantar

Happy Diwali - The Commitee Reappears

2010-11-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

Today is Dhanteras.

There is nothing urgent that I need in my kitchen. I wonder how necessary it is to follow this ritual as I contemplate what new utensil to buy, when my maid tells me in between mopping the floor, that she is shifting home. She is moving to a new room close to her old one, where she says she will get plentiful water. She can go back home and wash her children’s clothes in the afternoon without worrying about queuing up in line outside in the lane. It is ironic to me that what she deems is a luxury, is actually a chore. But the fact, that her chore will not be compounded by another chore, is in itself something for her to be treasured and celebrated.

I ask her if she needs time off to shift tomorrow. She tells me that she has already started doing so, a bit every day. She has to plan this, since her husband cannot help. He has injured his hand. When I ask how, she says he hurt himself running away from the Committee Wallahs. They came day before yesterday. “Diwali is coming”, she says sagely and resignedly.

Yes, it is festival time. And while most of us plan how to light up our homes and what to eat, for hawkers selling on the streets like my maid’s husband, it is not simply a time to decide how many new clothes and candles to buy. Certainly not a time to let their defences down, but to be more watchful and guarded. And to spend the money they set aside for the festival, on buying new thelas, new buckets, new wares to sell – many of which have been compounded, confiscated or broken by the Committee in its pre-festival swoop.

I tell her that the newspapers have reported that the Courts have said that it is the right of a citizen to sell his wares on the street. This is not something that she knows. Neither it appears does the Committee.

The Hindu edition of October 20, 2010 carried a Report on its front page which stated that ‘Hawkers have a fundamental Right to trade’. Justice A.K. Ganguly and Justice G.S. Singhvi have asked the Delhi Government to enact a law to regulate the hawkers’ trade keeping in mind also the right of commuters to move freely, and have noted that ‘the fundamental right of the hawkers, just because they are poor and unorganized cannot be left in a state of limbo’…and that ‘when citizens by gathering meager resources try to employ themselves as hawkers and street-traders they cannot be subjected to a deprivation on the pretext that they have no right.’

Some of us plan to write to the local Noida officials asking them how they propose to follow this judgment. We hope to have your support in the form of endorsing this letter by adding your signatures to it.

In the meantime, we would like you to think about creating more space in your kitchens and your homes, by ritually gifting away utensils, clothes, books, lights - or indeed anything that you deem appropriate to anyone less fortunate then you.

Have a peaceful and joyous Diwali. And wish the same for everyone.

Jantar Mantar Lecture, September 2010

2010-10-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

Book Launch of

JANTAR MANTAR

Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh's Observatory in Delhi

by Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

Price: Rs. 680, First Edition: 2010

ISBN 81- 903591- 1- 8

Published by Ambi Knowledge Resources Pvt Ltd

Address: Lower Ground Floor, C4/5 SDA ND 16

Telephone:011-49562700 email ambi.knowledge@gmail.com

Jantar Mantar: Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh's Observatory In Delhi

is available from:

21 B Pocket C

Siddharth Extension

New Delhi 110014

Ph: 01126341039

"Jantar Mantar" can also be bought

directly from the publisher, or by emailing the author at anisha.shekharmukherji@gmail.com

Reproduced below is the text of the lecture delivered by the author at the launch of her book at the Jantar Mantar on 29 September 2010.

The Delhi Jantar Mantar

Good evening, and welcome to the Jantar Mantar - the most enigmatic, perhaps the most photogenic, certainly the least understood of our city’s monuments.

When I started my research on the Jantar Mantar some ten years ago - despite training in architecture and conservation - I have to confess that I did not know much about it. Today, I know a little more, thanks largely to my association with the Jantar Mantar Project – the partnership venture between the ASI, the National Culture Fund and the Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels Ltd. The Project has supported research on uncovering facets about the form and function of the Jantar Mantar - as well as on improving its environs, and disseminating authentic information on it. It is also due to my association with the Jantar Mantar Project, that I have come into contact with institutions and organizations such as the Delhi Nehru Planetarium and the Delhi Amateur Astronomers Association which have helped me to understand the use of the instruments here – as indeed they have helped so many residents of Delhi and visitors to the Jantar Mantar.

I would like to share some of this understanding with you this evening.

The Jantar Mantar, has of course, always been somewhat of a mystery. Not just to you and to me, but even to most people 300 years ago, when it was located on the outskirts of Shahjahanabad - the new Delhi of that time. The fantastic forms of the Jantar Mantar are a complete contrast to the other famous architectural monuments built before, during or after it. Most European artists who visited India and Delhi in the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries made it a point to visit this intriguing place and record it – in drawings, paintings and photographs. These images are just some of the more known representations of the Jantar Mantar. The Delhi Jantar Mantar has also inspired other creations, one of which is a structure erected 200 years ago in a pleasure park near Paris derived from an illustration of the Misra Yantra– the Yantra in front of which we have gathered today. The Misra Yantra is of course the instrument that is most associated with the Delhi Jantar Mantar; coincidentally this Yantra, was also the logo of the IXth Asian Games held at Delhi in 1982, an event commemorated with the release of a special 2 rupee coin designed with a graphic image of the same Yantra.

However, despite its evident popularity and repeated representation in diverse forms – ranging from the design of fun-fair rides in France to a national symbol for our country - information about the Delhi Jantar Mantar in the public realm is often contradictory and incorrect. There is no unanimity about who got it built, when it was constructed, its name, and even its purpose and value. Though originally referred to simply as the “Jantra’[1], it has been called the Yantra Mandir, the Yantra Mantra and the Jantar Mantar from the 19^th century onwards. And while some consider the Jantar Mantar as an integral part of the scientific heritage of the world, others think of it just as an archaeological monument. Some writers go even further and dismiss the Jantar Mantar as an architectural whimsy.

Therefore before I speak about the appropriate way forward about how we must regard the Delhi Jantar Mantar today and for the future, it is important to clarify the basic facts about its background – and I shall do so very briefly.

