Meeting Charles Correa

I met Mr. Charles Correa today.

I spent the last night dreaming about him, the last week dreaming about him and the last month trying to reach him. My meeting was timed spaciously – at 11 am.

I left home at nine, and I knew that in Mumbai, 2 hours for travelling too is less. And I was right. I stepped out of home and it started raining, pouring heavily. I had an A2 portfolio, my bag and an umbrella. i was almost fully wet by the time the fifth bus came, as I had to leave the other four – they were full. I cursed Mumbai so much, the people so much! I did not get an auto rickshaw too…I realized that I had to take a ticket too, since my pass allows to travel only till Dadar. I again cursed anticipating the crowd at the ticketing counter.

I got down at the station from the bus and saw the Goregaon local passing in front of my eyes. Needless to guess – the bus stopped at bloody every signal and got stuck in every damn traffic…I cursed the driver of the bus too.

The only credit I could have is the next local (after which there were none, and my boarding the train would be impossible). I waited (rather wasted) 20 minutes to take the 9:56 local. I boarded in praying that it would take me to Charni Road in time. I managed to reach the station 15 minutes in advance of my meeting time and was at CCA exactly at 11 am. (though I was on time, now I feel so hopeless about the city – 2 hours FLAT wasted in travelling!)

I was almost instantly taken to Correa’s cabin. I saw the big man working on his desk…2 minutes later, he welcomed me and told me to take a seat near him. I asked him about his health and he said he is fine. He immediately asked me, “So tell me, what did you want to meet me for.” I said, “I just wanted to discuss my project, because I could not do it earlier.”

I got my sheets and put them on his table. He told me to explain. I said the first sentence about the project and he interrupted, “Yeah I remember, but whom are you building for?” I said, “The blind”. And he said, “Speak clearly, who is the blind – the insensitive or the real blind”. I said it was a metaphor. But he didn’t like it. He immediately said, “We almost gave you the medal on the benefit of doubt. Many of them thought that ‘this guy is just talking about some things’. But you got it only because of benefit of doubt…so tell me, who is blind?”

I said it was the "insensitive".

“You see you are slipping. I would never like to work with you. Because you are not clear. You have to be clear. You are playing with words. You can be a critic, or a poet or write books. But you have to be clear. Otherwise, you will keep doing these all your life and not go anywhere, and do some vague thing. What do you mean by blind. Show me your plan. What did you do? When we saw your plan we did not see any form of auditorium, or seating or any such thing. What are you expecting people to do inside?”

I explained the interpretation of the cinema hall.

“But how big is it? What scale is the drawing at? It seems that you have gone wrong at scale. Its just a drawing you see…? How much is this…” he asked pointing to the distance between two columns.

It has been 3 years now and I had forgotten the measurements. I still tried –
“Sir, the hall is 450 sq m. I am expecting about 50 people inside each hall”
“but how is it that much? (he took a scale). I had to guess…I blurted…the columns are about 8 metres apart. So the hall is about 32 x 20 metres ( I realized that it was wrong), but I had no other option…but to guess…) I told him that for composing the sheet, I had to take a non-architectural scale.

He handed over me the scale and told me to measure it. Now was the catch. While I was measuring, I felt something was wrong. Either I was confused with the triangular scale, or the drawing was wrong. He could make out the apprehension on my face. He asked if I was Dhaval’s friend., and I answered in a positive. He asked me if I wanted Dhaval’s help. I hesitated. He still called Dhaval inside. Dhaval fakely showed his surprise to me as he entered.

Dhaval took the initiative and explained the project. The whole intensity was lost to the question of “how would one make a Cinema for the Blind.” He saw things here and there, made things much clearer, dissected the “blind”. I kept nodding. Dhaval and he were almost having a discussion on my project. I did not get even a chance to speak. But I guess that was ok.

He was not interested in poetry and metaphor, but the physical building. And dhaval was much better at explaining the resolution. The fun of the project. He also pointed out the link in the cinema and the blind. I explained him further. He liked it. He liked the drawings, the sketches. He waited on the ‘experience’ on the link, and explained and questioned it.

While he was making pencil marks on my sheets, he was erasing it too. He did it with “experience” too. Then, while elaborating on experience, I rubbed my hand against the rubber dust he created on the sheet. He must have felt that I did not like him scrubbing on my sheets (which is not true). Later he took out his notepad saying that he would not like to spoil my sheets…

I wondered if he didn’t like my wiping away the rubber dust, or misinterpreted the action into something else…

We later discussed architects like Venturi, Kahn, Ando, Corbusier, Palladio etc. We also discussed buildings like the Rotunda, the Pantheon, etc. He somewhat criticized Venturi. I could have defended. But I kept quiet.

