Representations and Realities: Tracing Missing Bits and Misconceptions -- The Case of the Red Fort

Keynote Address to Conference on 'Remembering Architecture, Excavating Memory’

Department of English, Ramjas College, Delhi University

24 February 2023

Thank you for inviting me to an exploration of the connections between architecture, memory and literature. And the opportunity to re-visit my own thoughts on this. The very idea of re-visitation is central to what I have to say — the keynote of my address on ‘Remembering Architecture’. 

We approach the past through memories. 

Memories are recorded in our minds. And in myriad ways in words, or by hands: as texts, as drawings, as pictures, as sculpture and as architecture. But these events, however immediate they seem, are mediated by external and internal senses of perception. We know this not just from abstract texts on philosophy, or even from crime fiction where the unravelling of the mystery depends on the detective ploughing through testimonies of different ‘witnesses’ to the crime, but also from daily experience. Memory alters both perception and recollection. No two independent versions in newspaper reports of a current event, presented by two different people even if observed at the same time, will be identical. They can, in fact, be very dissimilar. What we may call the ‘Rashoman Effect’ that Akira Kurosawa demonstrates for us so brilliantly and disturbingly.

So, which version do we believe? In other words, how much can we rely upon representations of memory to convey the realities of what they aim to record? This is the question that especially confronts us in the case of past events that we cannot approach physically or observe ourselves — though it is a moot point how much reliance we can place upon our own senses. Can we pronounce with certainty that what we may have retained is the essence, and what has perhaps been thrown away — like coffee grounds — is insignificant? Physicists and philosophers remind us that all our attempts to register anything, are quite literally re-presentations, since by the time it travels to our senses: however infinitesimally small that time may be, the moment or sight or sound is already past. Taken in this literal sense, no event and its recording can ever be simultaneous or present in the same moment — and each is a memory.

Even if we disregard the implication of such minute allocations of time, our knowledge of events — whether through records made by someone present at a particular time in the past, or later — are re-presentations in another way. They are impressions filtered by not just the organs of perception, but also by the conceptions, abilities or intentions of those who make them. It would seem then that all records of the past are secondary sources. The only ones that may be termed primary sources are those we can still come close to perceiving in a primary way: those of architecture and archaeology. Archaeological records are however, more fragmented than historic architecture, and are often simply not open-to-view. They may be underground, or far from their original settings. In contrast, it is more difficult to dislocate architecture, though not impossible. 

The record of historical architecture — where it exists — also differs from all others, in that we can experience it through not just one, but practically all our physical senses. We can view and touch it, be enclosed and encompassed in it, hear the sound of our voices and footsteps as we walk within and around it — in similar even if not in exactly the same ways as did those who created and inhabited it. In other words, we can interact in various ways with architecture — which is not just the setting or record of events of life, but also the event itself. There are multiple levels at which we can engage with it and multiple layers of information contained in it. The act of creating architecture, even when done with the objective of commemorating a stated purpose, contains more than that. Conversely, even when there are no stated objectives of memorialising, we can trace in the way architecture is built, lived in, and transformed, a record of what people held important, what they remembered or wish to remember, what were their craft, technology or management skills. In The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli, ‘the poet of physics’ as he has been called, explains how ‘the second principle of thermodynamics…is the only equation of fundamental physics that knows any difference between past and future. The only one that speaks of the flowing of time.’ This equation, he tells us, provides the mathematical definition of the variation of entropy of a body: the sum of the quantity of heat leaving the body at a temperature. He goes on to say: 

’the growth of entropy distinguishes the past from the future for us and leads to the unfolding of the cosmos. It determines the existence of traces, residues and memories of the past. We human beings are an effect of this great history of the increase of entropy, held together by the memory that is enabled by these traces.’

Though we can see architecture as the most direct manifestation of such ‘traces, residues and memories of the past’ and of their effect on us as ‘human beings, held together by the memory enabled by these traces’ — especially since certain kinds of architecture can last through several human lifetimes — yet it is also precisely because it contains so many memories of so many interactions that it is easy to be led astray in interpreting what we perceive of such architecture, even through our own senses. Especially when we have missing bits to contend with.

So, how do we read this primary resource, so that we may extract the memories encoded in it? I would like to explore this general question through the specific example of what has been variously known through different times as: the Qila-e-Mualla, Qila-e-Mubarak, Lal Haveli, Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Dilli ka Lal Qila etc. From the epithet of ‘The Most Magnificent Palace in the East’ by James Fergusson, to the brusque and noncommittal title of ‘The Fort’ that it was called in British official records after they took over in 1857, these different names, and how and which we remember or use, reflect the different associations of this complex piece of historic architecture. I will also, through a couple of examples, hope to partially touch upon how far its representations match its reality — within the constraints of the time we have today. Please bear in mind, that my reading of the Red Fort, is inescapably coloured through my own filter.