To begin with, who was it built by?

The Jantar Mantar was conceived by Raja Sawai Jai Singh II and his advisors, and built in the reign of the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah Rangila, Aurangzeb’s great-grandson.

When was the Delhi Jantar Mantar built?

Probably between the years 1721-4, when the political relations between Jai Singh and the rulers of the Mughal Empire were most favourable, and Sawai Jai Singh’s schedule allowed him to remain in the Mughal imperial capital of Shahjahanabad continuously for two years - soon after the crowning of Emperor Muhammad Shah Rangila. The first few instruments in the Delhi Jantar Mantar were in metal, and the built structures that we see here today were made after Jai Singh decided that metal instruments did not suit his purpose. However, the Misra Yantra - the Yantra we are gathered in front of - was not built in the reign of Jai Singh, but in that of his son, Sawai Madho Singh - thirty years after the rest of the Delhi Jantar Mantar.

Why was it built?

The Delhi Jantar Mantar was built to take accurate observations to update the older astronomical tables, on the basis of which the yearly calendars were made in the Mughal Empire. The set of new astronomical tables devised on the basis of the Delhi Jantar Mantar, the Zij-i-Muhammad Shahi was dedicated by Sawai Jai Singh to Emperor Muhammad Shah Rangila, and was used to plan out forthcoming religious, agricultural, social and cultural activities throughout the Mughal Empire. The information in it was also utilized in the Pancangs - the traditional Hindu almanacs listing the different festivals, seasons, positions of the moons, eclipses and other such information. Such knowledge was put to practical use not only for marking time and seasonal changes, but also for accurate foretelling of natural calamities.

· How was it built?

Most of the Yantras that you see here are original creations of Jai Singh and his team. They were devised and built painstakingly after making many small working models in wood, stone or metal. The appropriate site was then chosen on Sawai Jai Singh’s ancestral land, Jaisinghpura, where we are standing today; the ground beneath each instrument was excavated and leveled perfectly with the help of channels filled with water – as can still be seen at the Jaipur Jantar Mantar. It was then marked out with north-south and east-west directions as detailed out in traditional astronomy manuals, and then constructed in local stone and lime mortar. Sawai Jai Singh, who funded and participated in experiments on astronomy and mathematics throughout his life, employed scholars from all faiths, his state-astronomers, his religious gurus, and expert masons to get the Delhi Jantar Mantar built. They built the instruments here partly below the surrounding ground level so as to make them stable and so that observations of the horizon would not be disturbed, and lessened the weight of the huge structures by scooping out arched openings within the walls. And finally plastered and rendered them in smooth white lime, and carefully marked them with measuring scales.

· What are its instruments, and what is their purpose?

Of the instruments that we still see at the Delhi Jantar Mantar, the three main ones from Sawai Jai Singh’s time are the Samrat Yantra, the Jai Prakash Yantra, and the Rama Yantra. A fourth instrument, the Shasthamsa Yantra, from the same time is no longer accessible. And the last masonry instrument here, the Misra Yantra, as mentioned earlier, was not part of the original range of instruments, but was designed later as a combination or a composite Yantra, chiefly perhaps as a demonstration tool.

Basically, all these instruments were designed to measure solar time, or the positions of objects in space. Of the three main Yantras, the Samrat, the central and the most imposing, was used to measure solar time, as well as to measure the sun’s declination. The Jai Prakash Yantra, was meant to measure local and universal coordinates of celestial bodies; it also had a secondary function of measuring solar time. The Rama Yantra, believed to have been named after Jai Singh’s great-grandfather, Raja Rama Singh was meant to measure local coordinates (in other words, the altitude and azimuth) of celestial bodies.

With these Yantras, Jai Singh’s team measured the positions of stars, the moon and the planets in the sky for about seven years, and recorded exactly when these measurements were taken. They then used these recordings to update older star positions. The instruments at the Jantar Mantar were also important for Jai Singh’s personal daily and special ritual practices. Observational astronomy in India, in fact, can be traced thousands of years back to the requirement for such rituals in the Vedic times. A temple dedicated to the Bal Bhairon Mandir still exists east of the Jantar Mantar, and was part of its original area, positioned in line with the earlier entrance to the Jantar Mantar.

· Thus, what is the value of the Jantar Mantar today?

We must recognize that the Delhi Jantar Mantar, as the first of the 18th century observatories constructed by Sawai Jai Singh II and containing many original instruments, is one of the most unique sets of buildings in the world. It has immense value as an educational and a cultural resource. Jai Singh wished to spur scientific interest amongst his people and to popularize observational astronomy, not limit it to an exclusive band of specialists. So, all the instruments that you see here today - though they are complex pieces of construction, are relatively simple to use - even for non-experts. Recent programmes by astronomers with schoolchildren and amateurs conducted at the Delhi Jantar Mantar have shown the success of Jai Singh’s premise. No other instruments anywhere in the world can demonstrate the movement of the earth and the planets with such clarity. No other instruments are so easily accessible to an ordinary person. They are in fact, particularly suited not just to observe the skies, but also to demonstrate principles of spherical trigonometry, physics, mathematics and geography. They also serve as a reminder that in any time or any age, individuals who have convictions, can still make lasting contributions.

However, our understanding of the value of the Delhi Jantar Mantar so far, has been mainly derived from the largely subjective accounts of science and technology in India by European amateur and professional researchers from the mid-18^th century onwards. By this time, it was more than a hundred and fifty years since the British East India Company had engaged in planned exploitation under the name of commerce, resulting in the loss of much of our traditional scientific and artistic knowledge. Later, when the British Empire became a reality, the prevailing outlook of most researchers also became influenced by their belief in the superiority of their race, culture and religion. It is with this background that we must understand why such earlier researchers have downplayed or dismissed the scientific value of the Jantar Mantars. In actual fact, with these very same Yantras, Jai Singh’s astronomers were able to take many useful observations, reveal new data, and correct the errors not just in older tables used in the Indian subcontinent but also in prevalent European ones. The Delhi Jantar Mantar thus must be appreciated for its value in measuring time and plotting positions of objects in the sky, instead of seeing it merely as a collection of intriguing architectural shapes or archaeological remains.