I wanted to ask him many things. but I kept mumb. It was about an hour. At perfect 12:00 he said he had to call it off.

He did not want to discourage me, he said, but wanted me to have more clarity.
I understood that my first impression on him must have been terrible. The rest of the story, I must ask Dhaval…

A day with lots of people...

I had been to Kamla Raheja some days ago and the day was extremely eventful…in the morning, I contacted Ateya and found out that she would be there in KRV that day. As I reached the place, I found Namrata (Kapoor) and Ateya in their auditorium watching Persepolis. Though I did not catch up with the entire movie, I saw some ending portion of it and it was really nice. Ateya and I and also Namrata spoke for some time after the movie when some students came for a review of their work. It was interesting to discuss their work (which was a part of the workshop which Ateya and Namrata were taking). After a long time, I interacted with students. It was refreshing.

We later went up to the staff room (I guess that is what it was) to have lunch. Outside the same, I met Mayuri(Sisodia). I had met him at the Metrologue workshop. She said that she was going off to Bartlett and i gave her Prarthana's contact. She was happy to have it.

At the lunch, I did not have any thing, as I was feeling a bit embarrassed, to be in a place which I don’t think was yet for me…soon, other people started pouring in…Rohan (Shivkumar), Rupali (Gupte), Kaushik (Mukhopadhyay)…all of them…And I was not expecting to see them around…actually I was even more abashed when all of them arrived. We did not speak, but I just remained a passive listener. Later, Hansa (Thapliyal) and Mr. Kamal arrived. For those who don’t know who she is, she is a film maker. I have worked with her in a PUKAR sound editing and video editing workshop. That is primarily how I know her. Otherwise, we have always kept on bumping into each other in seminars, conferences, etc. so she knows me quite well. Also, she stays quite close to my house, but we have never met each other. The thread of this story, I will carry further later…

So Hansa was taking an elective workshop (I guess on film making) at KRVIA with Mr. Kamal , who also seemed to be a film maker. He was an old man, with white hair, twinkling eyes and sweet smile and a curiosity on his face. Soon, Kaushik introduced my thesis subject to him and he was extremely passionate about it. I briefly explained what I intended to do…and he was overjoyed… I must mention here that there are only a few people who understand my thesis idea in a go. Surprisingly, all at KRVIA understand the idea very well. So I was happy. He asked me if the thesis was published anywhere, and I told him about the publication in IA&B. but I also mentioned to him that I would like to personally meet and hand over a copy to him. I overheard him while speaking to Hansa, that he was working on some project for the blind and could gather some clues from my thesis. This was a very different intersection with a film maker and my project and unlike what Ms. Sarita Vijayan (Editor at IA&B) was proposing. She had mentioned to take this idea forward to a film maker and I rejected. I quite liked the present intersection.

Kaushik further mentioned about keeping a mock-presentation of my project at KRVIA. I agreed and also mentioned that I was more excited to see his work. But I like Kaushik because he has always been excited to see my project. Another reason is that he is from one of the finest art institutions in India – Shanti Niketan, and thirdly, he is a Bengali. I have a particular affinity towards Bengalis for the reason that half my native place is in Kolkata, and I generally like their inclination towards art culture and their perpetual ‘awe-‘ accent in any other language. Also, Bengali is a very sweet language (as far as I have heard) and it comes across…

So coming back to the day, I further went and joined Ateya and Namrata in their crit-session upstairs. I was actually hesitating to join them, because I did not want to be a ‘kabab-mein-haddi’ but I just took a seat in their room. I saw students almost dozing off when Namrata and Ateya were addressing, but I am sure they purposely left those students unnoticed. Unfortunately many students donot take interestin theoretical discourses in the present system. This is a problem with the entire country I guess. However, that’s not a problem of the tutors. But how does one flip around the scene? I tried doing it while discussing the next student’s paper. I tweaked two or three small questions into the discussion. Slowly I saw chairs moving, students waking and giggles in the class room. I was happy…but I left for I had to reach for an interview to Max Muller Bhavan. While leaving the place, I met my juniors Aditya (Sawant) and Mayuri (my college) and also saw Sriganesh, whom i didnot want to meet...so i skipped his eyes...