Reading the Red Fort: What is — and What may have been

The Red Fort is a particularly good example for our purpose, because of its iconic reputation and role in the political and cultural sphere of the subcontinent — in fact of the world; as well as its sheer size, complexity and the great degree of transformation it has been subject to. Though its towering red walls loom large on the cityscape and the imagination of Delhi, very few structures from its original conception remain with us today — only about 10 percent. Inevitably then, its walls and gateways are practically all that leave an impress upon our memory, even after we have wandered or walked within it. When I first visited the Red Fort, incoherent as its interior seemed to be, I could — just like anyone else who visits it — experience the proportions, volumes, and forms of its buildings; their elegance, delicacy and craftsmanship; the light and space within them. At the same time, I could read the absence, albeit in a confused way, of what was not there: from my memory of what ought to be attributes of Shahjahani or Mughal architecture, and equally from my professional training about what a place that accommodated the functions of life, ought to be. I could also tell that the British barracks were evidently later intrusions, even though there was no information on site to help realise how much of the Fort was destroyed in 1857 and after.

To give an analogy from literature, the Fort may be likened to a large book, whose seemingly intact hard-bound cover is moth-eaten around the edges. When you turn the cover, you discover that most pages inside are missing. In the few that remain, the text has been so erased that only some scattered words of the original story are visible: in a half-familiar script that is not completely legible, crossed-out and overlaid by insertions in a different language and a different hand. How do we then read such an incomplete manuscript? This is the challenge posed by the erasure and reordering of so much of the primary record of the iconic Red Fort. 

To continue the analogy: it is evident that first, we must glean what we can from what remains of the book itself — by becoming as proficient as we can in the original script that it uses, to gauge the quality of language used, and understand what it describes. My being a Dilliwallah and my training as an architect helped to an extent, but finally it was only my repeated revisits to the Fort that allowed me to glimpse its many stories, plots and sub-plots. To put it simply, I knew that Shah Jahan had got the Red Fort built, and had lived here. But it was difficult to reconcile its disconnected isolated structures, with the regal splendour associated with Shah Jahan and his other magnificent acts of patronage. It was also impossible to understand how he or anyone else could have lived in it — which as an architect, was my main question. Thus, the primary record of the Fort yielded clues to what it was, as well as what it may have been. Even the absence of certain architectural features on site furthered my understanding. The realisation that they were missing-bits, directed my search to other sources: but only because I had some of the primary record of the few extant structures of the Red Fort, and I kept these in sight as reference. These kept me on track, and steered me away from incorrect conclusions. 

Whose Perspective

If you’ll forgive the pun, I’d like to illustrate this through some drawings of the Red Fort by British artists in the mid-19^th century. These drawings figure in different collections. They appear realistic; and are from all accounts, based on actual observation on site. They show the Fort from the vantage point of the ridge across and beyond the river, drawn during or just before the momentous events of 1857, which saw scenes of intense battle in and around Shahjahanabad. As we know, the Red Fort’s outer walls and inner structures suffered extensive damage by shelling in 1857, and unabashed looting and destruction after the British forces moved in to the Fort, as the symbolic seat of the Mughal empire. We also know that as a consequence of the palace demolition order carried out in 1863, most of the structures within it, and stretching around its boundary walls upto a distance of 500 yards, were ordered to be reduced to rubble. On the face of it, these drawings, showing as they do, an unbroken Fort and its inner buildings and outer adjacencies drawn realistically according to the rules of perspective, seem invaluable in re-constructing its reality just before its large-scale and violent destruction and re-modelling by the British authorities in power. 

However, a comparison with existing Mughal buildings in the Fort, as well as with maps, drawings and other descriptions, reveals that these views of ‘Delhi and its surrounding countryside’ re-order the configuration of the Red Fort’s built-form. Firstly, they greatly transform its outer profile, its neighbourhood and other parts of Shahjahanabad. Secondly, they completely eliminate the numerous pavilions, forecourts, gateways, enclosed gardens and arcades within the Red Fort. Thirdly, they reduce the interior of the Fort to a couple of towering buildings, depicted within an open area entered through a wide driveway flanked by trees and shrubbery. It is not a record of what really existed, but an Orientalised image of a stately European or English home.

Despite this rather glaring mis-representation, the preface to an official publication of the Kolkata Victoria Memorial Hall containing this and similar artworks by European artists, claims that ‘these paintings reflected images as in a mirror’ whose ‘credibility and fidelity remain above board’. We are urged to see these as ‘study-based endeavours in which no room is left for the imagination’. Such acceptance of ‘eye-witness’ records, without comparing them with what they purport to depict, leads us twice astray. First, it makes us see them as the ‘true’ reality of what existed. Secondly, it effects our perception, by making us see in these the standard image for monumental architecture. And therefore, the desirable template for making architecture, even in our times. As I mentioned in the beginning, memory alters both perception and recollection. 

The rendering of the Red Fort into re-presentations by British artists, may have been an unconscious act affected by memories of grand edifices in their own culture. But we must also remember that regulated access within the Red Fort to visitors and to residents of Shahjahanabad, was possible in many but not all areas. Entry to its inner, private areas was especially restricted. It is unlikely that these artists would have had the opportunity to therefore actually enter many parts of the Fort. Unfamiliar as they were with the very different forms, scale and layout of the indigenous tradition of architecture that the Red Fort was a development of, and the culture and world-view it emanated from, it is not surprising then that they depict it not as it was, but as best they could make sense of what they could see of it.