· And so, what is the manner in which we should regard the Delhi Jantar Mantar today – and how should we conserve it for the future?

The Delhi Jantar Mantar has in the past been conserved as an urban garden in the tradition of an English landscape, rather than as a medieval Indian observatory. Its first major conservation exercise in the beginning of the 20th century—about one hundred and fifty years after its establishment—though undertaken with the help of the court-astronomer of Jaipur and funds from the then Jaipur Raja - was supervised by British engineers who chose to conserve its Yantras as a collection of monuments rather than as precise instruments of astronomy. They were thus regarded and presented as ‘architectural follies’ amidst a plantation of tall palm trees. The foreground to the Jantar Mantar was also taken over shortly after this conservation exercise, by the building of Imperial New Delhi, which appropriated much of Jai Singh’s ancestral land, to make Connaught Place and the roads leading up to Parliament House. The immediate surroundings of the Jantar Mantar changed further with the construction of many buildings surrounding it.

These interventions have reduced the area and the function, and even the perception of the Observatory. Today we see the Jantar Mantar quite differently from what it was in the 18^th century. We enter it from a completely different direction from what Jai Singh did. And we often miss the point of its construction completely. One writer in the 21^st century has even termed the building of the Jantar Mantars as ‘a case of a headstrong monarch looking to construct huge and extravagant monuments for himself’.[2]

It is true that the Delhi Observatory has not been used for purposes of astronomy for more than 200 years. It is also true that most of the calibrations made by Jai Singh’s master-masons have been lost. The skyline around the Jantar Mantar has been taken over by tall trees, and even taller buildings. We naturally cannot change all of these. However, it is still possible to revive the function of the Yantras at the Delhi Jantar Mantar – which even in this reduced state - contain much of their original built components. They can still be effectively used to measure local solar time, observe stars and calculate positions of celestial objects. As Dr. Rathnasree, the Director of the Nehru Planetarium, has said: ‘300 years after they were built—they are still the easiest access...of doing celestial co-ordinate measurements’.

It is this aspect of the Jantar Mantar that must be reinstated. For this, it is of course, imperative that the Yantras must be physically conserved using building materials compatible with the original materials used by Jai Singh’s masons, as well as by accurately recalibrating the measuring surfaces. At the same time, it is necessary to understand that the function of the Yantras is the most important reason for their existence - this is why they were constructed, and any conservation which ignores their historical function or compromises or jeopardises it in any way, is self-defeating. It is only by bringing the Yantras back into sustained public use will we be able to conserve the spirit and form of the Jantar Mantar.

This is what I have come to realize due to my association with the Jantar Mantar Project, whose conservation philosophy has been directed by the understanding that the Yantras of the Delhi Jantar Mantar must be brought back into use. And this, among other related issues, is what I would like to share through my new book. The book aims to familiarise visitors with the instruments and their functions as well as the history of the Jantar Mantar. However, unlike conventional histories, the book also tackles the question about the future of the Delhi Jantar Mantar.

In keeping with Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh’s wish that the instruments be used by anyone interested in the study of astronomy, it is written with the hope that such knowledge as has been gained, is shared with as many people as possible without recourse to jargon. Perhaps through the book, an awareness of the real value of the Jantar Mantar may move beyond this gathering to many more of us. So that we never have a situation where we desecrate or vandalise the Jantar Mantar in such a shameful way - or indeed any of our monuments in any guise or in any form.

I strongly believe, in the words of the historian Claude Alvares:

‘All histories are elaborate efforts at myth-making. Therefore, when we submit to histories about us, written by others, we submit to their myths about us as well. Myth-making, like naming, is a token of having power...If we must continue to live by myths, however, it is far better we choose to live by those of our own making rather than by those invented by others for their own purposes...That much at least we owe ourselves as an independent society and nation.’

Thank you!

[1] V. N. Sharma, pp. 99

[2] P. 103, A. Volwahsen

Delhi - Of Onions and Kings

2010-08-25T22:53:00.000-07:00

OF ONIONS, KINGS, AND THE CITIES OF DELHI

Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

The city of Delhi sometimes reminds me of an onion, imperfectly taken apart - many layered, veined and maimed. The layers are not coherent or even tightly packed - scattered stray wisps forlornly curl at the edges in some corner, many centuries lie bunched together in another. Yet within them lie hidden vapours of many pasts, rising unbidden to sting you into an awareness of a different time.

Mythology in the form of that wondrous, infinitely complex epic of the Mahabharata, written more than 2000 years ago, refers to Indraprastha, what is taken to be a part of Delhi. Indraprastha was the capital of the kingdom of the Pandavas - the five brothers, each embodying a virtue, and their arrogant and beautiful wife, Draupadi. The Pandavas lost and won Indraprastha again. Their descendants followed. And that has been the fate of Delhi through the ages - to be lost and won successively, each conqueror leaving traces behind in the form of walls, forts, mausoleums, bridges.

Historically, the city is said to have been the capital of successive strains of rulers down the ages - Hindus, Turks, Afghans, Mughals. In actuality each ruler demarcated a portion of land, within the larger area of what is now termed Delhi, as his city. So, effectively, the various cities of Delhi consisted of separate stakes of land with their own city walls, forts and supporting fabric.