I reached Max Muller Bhavan about 10 minutes late. But that’s ISD and was not minded. At Goethe Institute, Max Muller Bhavan, I met Ms. Jayashree, who was the programme co ordinator over there. She was listening to beautiful music and I entered her room which had a big enough window to capture a patch of green. The corner occupied a small library with sufficient books. On the table on my right was an Apple desktop (was it apple?) but nevertheless, it was a beautiful atmosphere…

We spoke about the institute’s activities and she explained me my possible work profile. Not going deeper into this, I will cut it short and proceed to my meeting with Nihara (Kantak) at IA&B. I collected the latest issue which featured my thesis. I later went up to meet Thomas who has been shifted (actually by choice) to Chemtech from I-Structure. We spoke for some time and since we were in office, we agreed to meet later at the Marine Drive. I left the place to head towards the sea face.

While waiting at the Drive and reading the project brief provided by Ms. Jayashree, I spotted Neha (Parker) and her friend Hitesh. I went ahead and poked her. We went together to Gay Lords. Over there I met Neha’s colleagues and they too were very fascinated after knowing my thesis topic, which Neha had already spoken to them about. Thomas cancelled his meet diplomatically (realizing that I was already occupied). They left and then Dhaval joined in. we had a good discussion on our general ‘larger’ issues of life, when we left Neha in a contemplative mood.

Dhaval, Hitesh and I then left for home…

The only person I missed that day was Sonal (Sunderrajan) – I hope you are reading this sonal…that was the only day in KRVIA I didn’t meet you….

Heading No(w)here...

I would not believe myself being so restive until I started tying out at least 10 mails to different people for keeping myself busy with things. Suddenly I realize that it is so important to have work. I think work gives a background to other things that we do. The reason for the need to spend time in leisure activities is work.

Work has to be monotonous to accommodate and appreciate other activities? Isn’t it? I wonder if it is really true. And I am thinking this because I have no work to do meanwhile except preparation for further studies. I think this is the distraction that prarthana keeps talking about. To give a range of random things that I have been doing, let me mention a few – I have been visiting college frequently for meetings (the smallest of them), spending time in the library, guiding students with their thesis here and there, meeting people he help them take a decision with their studies, writing off mails to faculty at other institutes, contacting people whom I could help with their work, meeting people who are keen in getting some designing stuff done with me, preparing for fellowship research, looking up sites which publish research papers…

All these above were explored not for the sake of money, but for keeping oneself busy. one month of no work is after all, not good for a graduate – according to Indian social setup. It’s very embarrassing to tell others what I have been doing currently. So I end up saying that I am freelancing, or I am involving myself in research, or I am studying for further education. Answering calls at home on week days is like announcing “I am at home, not working”, or sitting at the library means answering the staff and juniors that meanwhile I have nothing to do in life…

Of course, it will change. There are good times and there are bad times. But there are times when you don’t know good or bad. This is one such time, when there is a lot of room to experiment, but there is no motive to do so, no drive or no purpose to involve in various things. Sterile as I say it…it’s going on...and on…and on…

there are things to write...opinions, views...but there is no disposition for the same...and the above is what i end up typing...!

KRVIA Fellowship Proposal

In a recent article on ‘Redefining Architecture’ in a local news paper, Architect Hafeez Contractor points out, “Go to Barcelona and you will be surprised that even a cab driver there is aware of the architects behind the different structures. Here, nobody is even aware of many of us, leave aside acknowledging our work.” Further, he adds that, “The field of architecture is highly neglected in India, and more importance is given to other creative fields. Though Architecture is the father of painting and sculpturing, but it is not recognized…”

The three questions that the above note raises are:
1. How does one ‘define’ architecture for the general masses?
2. Who do we expect to acknowledge our work?
3. What are these “other creative fields” that are given importance if architecture is the mother of all arts?

Simmel explains that “the nineteenth century demanded functional specialization of man and his work” . Further he states that each man identifies himself with these “supplementary activities of all the others” rather than the parent one. The histories of architecture and interior design in the world and India are not separate. In fact, the field of architecture has split up into other fields of ‘design’ post the industrial revolution. Architecture became a profession in India only after its independence, when people did not make themselves conscious about ‘design’. However, one can track a simultaneous growth of interior design and this awakening towards ‘design’ in the public mind.

Therefore, architecture is often perceived as a field where one designs/‘decorates’ interiors. Architecture never got a chance to detail its scope to the general public, who was to recognize and appreciate the production. A field, which was closer to people was interior design. Though earlier, it may have been a luxury of the elite, over the time, it has also become available to this general mass. Infact, all this while, what was closer to the public, who was to acknowledge architecture was local arts and crafts, which was created, produced and used by locals.

The problems which remain with us are whether we must deal with ‘architecture’ and ‘interior design’ as separate or one, and in either of the cases, how they affect the practice and production of space?