Apart from drawing on their individual skills as well as the store-house of memories of what they were used to and their expectations of an imperial residence, these artists were also recording for viewers back home, a simplistic image of unfamiliar architecture, seen as exotic if effete and inferior. Many Europeans stereotyped Indian rulers as decadent despots, and imagined the Red Fort as a den of vice. For instance, John Dryden, considered the greatest English poet of the later 17th century, themed one of his most successful plays on Shah Jahan’s Court, filling it with intrigue, improper amour and imaginary characters. That, Dryden, poet laureate in 1668 CE was also appointed royal historiographer of England in 1670 — and that his play Aurangzebe, first staged in November 1675 for the King of England, continues to be described as ‘the last and most intelligent example of the genre’ of a heroic play — shows us that literary merit and historical authenticity may be two different things, but can still be confused for each other.

To come back to the visiting artists, they were responding both to the prejudices and principles of where they came from, and reacting to the very different principles of architecture in the Red Fort. One important difference was in the way open space was articulated, and its relationship with built structures. For instance, the many forecourts, enclosed gardens, colonnades, pavilions and verandahs that the artists omitted from their drawings, were not part of their way of life. These were, however, integral to the form and functioning of the Fort where space, as it were, flowed effortlessly between inside and outside along with views, smells and sounds.

The Distortion of Singular Memories 

Along with such inherent limitations of secondary records, there are also instances where these deliberately reinforce a particular memory — as in the way in which physical remnants of the Fort were presented to a European audience to memorialise the British version of what occurred in 1857, and to justify their violence towards the city of Shahjahanabad and its people and ruler. One such is Felice Beato’s much reproduced photograph of the Forecourt of the Naubat Khana or Naqqar Khana, captioned: ‘Inner Gateway of Palace, with the tree under which the Christians were massacred’. As Narayani Gupta notes: ‘The account of this cowardly deed was to be so highly exaggerated that, when the British forces captured Delhi in September 1857, many of them slaughtered children and women in what they thought was retribution’.

The photograph deliberately highlights this much recounted tragic episode. The visual composition and the wording of the title, makes the Naqqar Khana — reduced to the ambiguity of the ‘Inner Gateway of Palace’ — recede so much in the background, that the fact that the photograph is an invaluable record of the presence and proportions of an important part of the Fort demolished by the British, escapes attention. This is the effect not just on those whose interest is in memorialising the incident, or on a casual observer, but also on many researchers. That I registered the presence of these vital architectural components and could use these in tracing and visualising the original conception of the Red Fort, is again only because of sustained engagement with the primary resource of its extant Mughal structures.

I would like to give you another example of how familiarity with the primary record of architecture, through close scrutiny of not just explicit forms, but of the entire canvas of implicit systems characteristic of architecture from specific times and places, may furnish clues to ways of excavating its memories. Through undertaking a variety of geometrical, spatial and proportional studies of the Red Fort, I was able to literally fill in the gaps in the sequence of the extant Mughal structures, and thereby recover the location of its missing bits. This spatial reconstruction was corroborated by a fortuitous discovery of a plan made by the British, documenting what they intended to demolish. Again, it was through a realisation of something significant being absent, and of uncovering a relationship between the architectural traces that remained, that I could in the first place, position these missing parts. And consequently, recognise the value of the document that recorded evidence of this vital relationship, when I accidentally came across it in the ASI archives.  

Literary records

We have so far looked at instances of visual records, dating from two hundred years after the Fort’s establishment. What of literary records? Those contemporary with its founding such as official court-histories, are often called primary sources. They cannot however, really be termed so because they refract the three-dimensional experience of architecture into words, through the gaze of the one who is recording or writing. Given this caveat, let us look at a portion of the Badshahnama commissioned by Shah Jahan. This, the combined work of Abdul Ahmed Lahori and Muhammad Waris in Persian, available in partially published form, covers the time that the Red Fort was established (i.e. between 1639 and 1648 CE). The translated description of the Fort’s founding, undoubtedly helps to picture the detail and decoration of its original buildings, as well as their dimensions and materials. However, it does not, by itself, help to understand the basic fabric of the Fort.

This is because the Badshahnama— illustrated with formal miniature paintings of portraits or framed views of selected areas — does not cover all of the Fort, even the private imperial domain and the formal entrance sequences leading to it, with which it is principally concerned. The authors of the Badshahnama rhapsodising about the ‘grandness and beauty of this mighty Fort’, write that ’Its structures are beyond imagination. Its every corner is dazzling and every direction full of heavenly gardens…The qualities of these buildings are so high that none can elaborate on them’. The writing — whether poetic, eulogistic, or recording specific dimensions of the plan or structures — does not describe or convey the spatial quality of the Fort, which, as I mentioned, was an elegant permutation of inter-linked built and open space. It is, in any case, for literary ability in coining phrases or sentences in a manner that appealed to the Emperor rather than architectural knowledge, that Lahori — coming after a succession of writers given access to exhaustive data pooled from different parts of the empire — was chosen as the author of the Badshahnama!