And that has remained the form of Delhi, even today. Driving from one part of the city to another there is a lack of any cohesion in the city fabric. This lack of cohesion mystifies visitors and leaves the people of Delhi with no form of identity to clutch on to. How could the city be described to a stranger? Would it be relevant to talk of the jamun tree lined broad and languorous avenues of imperial New Delhi? Or the narrow, dense, streets of Shahjahanabad thronged by people and wares, dominated by the 17th century Red Fort and a multitude of mosques? Would a visitor recognise the fussily flamboyant houses in Greater Kailash, hiding behind high walls, as the same Delhi? And left alone, in the wastelands between the former edges of the city and the suburbs now enveloped in its uncaring embrace, could he say where he was? And, of course, he would still not have seen the familiar walk up flats and their clones, scattered seemingly endlessly. Yet, somewhere within all this, appearing and disappearing as if in a dream, he might come across strange apparitions - ghosts of former Delhis.

As you weave in and out of the tangled traffic of Delhi, you come across the fragments of these former cities. Some scornfully straddle roundabouts, some look on peacefully from the edge of the roads. The sight of these remnants is one of the pleasures - the few pleasures, some might add, of living in Delhi. These sudden unexpected glimpses of the past constantly reaffirm a concept of time, unrelated to the frenzy of keeping appointments in a deadlocked city. But, perhaps it is the pressure of watching the car or autorickshaw in front that makes it easy for many people to ignore this part of their city. For it is a fact, that these monuments are for the large part, neglected or forgotten.

To the great majority of people the monuments are not a consideration in any way, and that is the biggest obstacle to their conservation, apart from funds and appropriate manpower. Planning authorities, instead of integrating them into the physical fabric of the city, ignore them in their master plans. The people of Delhi do not see these monuments as a part of their physical or mental space but as isolated freaks, their reassurance and romance discovered briefly when the are young and in love in an otherwise sneering city. For the most part, however, these structures are frequented by people who vandalise them in various ways.

The task of integrating these former Delhis into the Delhi of today is made more difficult by the fact that there is no unified perception of Delhi. This, in turn is caused by the lack of a coherent city form arid by the absence of a population who retain enough affection and memories of the city to identify completely with it. Such people are dead like the poets Ghalib and Zauq. Or they have been swallowed in the aftermath of the Partition of 1947, to be replaced by a new population.

This new population is one of migrants. They are historical migrants of 1947, bereft of belongings and with a loyalty to only themselves having completely and appallingly lost what had been their identity. Or more recent rural migrants, who have left behind families and a familiar social structure in search of the proverbial and elusive streets of gold. In most cases, they find neither the financial security they come looking for nor the dignity they have forsaken. Or the people in the urban villages, not strictly migrants. In their case, it is the ever expanding city which has migrated to enfold them and their traditional farmlands. Nonetheless, the effect is that the urban villages retain their old ways of living and identify themselves with their village rather than the city.

And the problem is compounded by the planning processes of Delhi, which have relied on an interpretation of the bungalow theme, replacing individual dwellings with higher flats. The theme is one of separation - between different parts of the city; from the street; from the older structures. As a result, the city has evolved into isolated rings, manoeuvrable only on the backs of machines, dissected by wastelands of empty roads and desolate greens, pushed out further and further to satisfy the diet of developers. An ordinary man, covering many kilometres in suffocatingly crowded public transport, does not retain the will to perceive former Delhis, smothered in the pursuit of the Delhi of today.

There is as yet enough opportunity to involve the monuments with their surroundings and the people. The most visible of these are the big and famous monuments, frequented by visitors and under some form of Government protection. Then there are the structures bordering main roads, visible in their own way, but neither part of a specific living space nor famous enough to be on the tourist list. And finally those that lie within residential colonies, neither very visible nor famous. A long term conservation policy is one that aims to develop a sense of responsibility in people towards all these structures. This lack of responsibility is evident in the high incidence of vandalism in many portions of the Red Fort, which is one of the most prominent of Delhi's older buildings. These are now shut off from the public because of the impossibility of manning every structure in such a big site against vandalism.

It is important to instil in the minds of younger generations - finally the custodians of the city, a positive feeling for the elements that make up their city. In an economy that has to distribute sufficient funds for purposes as varied and urgent as poverty control, health, education, and defence across thousands of kilometres of land amongst a huge population, it is even more imperative that all the responsibility for the conservation of the past is not dumped at the feet of the government. It is equally important to develop a more vigilant public that not only does not harm the monuments themselves, but also exercises enough alertness to demand a more relevant use of the funds available.

Simultaneous action is needed on many fronts, but a start can be made with the structures within residential areas. Monuments t can be the focus of public open space in residential areas which can be used actively by families living in and around these areas. They might then develop a sense of responsibility towards that specific monument, and through it, perhaps to other monuments. Such involvement would also act as a check on vandalism.

The conservation of these older structures has thus an implication not just on the repair and maintenance of their physical fabric but also on their active and beneficial use by the communities living around them, such that they form an inseparable part of the image of the city. Finally the conservation of the spirit of the city, which is a mixture of its past and present incarnations, can only be achieved through the many ordinary men and women who live in it. An old Indian proverb notes the three necessities that go into the making of a city - badshah (king), dariya (river) and badal (cloud). The dariya has moved further arid further away, the badal is capricious and both the badshah and the Empress have bowed out ignominiously. The only factor that has remained and will continue to remain, are the people who inhabit the city and it is their thoughts and wants which will determine the form and existence of the city - or the lack of it.

Plain Tales from Doon

2010-07-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

Plain Tales from Doon-

Some Exchanges Between the Garhwali and the Kumaonis

No one can deny that Onial Mausaji tells a tale well. And that he can do so on almost any subject on earth and at the slightest provocation.

Or so we thought as children with little patience and manners to listen appropriately to him. We could not sit still long enough to savour the slow spinning out of his stories, especially when there was the ripe lure of the lichis from Nani’s orchard that could trickle down our mouths. The orchard also held other attractions. One of my more intrepid cousins has been known to explore the ways through its large twisted trees on the back of the galloping domestic buffalo, ostensibly to entertain a train of younger cousins. Considering such pursuits that interested his nephews and nieces, Mausaji’s persistence with us is commendable. Looking back, I wonder if this was due to an incurable optimism, or his experience as house-master to boisterous boys in Punjab Public School at Nabha, or a particularly whimsical streak of humour.

