Charkop

 

Nagari Niwara Parishad, Goregaon East

This is a typical unit plan of Nagari Niwara Parishad, Goregaon East, Mumbai - a low cost housing project designed by Adarkar Associates during 1981-92. The area allocated to the project was about 62 acres to house about 6000 people who were displaced during the expansion of the city. The plot is adjoining the edges of the national park and therefore at the foot hills of the mountain. The run off of water necessitates a large nallah (drain) that creates a moat-like boundary on one end of one of the plots. The series of bridges and three storey buildings throughout the colony create scaled courtyards and a labyrinthine ground space that opens into different direction.

The courtyards earlier meant as gardens have now been paved and converted into parking spaces for the cars, two-wheelers and bicycles. There is still enough greenery within the overall campus. Each building is a society within a cooperative model with three wings. Different buildings are interconnected by intermediate level bridges - an idea adopted from the earlier Mumbai chawls that housed equal densities of people. These intermediate bridges create spaces for play and pause for young and old alike, and offer a unique perspective of the space between the buildings. 

Most layouts are one room, kitchen format with attached facilities for toilet and bath. The living room is around 3m x 6m, and the kitchen is around 3m x 2.5m - spacious enough for further divisions. Many residents have further subdivided the large living space into smaller study or private bedroom space for themselves. In some cases, the kitchen has been converted into a bedroom, while the cooking space has been carved off from the large living room. However, most of these living room interventions leave the remaining space with less light. Often these partitions are made up of glass in order to allow for light to pass through.

The entire project is made out of concrete - including the walls. This was a unique technique developed during the period which brought down the cost of construction drastically. Although, such a move causes the buildings to heat up excessively during the summers or get extremely damp during the rains. The task of using the walls to install furniture becomes difficult since it is not easy to drill holes in these concrete masses. Nevertheless, the layouts are very efficient and keep all spaces well lit and ventilated throughout the day. The sense of well being is maintained, and the common spaces are social extensions of the apartments.

The Aesthetics of Co-existence

Like many mornings, this morning I was walking along the skywalk of Borivali West (Mumbai) to see more and more homeless lined up with their sleeping mattresses. The period of monsoon especially sees the increase in the number of homeless occupying the space of the skywalk. Here, one sees different bodies intertwined with each other. Men with men, men with women, children with women, children on men on the one hand, and dogs besides humans, cats playing with children, and so on. These intertwining is far for sexual. the intimacy here is a product of the shortage of resources. The limited length of the mattress, the single and only blanket, the only space which may be dry or the best corner to leave space for the pedestrian walk. On passing thought this landscape today, I thought to myself - if this is not co-existence, then what is? 

Of all the hullabaloo that is made of co-existence in the theoretical space within the academia today, here, co-existence is a mere necessity. Yet, the image of co-existence seemed far away from beautiful. Firstly, these bodies lined up on the skywalk certainly had a different sense of cleanliness. To be able to inhabit a ground that is walked by hundreds of feet bringing dust from all over the city requires an alternative level of equation with hygiene. This in addition to the lingering dirt and muck of the rains, the spit and shit of the scavengers, the rubbish and remains of the passersby create a landscape that the middle-class would associate with disgust and disease. Secondly, the absence of shame in loitering, cooking, worshipping, sleeping in the open (air) must require a unique kind of sense of self. To be able to suspend one's state of awareness, vanity and being comfortable in the state of things without being affected by the gaze of the passers by is a leap into the very fact of existence. 

Now that I begin to write the above, I am made aware of how my own sense of shame or self is constructed perhaps throught a certain middle class morality. The idea of co-existence too then, is shaped through such a moral position. This position, layered with an aspiration of the upward classes shapes a peculiar imagination and aesthetic model of co-existence that frames the pedagogical space of the institution. The institutional idea of co-existence that emerges within design schools (planning, architecture, interior, and such) often misses to acknowledge the political economy of marginality. The moment the marginal is made into the mainstream, it is prone to get hijacked by the middle class, or more appropriately the bourgeoisie. Any attempt to upgrade the marginal into the dignified will shift its image into the realm of the middle-class. This situation creates an opportunity of 'exclusionary appropriation'. 

Exclusionary appropriation could be thought of as structurally similar to gentrification. Through the creation of an allurement of an upward tending lifestyle, the lower classes are promised facilities and resources which most may themselves not be able to afford. Thus, identifying themselves clearly separate from that image now, they willingly surrender resources that they once primarily claimed. This trickery is how urban spaces get reformed. This is not the bane of merely the middle class. This could also be the situation for poor or the homeless occupying the margins within urban spaces. The bourgeoisie designers are helpless in thinking about design outside their frames of middle-class-ness. This is primarily because firstly, this is what the apparatus of the design institutions trains them as, and secondly, it is what is their "aspirational normal". Which is to say, their own standards of hygiene and cleanliness are much different from that which they see on the streets. The work of dignifying, in their design process is thus, elevating the poor to at least their levels of hygiene. This decision already puts an economic pressure on those people who transiently occupy open empty pockets of the city when no one else probably claims it. 