Neither the text nor the miniatures cover the parts of the Fort where the attendants and soldiers lived or worked — even though these are integral to its original conception as a city-within-a-city and its subsequent functioning. In other words, the official record of the founding and original form of the Fort also has ‘missing bits’. We deduce the existence of these missing bits and understand their diverse complexity from other sources: maps, drawings, travelogues, earlier Mughal Forts etc. What this also tells us, is that rarely is a record complete in itself. It is by looking at multiple frames of reference and memories, that we come close to a more complete picture of the reality we are trying to understand. And, as I hope I have shown, it is only by revisiting the primary record of what remains on ground — and consciously recognising the absence of what does not — that we can trace the essential attributes of these records from earlier times. And realise the many misconceptions in which we see, conserve, or write about them today. 

On revisiting and examining the primary record of the Red Fort, we realise that its refined resolution of space, was in many ways, the grand finale of a tradition where buildings were not used as sealed objects sitting in space, but interlinked with open areas and each other: permeable, efficient and adaptive to different seasons and multiple use by a wide number and variety of people across the social spectrum. Such an expression of architecture was the embodiment of the underpinnings of life in the sub-continent with coexisting plural and spatial identities, and multiple affiliations. Yet, despite this fact of an inclusive philosophy central to its creation and functioning, we paradoxically reinforce the appearance and use of the Fort set forth during its colonial occupation. It is now an exclusive, aloof and barred space, occasionally used as a stage-set and backdrop for celebrations that ironically dwell on its memory as a symbol of resistance to colonial British rule — while continuing colonial concepts of rigidly keeping people out.

The Red Fort like all architecture, is an act of community. It is particularly important for us to dwell on this in a conference themed on ‘Remembering Architecture, Excavating Memory’. Architecture cannot be built single-handedly. Nor conceived as the outcome of one mind, however unique it may appear. We bring forth architecture through a coalescing of recollections and practices internalised through training or temperament; through the play of cherished memories of light and space, constituted equally of places we have inhabited or visited, as of real or imaginary places we have read about and visualised. The more diverse and varied these spaces and thoughts, the richer are our memories, our minds and our lives. The Red Fort, like other architecture from times before us, bears the imprint of many lives, spaces, embodied knowledge-systems and skills. It is in our own individual and collective interest, to comprehend these memories and knowledge-systems, and discover through these the ‘unfolding of the cosmos’ as it were.

Thus, the Naqqar Khana, is the scene of tragic events, and happy ones. The setting for court-musicians marking with drums and cymbals the presence of the emperor on the throne in the Diwan-i-am, it is also the place where some emperors lost their lives. It is the final element in a dramatic spatial sequence, the point where noblemen, visiting ambassadors and everyone not of imperial Mughal blood, dismounted before passing in — and where the British official Francis Hawkins had the temerity not to: and consequently had the palace affairs removed from under his jurisdiction. It is a way of seeing how buildings were constructed three-hundred years ago, and a lesson in how something may be simultaneously a marker of space, a gateway, and a music-chamber. It is an exercise in proportions, a configuration of arches that are both structure and decoration; it is the panels of carved red sandstone flowers, the delicate underside of the dome under which you pass. And so much more. What it, or the Red Fort that it is a part of, evokes in us and how we remember it, ultimately reflects what we are. What I have analysed so far is how I see it through my filter, even as I base it on direct experience of its physical form. 

I end with a different filter: a poet’s evocation of the realities and remembrances that the Red Fort constitutes for him. A testimony to the ability of history and architecture to fire imagination and empathy — this is the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, originally in Bengali and here, through my imperfect translation in English. 

You have gone away

Emperor, today;

Your empire like a dream has flown. 

In pieces lies your throne; 

Your soldiers, whose marching feet 

Made the earth ring and beat,

Their memory carried on the wind today  

Flies after the dust of Delhi’s streets. 

Within your walls are songs no more;

With the Yamuna no longer does the naubat roar; 

The sound of the anklets your perfect women once wore 

Dies away with the crickets’ drones,

In the corners of your broken palaces 

As the night-sky mourns.

Even so, your messenger ever high,

Unsoiled, untiring,

Above the ruins of empires rising, 

Above the turn of life and death, 

Through time and after in a breath

Of bereavement infinite

Avers without respite 

“Beloved, I have not forgotten, nor will I.”

All in a Day’s Order

 All in a Day’s Order

The Delhi winter was upon us. 

There was an initial lull of cloudless skies and only the occasional fog. The parents, in deference to their Pahari genes, observed disparagingly how warm it was. But as interminable days of no sunshine, bone-chilling winds and clammy aspect set in, they suddenly felt the cold.

The subject of the weather naturally came up in telephone conversations with my brother, Vivek, in Mumbai — as in all conversations with anyone. “The weather bureau has forecast a severe cold wave all over North India”, Papa told us over the phone. We had been exchanging notes about the plummeting temperature, each convinced that their respective house was more of an ice-box than the other. “And one of our heaters has stopped working”, he continued. “I have asked Vivek to order an oil radiator. He’s used to online purchases.”

“Does Mummy know?” I asked. 