Each year we - my parents, my brother and I - would descend on Dehradun from whichever cantonment in the country my father was posted, to spend the long summer holidays with my grandparents and our numerous cousins, aunts and uncles. We would generally stay at my Dada’s house right next to the East Canal, five or perhaps ten minutes walking distance from Nani’s house. Once she was at her mother’s, my mother would leave us to our own devices to our mutual delight. On warm afternoons in Nani’s house amidst Mausaji’s measured and leisurely tones, we would slip of quietly into sleep or out of the room. All, except our eldest first cousin. With irreproachable manners then, she more than made up for the absence of the rest of us, smiling and nodding with reasonably wide eyes. Mausaji obviously did not mind or notice his dwindling audience. He sportingly embarked on some other story the next afternoon. I cannot actually remember what they were about. I probably did not follow either his impeccable English or his seasoned Urdu, both of which he was wont to use with equal felicity.

Now it is a different story. Mausaji is more discriminating in his choice of listeners. Not just his reminiscences about big cats and elephants, and the Dehradun, Rajpur and Mussoorie of yore, these days he needs to be cajoled to enact his favourite anecdotes, most of which deal with the eccentricities of his wife’s clan. The best time to get him to elaborate on this theme is when he has warmed himself on a crisply cold winter evening with a whisky.

According to Mausaji, the individuality of the Ghildiyals - the family into which my Nani was married – is the inevitable result of their being true Garhwalis. They, he has deduced, “are like their landscape, craggy, unpredictable, and tortuous”. “Now Kumaonis”, he beams, “are gentle, soft, yet sharp – like their landscape”. My father, as one of the few Kumaonis inducted into the Ghildiyal clan by marriage, disparagingly strokes his well-shaped nose, and grins modestly at this praise. The mountains of Garhwal and Kumaon border each other, and Garhwalis and Kumaonis, like all good neighbours, disagree on most things. But, to be a Garhwali and a Ghildiyal, seems to not just add but heap, in Mausaji’s opinion, insult to injury. ‘Jaise karela aur neem chara, vaise Garhwali aur Ghildiyal’! As one of the few resident males in a family full of females, he feels particularly strongly about the Ghildiyal women.

The story which animates him the most features Guni Mausi, my mother’s middle sister. Guni Mausi is a most fearless and spirited person. Also most bewildering. Like God, she moves in mysterious ways her wonders to perform. Not just her very proper elder daughter, Manishi, but even her less conventional younger one - my buffalo-riding cousin of yore – cannot quite comprehend or contain her. Mausi’s conversations start off midway or towards the end. They often leapfrog into action before one has quite grasped that she has finished speaking whatever she had started on. Phone calls to her rarely find her at home. She may be in the local market, seizing upon an acquaintance next to the old Tonga stand. Or on a rattling bus to one of her many relative’s weddings in a distant mountain village. Or at the carpenters assessing the quality of wood. Or on the way to the airport with 70 kilograms of baggage including tamarind and coconuts to make delicacies for her grandchildren in England. One never can tell with Mausi.

That is Mausaji’s grouse too. ‘I can never understand,’ he asks, shifting comfortably from one foot to another, “why Guniji - after specially calling us over for tea - peers at us suspiciously each time through the wire-mesh with her hand on her eyes, when we do arrive, and asks ‘Kaun’?” Mausaji is very proper. He dresses up in crisp blazers, old school ties, and shining shoes and I can comprehend that it can be a little disconcerting for him to be invited and then regarded thus by a close relative. “But,” he adds, “what I understand even less, is why when she comes over to our house and we answer the doorbell, she peers inside through our door mesh and enquires ‘Kaun’!”
“Restless and incomprehensible”, he continues. “Your Nani, and your Mausis. If they come into the room, they can never sit or stand peacefully. They will twitch the tablecloth awry; yank the curtain to one side, beat a tattoo on the light-switches. Then, having succeeded in putting on all the fans in winter or all the lights during the day and having made the room look even more unpresentable than usual, they will deign to sit down!” “And papers”, he adds, “your Nani never throws away any old letters. Every few weeks she causes a commotion by picking up one from the pile on top of her fridge, and then calling out distractedly “oh no, Damayanti has fallen ill again”. ‘As for your mausi”, he continues bitterly, “she sleeps with papers under her pillow”.

Saroj Mausi, my mother’s eldest sister (and Mausaji’s wife) taught English at the Scindia Girls School and then the Mahadevi Kanya Pathshala College in Dehradun. She is quite literally a woman of letters. She is also a social and environmental activist. Her house has an abundance of books and papers, peeping out from under the table, balanced precariously on the stairs, stuffed in closets, under the mattress. She is one of the few people I know who can simultaneously peel potatoes and propound philosophy.

Like Guni Mausi, she is also rarely at home. And if she is, Mausaji complains, his drawing room is taken over by half a dozen women from her organization drinking endless cups of tea, interfering with his mealtimes and ruining his health and that of his wife. After retirement, her portfolio of jobs outside the house has expanded. She writes letters to the District Magistrate to install lights for pedestrians, holds ‘green’ workshops in her garden for local children, lectures the Mussoorie and Dehradun Development Authority about fields of basmati rice being taken over by building agents, encourages her maids to stand up for their rights in property-disputes, promotes a women’s organization that works with children’s education, and as Mausaji points out, colonises the family car for her altruistic agendas. ‘Everyone recognizes our car. When Saroj rolls up in it, she causes a stampede! All the children scatter and shout, “Run, the Red Maruti’s coming”.
Mausi smiles at most of Mausaji’s pronouncements, only occasionally being provoked in her turn into a discussion on the Onials, the Garhwali clan that Mausaji belongs to. Surprisingly - or then perhaps not - Mausaji is a Garhwali too

Who designed the sil-batta?