What I am trying to articulate is this image of the marginal that discomforts us on the one hand, and produces empathy on the other. This empathy, to be sure, arises out of our middle class morality which, seemingly is too precious to give up. It is shaped by the taught values of being helpful to the other, and if you are a designer, the social cause of your profession. Both of these in their root, are opposed to the aesthetic of the marginal on several ground of economy, cleanliness, privacy, permanence and so on. How do we critically interrogate and address the bourgeoisie entrapment of our design methods?

As I walked ahead thinking of all these things, the skywalk was ready to come to an end. At the bend, a handicapped old man was looking into the steel wares he may have scavenged or collected over time, perhaps for his morning breakfast while a woman was just getting up besides a shrine she has elaborated over the last year. What may have come for an occassion of a single auspicious day (which even the enforcement authorities could not have opposed, in the might of God), has slowly accrued larger over time. Scavenged photographs, discarded objects of worship along with exotic natural rejects like pine cones or dried flowers now adorn a what may be emerging into a permanent corner of worship for all the homeless on the bridge. Just as one moves ahead towards the steps, dirt littered around the petit municipal dustbin rotting in the drizzle of the rain continues to mix into fresh faeces of  what one wonders would be canine or human. 

Kant's Philosophical Project

Jhuki Jhuki Si Nazar - Translation

गाना / Title: झुकी झुकी सी नज़र बेक़रार है कि नहीं  (Jhuki Jhuki Si Nazar)

चित्रपट / Film: अर्थ (Arth)

संगीतकार / Music Director: कुलदीप सिंह (Kuldeep Singh)

गीतकार / Lyricist: कैफ़ी आज़मी (Kaifi Azmi)

गायक / Singer(s): जगजीत सिं (Jagjit Singh)

Hindi/Urdu

झुकी झुकी सी नज़र बेक़रार है कि नहीं 

दबा दबा सा सही दिल में प्यार है कि नहीं ... 

तू अपने दिल की जवाँ धड़कनों को गिन के बता... 

मेरी तरह तेरा दिल बेक़रार है कि नहीं... 

वो पल के जिस में मोहब्बत जवान होती है 

उस एक पल का तुझे इंतज़ार है कि नहीं... 

तेरी उम्मीद पे ठुकरा रहा हूँ दुनिया को... 

तुझे भी अपने पे ये ऐतबार है कि नहीं...

Translation

These folding eyes, aren't they anxious

Even if repressed, is your heart soaking in love or not?

Count the times your youthful heart is beating

Just like mine, is your heart restless or not?

That one moment in which the feelings of love blossom

For that one moment, do you await or not?

In chancing your promise, I am rejecting this world

On yourself then, do you have enough faith or not?

on Academic Discourse

Notes from early 2022

Pangana, Himachal Pradesh

Pangana is a small town in the state of Himachal Pradesh. I visited it as a part of the settlement studies program with students. The place is about 5 hours away from Shimla and 10 hours away from Chandigarh. We were put up at the HPTDC Mamleshwar hotel which accommodated about 49 of us. 

The most interesting part about this place was the warm hearted people - the pahadis - who were so giving and caring. For the 6 days that we spent there, they opened their hearts out to us, making space for us in their homes, preparing us beverages, serving us fruits, telling us about the place, singing for us, dancing with us. Some of them even gave gifts that they knitted out of wool over the days we were there. 

The overall town used to be organized around the fort-temple tower just adjoining the fort walls. The king patroned a few people to establish their shops along the old market street that branched to the temple. This market street however, is hardly active. A new market street has emerged in the town that caters to vehicular traffic and new enterprises.

The primary occupation of the people here is agriculture - they grow apples, peas and other vegetables that are exported as well as consumed in the village. The more recent enterprises people have began are transport and local departmental stores. The centre of the village is occupied by the upper caste population, while the lower caste people are on the upper margins of the village. Geographical proximity is the primary indicator of caste difference in the village.

The built form of the town is fast transforming from older shingle / slate roof houses to concrete construction primarily because it is the image of the modern and easier to maintain. Maintenance of the house was also primarily a female activity, hence women are generally invested into new construction techniques. Older houses are planned around courtyards and wrapped through verandahs. Walls are made up of slate and floors are made in wood.

The entire town winds around the temple. Most roads lead to the temple fort, and it is the focus of the town - visually as well as organizationally. Houses are nestled in their landscapes. Most houses have fruit plantations like berries or pomegranate. People have an innate knowledge about every grass that grows around them. They understand their properties for different everyday purposes - from construction to medicine. There are some commonly owned fruit trees which are not claimed by any one from the town in particular. Roses grow in abundance, along with a variety of succulents that erupt from the crevices of the mountain embankments. 

The fort temple is the most complex and rigorous building demonstrating the traditional kaat-koni method of construction. While spatially simple, it weaves around numerous myths and history around which the village rhythm revolves. There is nothing more to take away that the old school slow timeless charm that one can only enjoy in the quietude of this town and its people. 

Accidental Landscapes

 

A Garden from Himachal

Chandigarh Trees

No one talks about these large trees that may be as old as the designed city of Chandigarh. In the scorching months of summer, these trees are the solace for the concrete-ridden city. The foliage of these trees span anywhere between 25 to 30 metres. Many of these are fruit trees, bearing black berries or such other fruits. The city swims in a soft smell of the foliage.