Mummy has a more than average dislike to what she calls ‘cluttering up the house’. This covers a fairly broad canvas. Anything that can, is promptly returned from whence it came. Or if it can’t, then invariably it comes our way, since we are closest at hand. Caps, clothes, gifts, savouries from the local market that an impressionable Papa is lured into buying, tiffin-boxes and vessels in which we are wont to take across occasional food items and special Bengali sweets, the bags they are taken in —- and sometimes what is contained in the tiffins too! Even Papa’s walks or visits to the local market are a daily source of trepidation. “Anytime he goes out, he comes back with a bag full of something or the other,” she complained. Consequently, we or anyone who makes an entry with any bag of any sort that may potentially contain anything, is regarded with utmost suspicion.

Vivek, as an ideal consumer, inhabits the other end of the spectrum. He believes in shopping often and comprehensively — not just for himself, but also for friends and immediate and extended family. And especially for the parents, for whom things arrive with nonchalant frequency — carried in breezily by him when he is visiting the NCR, and delivered by courier when he is not. Like Newton’s Third Law, an equal and opposite reaction ensues from Mummy each time. 

That very evening, he called up from Mumbai. In passing, he mentioned that he had ordered two oil radiators for the parents. “Two”! I exclaimed. “I thought they wanted one? They already have one working radiator”.

“They should have one in every room”, he replied dismissively. “What's the point of shivering? They’ll be delivered tomorrow.”

Foreseeing some fireworks, I enquired if  Mummy Papa were aware that they were getting two for the price of one, as it were. “I’ll let Papa know”, answered Vivek. And what of Mummy, I thought. Who will bell the cat?!

Not unexpectedly then, I got a call from Papa the very next day.

“Anisha”, he announced, “Vivek has sent two radiators and we don't have any space to keep them. Mummy is very upset. It's best if you take one.”

“That’s a bit much, considering he has just ordered them especially for you! You've been saying you have been feeling the cold even inside the house”, I reminded him.

But it seemed that Papa had made up his mind. “We have kept one in each bedroom. We don’t need any more. You take one; it will be useful in your house.”

 “We also have an oil radiator”, I protested. “And we don’t feel so cold.”

“Doesn't matter, you can keep it in the other bedroom,” he pronounced with finality, adding that he had already spent all morning trying to unpack and assemble one. “I can't get the wheels on,”he continued in an aggrieved tone. “I have asked Bhimraj, the electrician, to come. When will you be able to pick the other one up?”

A little later, an agitated Mummy called up. “Oh, please take the radiator,” she said without any preamble. "As it is, there are so many things in the house. I am black and blue with knocking into something or the other.”

 

“You have to walk more carefully,” I advised. “Don’t rush about the house. And there should be no problem in putting it in the study-room, where Papa watches TV? Since that’s at one end of the house, out of the way of your normal circuit, it should be fine there.” 

“How come he doesn't seem to feel cold when he's outside? He’s going for golf every morning,” she countered, side-stepping the main point with customary practice.

There seemed to be no answer to that, so I parried the question, hoping to delay things till she got used to having three radiators in their house.

It seemed there wasn’t much chance of that happening. A stream of suggestions followed from the other end of the phone. “Maybe you can present it to somebody?” Mummy went on. ”A friend’s anniversary? A wedding you have to go for? When will you come?” 

The next day, in reply to the same query from Papa, I suggested they put it in their dining room for the time being. But it seemed there was no room anywhere for the radiator — or for any more discussion.

“We have put it there for the moment. But we only sit there for ten minutes or so. Ask Snehanshu to find some time to come and pick it up while the weather's still cold. Otherwise, it will be no use.”

“Vivek won’t be pleased,” I said again. “He ordered them for you.”

“Oh, but we are keeping both the ones he has sent”, he replied, with unassailable logic. "We are sending our old one to you!”

——————-

It was the following Sunday, a couple of days after Papa Mummy’s old radiator had been ensconced in our house. The phone rang at 7:45 am in the room, where Treya, in celebration of it being a non-college day, was sleeping the sleep of the just and the free. I ran to pick it up. It was Papa. In response to my “Good morning”, he said: “Anisha, Mummy needs your help urgently!”

Naturally concerned, I enquired in alarm what had happened. 

Fortunately, it was just an extravagant turn of phrase. “You know,” he began. “We had asked Vivek to order some cut jackfruit and some dry fruits. He has also sent lots of other things with them. Sprouts and corn and red radish and cut-methi and much more. Mummy says she can't handle all these. You please take some. And don't order any vegetables for yourself for some days.”

“All right”, I said. “We will be coming in any case this evening for dinner —“ 

But it seemed they would not last till evening! We were asked to come and take them in the morning.

I was still in the midst of relating the newest episode of the online shopping saga to Snehanshu, when the phone rang again. 

It was Mummy this time. “The entire lobby is full of packets of things we don't eat, all with an expiry date of tomorrow. There are at least twenty-five. About four big packets each of walnuts and almonds and pistas! And little-little packets of sprouts of different kinds! Oof, my back is aching with unpacking and sorting them. And you know Papa, he had as usual bought so much stuff — vegetables and dals. Our fridge is already overflowing. “

“And then Vivek sent all this,” she began again. “Sprouts and what not. And a big carton of eggs! Please take them. When are you coming?”

“It's only eight in the morning!”, I said. “Sometime after breakfast?”