2010-06-27T03:47:00.000-07:00

Who Designed the Sil Batta -

and why should we care?

When my mother-in-law came to Delhi from Calcutta, more than forty years ago, she brought with herself a stone-grinder – a sil batta – on the train. The sil was part of the household goods given by her family, to start her new life as a married woman. A few days ago, in the absence of my cook, I ground fresh coriander and garlic chutney on the same sil-batta. It was vigorous exercise for my arms. As the volume of green leaves transformed into a darker green, and I saw and smelt the shape of the white garlic clove disappearing into the green paste, amidst my growing anticipation of tasting the chutney, I was struck by a thought. Who designed the ubiquitous sil-batta, that indispensable part of every Indian kitchen even today? Was it designed at all? Or did one or many of our ancestors simply pick up a stone lying around by chance and use it to beat something on another convenient stone?
The germ of the idea may certainly have come from there, but when I look at the smooth black oval softness of the batta and consider how snugly it fits into my hands; the pocked and dotted surface of the sil and how well it uses friction to grind finely, it seems to me it must have been designed. Designed not in the sense that we think of today, with elaborate drawings, concept doodles and engineering drawings, but in the classic sense of the word – ‘thought of, conceived, deliberately visualized in the head’. Individual makers would have introduced minute changes in the basic configuration – depending on their personal or regional preferences. So the oblong batta preferred in Bengal becomes triangular in North India. The size of the sil varies. But, by and large, the sil-batta is instantly recognizable – the type is standardized yet each piece is unique, with its own identity.
The widespread use and acceptance of the sil-batta and its enduring popularity shows the success of its design. Of course, along with the sil, most conventional Indian kitchens today also house an electric mixer-blender, the ‘mixie’. I have one too. A Black & Decker model, bought less than a couple of years ago. We believed that it would perform better than the locally made mixie which had given up fairly soon. In about a year, much before the locally produced model, the blade of the wet-grinder of the ‘branded’ mixie had broken, and the vessel of the dry-grinder had cracked. Considering how infrequently it was used for our small family of three, and considering the claims of quality and durability of this international brand, this was unexpected - to say the least!
We considered toting the mixie back to the shop in Sector 18, not far at all from our home, but increasingly intimidating to reach with the intervening metro construction, road widening, stacks of malls and cars. And after all that effort, the shopkeeper would probably direct us to the company office, somewhere in the Industrial Sectors of Noida where we would spend more time and energy. After spending a precious morning in hunting out the bill and warranty card, we let it be.
In any case, the mixie was rarely used. One had to consider carefully what could be ground in it. The fine poppy seeds, the beloved posto of the Bengalis, used for flavouring and texturing vegetables, emerged virtually unchanged from the mixie. Mustard seeds, another favourite spice for both fish and vegetables, could only be ground in huge quantities, and even then not fine enough to bring out their pungency. Dry grinding other spices in the mixie was fast, but most of the flavour was lost.
If you pause to think about what the sil-batta does for and to you, it seems that it may actually be far more progressive and modern to use it rather than the mixie. The energy and resources consumed in its design and production are minimal – the design is well-disseminated, familiar to both maker and user, does not require fancy 3D mock-ups or scale-models, and contains no high energy parts such as steel or plastic. The stone may require high-energy resources in quarrying but further shaping is primarily by hand tools wielded by skilled stone-workers, and causes practically no pollution in production. The stone for the sil-batta in my family must have been quarried half a century ago. Unless I drop it on the floor and break it, there is no reason why it will not give service for another half a century more and be used by my daughter to pass on to whoever she wishes. Whenever my cook or I use it, the only energy we expend is ours. The taste is fresher, I believe the nutrients are retained, and I do not need to go to a gym to get exercise for my arms!
Contrast this with the steel and plastic mixie. Its production is complex, and requires detailed drawings (now probably produced on a computer, itself made with high energy materials) as a prelude to being manufactured in a large complicated factory - the setting up and running of which consumes precious water, and energy - and causes toxins to be released in the air, water and land. Every time the finished product is used, it consumes a lot of electricity. And then it breaks down in about a year.
Why don’t I throw the mixie? Or give it away to my maid as I do so many extra utensils? Perhaps it’s the particularly Indian habit of thrift. Perhaps because I nurse a fond hope that I may discover that there is something that the much advertised and branded mixie is good for. Or perhaps because it occurs to me that Gandhiji was right – giving away things whose use you have outgrown but whose usefulness you believe in, is acceptable. But giving away things that you think are practically useless, is hypocrisy.
I am, however, almost sure that my maid will be pleased to own a mixie. Why? Because we have been led to the belief that the mixie - like the image of the ‘pucca’ house - symbolizes modernity and progress. It is another matter that the pucca houses of concrete that practically every villager in India aspires to live in - and which already disfigure our cities and towns - are climatically and structurally quite inappropriate for most parts of India. They heat up dramatically in the summers, lose heat in the winters, and are unable to cope with the cycles of dry heat, humidity, or cold weather that make up the climate in many parts of our sub-continent. Whether it is the capital complex in Chandigarh that is said to represent the epitome of the ‘Modern Style of Architecture’, or the AWHO or the DDA built flats in the National Capital region of Delhi, or the hastily put up structures by local contractors all over the country, they all spall, rust, crumble and flake sooner rather than later. Sometimes, they also collapse and fall apart much before their slated time – like my Black and Decker mixie.
So we have gone back whole sale to the sil-batta. Pink onions and green mint, brown roasted cumin seeds, soaked almonds, fresh ginger, mixed dals, are all freshly ground, and just as much as we want. I no longer have to store huge quantities in the fridge, or waste much water in rinsing out the grinder, or worry about power cuts getting in the way of preparing food. The mixie is still there, occupying space in the kitchen. I hold onto the split vessel tightly trying to prevent spills when I summon up the will to use it (perhaps once in the past six months), curse it when I occasionally dust it, and look gratefully at my mother-in-law’s faithful sil, and marvel at its designer and maker.

Anisha Shekhar Mukherji
23 June 2010

In Search of the Sun...and the Rain

2010-06-23T05:59:00.000-07:00

Surya, The Sun God, 8th Century AD, Rajasthan, Black Stone

‘Sister moon will be my guide

In your blue blue shadows I would hide……
I'm a stranger to the sun

My eyes are too weak

How cold is a heart

When it's warmth that he seeks?…
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

My hunger for her explains everything I've done…’
Gordon Sumner alias Sting, Sister Moon 1

‘My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red…’
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130 2

The words of a musical superstar and a celebrated poet take on a different meaning in the clear yellow sunlight of a winter morning in Noida, barely a few kilometers from what remains of the Yamuna River in the plains of Northern India. It is many miles away and many degrees warmer than the England of Shakespeare’s and Sting’s rearing, where the sun is a very rare and therefore a precious sight, to be celebrated in song and sonnet.
The elusiveness of the sun in the Northern Hemisphere is the reason, one is led to speculate, for colonization―the hunt for spices, for warmer climes, for an abundance of foods, for salt, for richly worked precious materials. And, by a similar reasoning, for industrialization. The British like their other North European counterparts, were led to invent a variety of devices because before such inventions life was cold, bleak and dismal for a greater part of the year. Much of medieval and ancient Europe was thus, bereft of the proverbial and abundant riches of the warmer and mysterious East. One might say that industrial glass had to be invented in Europe if nothing else than to let in the golden sun to warm European homes on the occasions that it did appear.

In fact, perhaps the East was mysterious to the European precisely because everyone seemed to live a good life, with leisure and sunshine. Most of the ancient cultures were centred in the regions of the world endowed with the gifts of the sun―India, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Byzantine. The Roman civilization, the most widespread of the European civilizations, became richer and more prosperous only after her fleets and troops reached warmer lands. The western world’s continuing colonization of these lands―now under the guise of ‘development aid’ and transmission of ‘modern’ technology―are perhaps the inevitable result of an ancient envy. The remnant of the memory of being left behind to eke out an existence in the cold.

Memory however, works in different ways. And so many parts of the world colonized by Europe and America in the last few centuries neither remember their indigenous customs, nor the reasons that underlay such customs. They consider themselves ‘undeveloped’, ‘under-developed’, or ‘developing’, having been made to forget that their cultures led the world’s material, spiritual and technological development through most of history, not that of the industrialized West whose ways they now embrace so eagerly. The sun, for instance, was not just sung about but was revered, even deified, in most ancient cultures of the East. In India, his powers were associated with enlightenment; his role enshrined in myth, history and ritual. It is from the sun that Lord Rama is believed to have descended. Each day was traditionally supposed to begin with Surya-namskar, salutations to the sun. Locations of towns and cities, the form and orientation of buildings, clothing, were devised keeping in mind the power of the sun.

Neither was the Sun worshipped in isolation. The Vedas emphatically link Surya with Varuna, the Lord of the Sea and the Ocean; the Sun with the Rain. An important myth in the Rg Veda tells of the winning of the Light and the Waters by the Gods. One interpretation links this myth to the unique yearly climatic condition in India wherein the monsoon rains occur at or around the summer solstice, the time of the year when the days are longest and maximum sunlight is received. 3

As inhabitants of such a land, it should not be unnatural for us to associate sunlight with rain. But despite our past cultural understanding of the role of the sun, despite its overwhelming presence in our skies for the greater part of the year, and despite our supposedly greater levels of education today, it appears that we no longer know how to integrate it in our lives. Perhaps it is poetic justice that drought is imminent in many parts of the country, as the monsoon―one of the most unique climatic features of the sub-continent―recedes every year.

Is it fanciful to link the threat of drought with the loss of our collective and cultural memory? Not really. We are so embarrassed at the thought that our ancestors worshipped nature, that we now design our homes, cities, clothes in opposition to nature following the unshakeable Western belief that technology will solve everything. Consider that even a few hundred years ago our social and cultural practices were such that we could maximize the benefits of both the sun and the rain. These practices cut across religion or wealth. Till even two generations ago, most people prayed every dawn to the sun, in recognition of the healing benefits of the early morning rays. They recognized the foolishness of venturing out during the day without covering their heads with pagrees, odhnis, pallus or angvastrams. They took care to protect their homes, their villages and their town and cities by ensuring that trees were planted and maintained.

Just as it was deemed praiseworthy to worship trees, it was considered auspicious to celebrate rivers; to dig ponds and tanks and harness rain-water. Elevating the digging of wells and planting of trees into acts of piety ensured that all over India, not just kings and queens, but farmers, householders, widows, holy men protected forests and endowed or built step-wells, dams and ponds. This ensured that every drop was utilized when it rained, either to regenerate plant cover or to be saved for a time when there was excessive sun. When the British came to India they discovered five million ponds in 500,000 villages from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Jaisalmer to Konkan.4

Less than five hundred years ago, Sher Shah Sur, the Afghan King, got trees planted all along the great Grand Trunk Road that he established. In the mid-17th century, Emperor Shah Jahan’s new city in Delhi was planned on the banks of the Yamuna such that more than half of Shahjahanabad was covered by orchards. The huge gardens of his imperial Red Fort were extensively planted with fruit trees; water used in the fountains and canals was recycled for irrigation. Older ponds and step-wells dating from earlier cities in the Delhi region were not summarily covered over, but were integrated within the design of the new city. So it was that Delhi, not so far back, was recorded to have had about 340 small and big wells and ponds.