Fortunately, that seemed to pacify her. “All right. And please tell Vivek not to order so much for us.”

That evening, Mummy, slightly mollified by the fact that some perishable items had been duly collected by Snehanshu during the day, began afresh. “You know, Papa saw an advertisement in the paper that there is a sale of dry fruits at Big Bazaar. He asked Vivek to order some for us. And Vivek instantly ordered — from Big Basket!” 

“Along with I don’t know how many other things — sprouts, corn, eggs, dal — and a huge number of dry fruits. And it was delivered at the crack of dawn, everything in bags within bags of plastic. I thought I would go crazy.”

“But Big Basket doesn’t use unnecessary plastic,” spoke up Snehanshu. “They are quite responsible. We order from them too.”

“No, no, not Big Basket. Milk Basket,” said Papa. “Milk Basket are the people who send us milk every morning.”

“They deliver all this too,” asked Snehanshu, surprised.

“They deliver everything,”declared Papa serenely. 

“And it's all from Bombay,” said Mummy. 

“Bombay?” We all piped up. “Chopped kathal and methi from Bombay?”, asked Snehanshu in disbelief.

“Yes, it comes by air,” replied Mummy. 

“Can’t be, it must be from somewhere local”!, said Snehanshu.

“Well, anyway it was ordered by Vivek in Bombay,” said Mummy. As I was marvelling at how the three of them had contrived to make Big Bazaar morph into Milk Basket, Mummy confided, “Actually, it was only because there was a sale in Big Bazaar that Papa thought of ordering from them, otherwise our local shopkeeper, Amit is very good. He delivers instantly, and he is always ready to exchange items if required.”

“It wasn’t very much,” an unmoved Vivek responded, when I told him later what had happened. “Only about 250 g each of mixed sprouts and some moong sprouts and some corn, and a few other things they should be eating. Next time, I’ll order more.”

It’s evidently not long till we will be party to the next episode of the inevitable combination of Chinese Whisper and Passing the Parcel — only till the next order!

Urbanisation and its Imperatives

Text of the talk delivered at the Architects Meet, IIA Noida Centre, 9 September 2022

Good evening.

I am going to strike what may perhaps seem a completely different chord in the panel discussion on Urbanisation and its Imperatives.— and turn the theme for today’s discussion on its head. It appears to me that we are spending excessive energy and attention on urbanisation — both literally and metaphorically. What we should instead be discussing is Ruralisation and its Imperatives.

When I say this, I am neither being irrelevant nor flippant. We only have to look at the primary evidence around us — the volume of dust and pollution; the piles of garbage and waster; the insanitary, unhealthy and degrading conditions amidst which the majority of urban dwellers live; the issue of clean and sufficient water that confronts all of us; the traffic and the distances we encounter in our daily commutes — to realise that the current model of planned urbanisation is a failure on multiple counts.

Nonetheless, ignoring this primary evidence, the solution at a policy level is to push for greater urbanisation. More funds for more cities. And more schemes for alleviating the so-called ‘inevitable’ problems of urbanisation in existing cities. What I question is the validity of these presumptions. So:

1. Is urbanisation inevitable? Do we need so many cities?
2. Is the inequity, waste and loss of ecology that accompanies urbanisation, inevitable? Do we need the kind of cities that are being planned?

To me, the answer to these questions is a resounding NO. When I say this, I am obviously not in line with conventional professional wisdom or government policy. According to Government of India projections, “urban areas are expected to house 40% of India’s population and contribute 75% of India’s GDP by 2030”, up from the figures in the 2011 census of “31% of India’s population housed in cities with a contribution of 63% of the GDP”.

That these projections are seen as inescapable — even desirable — is evident from the stated objective of “attracting people and investment to cities” as part of “a virtuous cycle of growth and development”, in the description of the Smart Cities Mission (SCM). The SCM, declared to be an ‘innovative and new initiative’ by the Government of India, further announces that “the focus is on sustainable and inclusive development”. This is proposed to be achieved by “enabling local development and harnessing technology”. Nowhere in the Mission Statement is the necessity or desirability of urban shifts and population concentration evaluated.

There is clearly a fundamental contradiction in the proclaimed objectives of such programmes and their methodologies. How can you provide sustainable and inclusive cities without examining and addressing the root cause that gives rise to unsustainable and inequitable conditions? It is because such analysis is missing, that there is no acknowledgement of the fact that our cities are nothing but a manifestation of the centralised large-scale industrial method of production and control, that we have adopted with such enthusiasm.

If we continue with this same old economic system and its exploitative and mechanistic ways, we cannot escape their attendant effects — including rapid, uncontrolled urban growth. What I propose may be termed an ‘out-of-the box’ approach. The imperative of urbanisation, in my opinion, therefore is to halt such growth, and both the number and the extent of cities.

Though we are architects gathered here, an analogy from medicine should help to better understand the logic of this statement. Growth in the human body is part of the natural cycle of life — but unnatural, rapid growth results in cancerous cells, that has to be stopped to prevent loss of life. Isolated, concentrated, expensive efforts such as chemo or radio-therapy are largely unsuccessful in providing a cure. Similarly, “project based approaches” and “area based strategies”, put forward in the SCM statement, will not succeed in infusing humane conditions back in our cities. We can only do so, by finding alternatives to centralised, industrial ways of production and living.

We are fortunate that we have such alternatives in the scientific, artistic and technological knowledge embodied in the resource of our crafts and craftspeople — the largest such resource anywhere in the world. The development of the crafts sector, a ‘creative and cultural industry’ as it now recognised and designated internationally, is a national imperative. It is important here, to mention Prof Ashoke Chatterjee’s observation that India’s crafts-sector, even in its denuded and neglected state, satisfies 11 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2015 by all UN Member States. And this sector with its key characteristics of de-centralisation and emphasis on natural, local materials and hand-skills can be carried out not just in urban areas but equally well — if not better— in rural areas. Yet, there is practically no dependable statistical data about numbers of craftspeople or their contribution to the GDP, nor a specific Ministry for the crafts sector as a whole and sufficient budgetary allocation, reflecting the lack of seriousness with which this sector is taken in institutional and official planning policies.

Where do architects and organisations of architecture come into all this? I believe, they can actually lead the way — in convincing policy makers about the necessity of shifting to alternative ways of production and building; as well as by pioneering a shift to acquiring knowledge about alternative, natural, low-energy materials and decentralised design and planning processes. In other words, to focus on both ruralisation and what has been termed rurbanisation — within the context and practicality of our culture and society.

I would like to end by reminding ourselves about the celebrated historic city of Shahjahanabad, established in the 17th century. It encapsulated many sustainable and equitable urban features by following a philosophy of building and making the optimum rather than the maximum — while epitomising urbanity in all its meanings of courteousness, consideration, and refinement. This is clear even in accounts by observers such as the Frenchman, Francois Bernier, despite his bias in favour of his own culture and his city of Paris. Through him and other sources, we learn how the very heart of the city of Shahjahanabad makes space for the poor, even in areas immediately outside the imperial Fort. And how the main ceremonial streets and urban spaces of Shahjahanabad, house markets that do not just display expensive life-style stuff but also basic food and grain for the less affluent, and accommodate artisans of different trades and a variety of goods.

To put this in context, imagine that the vista of India Gate leading up to Rashtrapati Bhawan, is inhabited by a market — which not only sells expensive items for the rich, but also goods for the poor and lower-income groups. Imagine that bands are allowed to practise and play music in the Vijay Chowk area, and later on in the evening, that informal performances, street-plays, and itinerant markets are held here. 

Put this further in context. Recall that even designated market-areas now increasingly disallow goods and services that do not cater to the rich. Tailors with sewing machines, watch-repair wallahs, food-vendors, hawkers are regularly evicted from markets and road-sides — including the Brahmaputra Market in my neighbourhood in Noida — even when a landmark Supreme Court judgement reinforces their right to sell in public places as part of the Right to Livelihood enshrined in the Constitution of India.

I leave you with an incident from a fictional account of an event in 19th century Shahjahanabad, written by Mirza Farahatulla Baig Dehlavi, who was born and brought up in Shahjahanabad. In  his book, Dilli ki Aakhri Shama, or ‘The Last Mushaira of Delhi’, Maulvi Karimuddin, an actual personage from history, and the organiser of the mushaira, is described as ‘footing it across the lanes and streets of the city, in search of patrons and poets’ for the mushaira. He traverses practically the entire city on foot,  from Zauq’s house near Kabuli Gate to Ghalib’s in Ballimaran; from Hakim Momin Khan’s Haveli in Kooche-e-Chelan to the Lal Qila itself. 

In contrast, though our gathering of today is barely 1.5 kilometres from where I stay, it is virtually impossible for me to walk here in comfort or safety.

Of Monsoons and Mangoes, and Outings in Orchards

Consider this:

‘The girls now go towards the mango orchards…Various kinds of mangoes grow here: Mohammad-shahi, laddoo, shahad kooza, shah pasand, batasha, safeda, gulabi, sindoori and siroli. They are piled up ready to be eaten. Jamuns fall from the trees and the girls rush to pick them up. Several fruits — sour lime, mulberries, oranges, phalsa berries, khirni, gular, star fruit, berries, jackfruit, peaches and apricots — have ripened, ready to be plucked from the trees…While the grey clouds sway and dance in the sky, every now and then a burst of rain adds to the beautiful ambience. Peacocks sing, nightingales chirp, koels sing…A girl pulls at the fruit cluster of the banana tree…and they climb various trees in a rush to be the first to pluck the fruits and eat them on the branches itself…Some friends continue to swing from the trees laughing joyously.’ 1

This is a description of the princesses and their friends, maids and attendants, enjoying themselves in the baghs and amriya’n, the mango orchard near Zafar Mahal in Mehrauli in the monsoons. The family of Badshah Bahadur Shah Zafar accompanied him here every year for some weeks before and during the Phoolwalo’n ki Sair held in the month of Sawan. Not just the royal family and their retinue, we are told that ‘Monsoon is the season when everyone spends time in the gardens’. 2  

In a time when the onset of monsoons in Delhi essentially means water-logged roads, sweltering heat, more traffic jams and mosquitoes, this description of how monsoons in Delhi might have been around two hundred years ago, sounds idyllic — and impossible. The stuff of stories. Too far away to seem real.