Contrast this with our capital city today, whose image sets the benchmark for the rest of the country. Its inhabitants display no sense or sensibilty in dealing with the sun or the rain either in their attire on in their decisions for the city. Its landscape is of interminable roads and transport networks to construct which it is perfectly acceptable to cut thousands of trees. Crores of rupees are spent to replace natural forests with stony ‘parks’ where exotic trees and shrubs which consume precious water and give no shade or fruit are planted. Most urban architecture neither maximizes insulation nor takes advantage of cool evening or morning breezes. It imitates facile western glass-box buildings that soak up the sun or let in the rain without a thought for correct orientation.

And so the rain that we pray for as respite from the heat brings us no joy. We squander it on our kilometers of paved roads, leave it to clog our drains, bring traffic to a halt, and breed mosquitoes. We profess to be alarmed at the frightening reduction in the ground-water levels, yet we continue to build on our nahrs and rivers or convert them into dirty nalas. We claim to prepare for the Commonwealth Games by ushering in ‘new standards for the urban environment of Delhi’5 even as we ruin the Yamuna for all time, by building parking lots, flyovers and housing on its drainage channels, river bed and flood-plain.

As another 15th August comes and goes, it is time that we proclaim our Independence from current conventional industrialized notions and try to rediscover appropriate ways in our own culture of dealing with the sun and the rain. We may not be able to influence the form of the city unless we are bureaucrats, town-planners or politicians. We may find it unreasonable to pray to the sun. But we can surely find nothing to quibble at all in planting indigenous trees or shrubs that act as natural pesticides or bear fruits to sustain human, animal and bird life. Change, like charity, begins at home. We can transform our immediate environment by starting with our own back-yards, terraces or colonies. Then at least, somewhere, the rain will not have been in vain and we will be able to appreciate the sunshine.

1. The title of Nothing Like the Sun, a 1987 double album comes from Shakespeare’s Sonnet no. 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"), which Sting used in the song "Sister Moon". The album was apparently influenced by two events in Sting's life: first, the death in late 1986 of his mother; and second, his participation in a Tour on behalf of Amnesty International, which brought Sting to parts of Latin America that had been ravaged by civil wars, and introduced him to victims of government oppression.
2. The entire Sonnet reads:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare

3. David Frawley, Gods, Sages and Kings, p. 32, Motilal BanarasiDas Publishers Pvt. Ltd., Delhi

4. Anupam Mishra, ‘Past Perfect, Future Perfect’, p. 20, Civil Society, Vol.3 No. 1, September/October 2005

5. ‘Games are a Chance to Redefine Delhi, p. 6, Civil Society, Vol.5 No. 9, July 2008

2010-06-14T19:33:00.000-07:00

The Plight of Street Vendors

On Friday night, the Noida authorities knocked down, took away or destroyed the wares of vendors, hawkers and sellers in many markets. One of these was my maid’s husband, a fish seller. More than fifty kilogrammes of fish was taken away from him. The representative of the Noida Authority accepted 500 rupees to let him go with his cart. Then, his senior came and took away the fish anyway. My maid told me that this is despite the fact that he is asked each month, to pay 1000 rupees each, to someone from the Noida Police and the Noida Authority, to sell fish.
Two months ago, it was not just his fish that was picked up. He was taken to prison, kept in on a trumped-up charge of being drunk and disorderly, and only released at the end of three days after his brother and wife made repeated visits to the police-station, and gave a bail of 2000 Rs and copies of all the bank and other documents they possessed.
What is his crime? That he makes the trip to the mandi each morning to get fish to sell to people like you and me? That he tries to make an honest living? That in a country where we cannot provide enough jobs to the educated, he is self-employed and is no drain on the government?
I heard that ‘the Committee’ came to our local market too. They threw the home-made momos sold in stalls outside, down on to the ground; smashed the earthen handis filled with food; and refused to let the sellers leave quietly with their food, though they begged them to. This is worse than criminal when we know that everyday there are many Indians who starve to death or commit suicide because they cannot fill their stomachs.
I have seen the fear that the Committee arouses. I was in the local market one day when suddenly everyone – the pavement book-seller who stocks authors ranging from Amartya Sen to Enid Blyton; the tailor who replaces zips, repairs buttons and alters clothes; the watchmaker; the newspaper vendor; – started rushing around, stuffing things into crates, dismantling their wooden stands. It would have been a stampede were it not that their movements were driven equally by fear and practice – a shameful reminder that this was not an unexpected event. This must happen frequently enough for them to react in such a concerted manner; and must be brutal enough to drive them into this controlled frenzy of activity despite being expected.
And what for? What after all is illegal in selling books, providing services for repair, stitching clothes? My cook’s husband, a rickshaw-puller was beaten up some months ago, along with many others because he constitutes an ‘impediment’ to traffic if he comes across the main road from where he lives into the sectors where he gets his ‘sawaris’.
I am no expert on legal provisions with respect to hawkers and street-vendors, and unfortunately neither are my maid or her husband. But I understand that the preamble of our Constitution states that India shall secure to its citizens equality of status and of opportunity and that all Indian citizens have a fundamental right to practice any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business. This is limited only by the right of the government, to prescribe professional or technical qualifications for certain trades or professions, and to create monopolies in certain trade, business or industry in the interest of the general public.
What I do see and understand is that we, the privileged of this country, no longer think of the poor as our people. We do not consider rickshaws, cyclists or pedestrians in our traffic plans; do not give any incentives for street-vendors to operate in a dignified manner; repeatedly thwart their attempts at making an honest livelihood – and then are surprised when they turn to crime. If this is what you or I received in return for enterprise, thrift and resourcefulness, what are the odds that we would not? This happened in my neighbourhood, but it is happening all over Delhi and the NCR, and all over India, despite organisations supporting hawkers and street-vendors and legislation in their favour. If there are any of us, who can stop this persecution in Noida or anywhere else – in any way – please help.

PostScript: My maid’s husband’s cart has still not been returned, “since it is a week-end”, but the Committee found the time to visit the market again on Sunday on their ‘cleanliness drive’.

Anisha Shekhar Mukherji 14 June 2010