Amidst the first few showers of the season, as these thoughts ran through my mind while reading about nineteenth century Delhi, I happened to speak to my Mausi, now in Shanghai where she has been ever since the lockdown. The talk turned, as it invariably does between us, to gardens and green things. She was missing her litchi trees in Dehradun, and trying her best to make up for it by growing chillis, marigolds and melons in pots in her daughter’s house. 

Not one for normally reminiscing, in the course of our conversation, she was led to recall that when she was a child, the litchis would ripen much earlier in summer than they did now. And how after they returned from school, entrance to their grandfather’s house on 36 Lytton Road — where they lived with their mother, and their uncles' families — would be preceded by a climb up the litchi tree at the gate. Only after eating their fill of the half-rosy half-green litchis, would she and her cousins and siblings pick up their bags and satchels deposited on the ground at the foot of the tree, and proceed inside the house. 

She also told me how the children in the house and the neighbourhood would walk from the Lytton Road house in the heart of town, all the way to Ballupur to their extensive orchards and fields and the family-temple. Their grandfather had given strict instructions to the contractors who manned the orchards in the fruiting season, that the children should be allowed to eat their fill whenever they came. So they would eat quantities of litchis and mangoes straight from the trees, play around under them, and then walk back home singing all the way. My mother, when I mentioned Mausi’s recollections, remembered cycling there in big groups and sometimes staying-over on the top floor of their Nana’s house there, clattering over the wooden floors.

And suddenly, it seems to me that Bahadur Shah Zafar and his family, just like the other residents of Delhi then, and my mausi and mother as children in Dehradun in the middle of the twentieth century, had essentially done the same things. Enjoyed the seasons, frolicked under trees in the company of family and friends, feasted on fruits. The Badshah and his family and the people of Delhi swinging under trees and sampling mangoes in orchards, are not so distant after all.

Growing up in cantonments, I am fortunate to have somewhat similar memories. My walk back home from school in Wellington in the Nilgiri hills, was enlivened by the simple device of choosing a different path back home everyday rather than simply following the road. Sometimes that meant sliding down stretches of a steep grassy slope, or getting momentarily lost amidst tall trees and shrubs, or climbing up a particularly challenging tree-trunk. But the one constant in all these different routes, was the eating of the blue-black lantana berries that grew profusely everywhere. We plucked and consumed these with single-minded concentration, berry-stained fingers and much delight, despite already having had two tiffin-breaks at school.

I have not gone back to Wellington, but the fact that it is a cantonment means there is a greater chance that it is still green and blessed with trees. Not so Delhi. Nor Dehradun — or indeed any part of the country. We can only visit them in memories and in drawings — such as the one Snehanshu made of the mango orchards that once surrounded his ancestral home in Birnagar in Nadia.

Mukherjee-Bari among Mango trees, Birnagar, Nadia, Bengal.
Sketch by Snehanshu Mukherjee

I remember the first real project I was more or less independently entrusted with, in the architectural studio I joined after graduating. It was a tiny building in Najibabad, a place I had not heard of till then, about five-six hours drive from Delhi. We needed to set out at five am to reach there by mid-morning, and then head back after checking work at site and a late lunch. 

It was always a tiring journey, but the distance and the discomfort of being cooped up for hours in the Ambassador taxis, was, at least for me, always mitigated by the mango orchards that bordered many of the narrow roads or lay beyond the fields on the way. As we sped past their dark stillness, with golden bars of sunlight slanting through their intensely green solidity, I would beguile myself with visions of lying there on a charpai, with a favourite book, nimbu-paani, mangoes, parathas. And the scent of the mango blossoms wafting in as we dozed or looked out into the dark on the way back, stayed with me long after we entered the noise and hard lights of the city close to midnight.

It seems strange to think that the number of years that separate today’s time from the days of my mausi’s and mother’s childhood, is half of that between their time and nineteenth-century Delhi. Yet the experiences between them are closer. We have come a long way away in the past few decades. And lost experiences that celebrated everyday life amidst the changing seasons. We have forgotten how much joy trees and gardens can give everyone, even the mere sight and scent of them. So we cut down trees, thousands of them — mango, neem, oak, jamun. And gouge out the earth to widen roads, make stadiums, offices, flyovers. Any excuse will do. What we need is many more trees, orchards and gardens, not manicured memorials, ministries or malls, but is anybody listening?

Trees cut and hillsides levelled in Rajaji National Park and Mohand, Dehradun, April 2022,
Photo: Treya Mukherjee

                                                               

1  Dilli ka Aakhiri Deedar, The Last Glimpse of Delhi, Syed Wazir Hasan Dehlvi, published 1934, Dilli Printing Press; this excerpt is from City of my Heart, p. 50-52, selected and translated by Rana Safvi, and published by Hachette India, 2018. A description of the Phoolwalo’n ki Sair is also included in Bazm-e-Aakhir, The Last Assembly, Munshi Faizuddin, first published in 1885, p.122-128, and included in the same collection of translations.

2  Ibid., p. 23