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Chandni Chowk....Or life??

I have had the occasion to galavander around the streets or rather lanes of Chandni chowk these past few weeks. For those who are not familiar with the capital of India, Chandni chowk is one of the oldest residential settlement that remains even today.

To be honest I was trying really hard to find a way to express the enigma that is Chandni Chowk in words. But I found my pen, or rather in this case, the keyboard running dry every single time that I tried. Until, I found a most remarkable metaphor for the place or I may say that I found the lanes of Chandni Chowk to be an amazing metaphor for something we are all too familiar with....Life!

Life is in every way nearly like Chandni Chowk. It is complicated, unplanned no matter how hard you try to set a course to it. And it is vibrant and scintillating. Every moment that you walk down the lanes, you are dodging, side stepping, tripping, balancing and all this while moving along with a well drawn map in your hand. Yet you have no idea where the next turn will lead to or if there is a surprise waiting for you just around the corner. It defies all calculations, disobeys all rules, except time and survival. And at the most unexpected places you find a treasure trove of the most beautiful experiences. We wish to travel down left out streets and turn into the missed out turns but would it really have taken us to a different place? Perhaps, perhaps not...would it have been any easier, perhaps, perhaps not, the only way to find out is to walk through all the lanes till you have seen them all...but that will take many trips , many lives.

Every one tries to knock you down in their hurry to get ahead, yet when you step back and look, you see that its nothing but a rat's race with no one really going anywhere. Curious eyes look at you when you step into strange domains...quickly and surely picking out the ones who do not belong and after having interrogated you let you pass with doubtful and suspiscious eyes burning holes through your backs. Ever been in a profession where you feel you do not belong. It feels just about the same.

Glittering red capes for the bride, books and stationary for the studious mind, food for the kings, you will find everything here. It is all here yet you have to find it among the narrowest lanes where every single one is squirming for space. Palaces have become huts and what were huts have become a modern day castle. And then, when you find that the walls are closing in on you...Suddenly you are in a open breather where the blue sky shines down on you through the twinkling shades of an enormous tree and you suddenly feel that there are powers beyond. And sure enough you hear bells ringing as a Pujari in his 1ft by 1ft little shrine offers prayers or somewhere a Mullah calls out to the faithful to join him in prayer.

Time is the sole thing that is constant in ths ever-changing canvas. The lanes of Chandni Chowk keep meandering and life goes on.....

There and beyond.....been there done that!

Ruddy joke!!

God is not without his share of uncanny sometimes cruel sense of humour. And considering He is far greater than the lesser mortals like us his share is considerably larger.

Bundi.

Dabhai Bavdi, Bundi.

The Bavdis of Bundi

Step into the mind boggling world of step wells. I never fancied myself to be scared of heights, but these inverted pyramids gave me a taste of vertigo. Optical illusions sweep you off the feet in this midget of a town called Bundi. Nestled in the lap of three hills with an ancient fort palace standing guardian atop one of them, this city has somehow lost its way in the passages of time. People gamble away the reality in broad daylight with bhaang assisted nonchalance. Amidst such forgotten lanes, ring out the chorus of "Hello, Hello, How are you? One pen please, Some rupees please" It is not a surprise since the only people who ever come to visit this forgotten town are tourists from faraway lands and irrespective of their nationality qualify as "angrez" due to their foreign tongue. We were "angrez" too for these naive people. A one year old toddler had hardly gained her balance and came staggering towards us on the instigation of her highly veiled mother to say "allo allo". And somewhere squeezed in between like invisible time portals are these wonderful stepwells. Once more sacred than the holiest of temples, these man made water bodies are now derelict and abused by the same community that once built and worshipped it. Tucked away behind a tiny temple or between two shops or behind a haveli, these marvellous structures are now defunct and have no use for the people but as garbage dumps. The water that it once held was used for drinking but now poses one of the greatest problems of sanitation for the local people. Flowers from puja that are not to be caste away in unholy grounds are dumped here without a second thought. Plastic bags hang unceremoniously on the beautiful cusped arches and toranas that were once adorned by fresh blossom. As a local man put it, this was once considered the abode of the apsaras and kinnarais and now they are the den of demons and feinds. Do they care...some do....some don't....but if you do...they tell you "Bavdion ke picche bavda ho gayo hai ke??!!"

cannon holes at Lucknow Residency

Lucknow Residency-post 1857

Roaring cannonballs,
Firing guns,
Dashing adventurers,
The Mother's brave sons.

They all fought,
On this land,
For this land,
One to keep it,
and the other,
To command.

Eroded walls,
Collapsed beams,
Meandering cracks,
A building falling apart,
At its seams.

Staircase ghosts,
Missing bricks,
Disappearing fast,
Legend meets the present,
In these relics of the past.

The memories,
Are here to stay,
As long as
These relics last.

You can still hear
The canons roar,
Behold!
As the bricks bleed
The gaping wounds sore.

Judgement day.......

Most students of architecture would identify with me when I say that it is something about the final submission that makes the whole semester seem like a mundane exercise and that makes us associate jury day with Kingdom come....

True thy will IS done at the end of the day. The strong prevail, the weak crumble and the jury, aka St. Peter pronounces the judgement for you. In this mortal land of course the holy words are spoken through an obscure list that everybody is clawing at on the first floor notice board. The class representative or the chosen one has the privilage to collect it from the cradle of the Lord himself (translated as college office) and thereby impart it to the rest of His flock.The whole charade, if you ask me, has the imagery of Moses emerging with his ten commandments. Then again I may be going crazy for it is "judgement day" for me next week and news is the jury is the "taskmaster" Himself.

Jama Masjid at daybreak...breathtaking!! 

Shadows.....

The city's largest "golchakkar"

Today I took a stroll down Janpath, the Cardus of the Indian capital. Lutyens may have done much damage to the place or may have created a masterpiece...whatever the stand, the fact remains, these roads nearly 75 years later still function better than most of those built by "apna DDA." True he was merely painting a very autocratic picture on a very large canvas, true that we continue to cling on to that canvas as our pride and joy and also true that we have happily accepted this British "acropolis" as a willing hand-me-down without much inclination to alter it let alone replace it. The question remains, "could we have done any better?" The answer lies in the 15 minuite traffic clogs that jam the cities life lines. One could however argue that while at the end of the day, lacs of weary Delhites who make their way through these bottled up routes, only one man with his smart entourage, returns home to "Rashtrapati Bhavan".

Shapes and patterns

There is so much geometry in all the randomness around. It is mind boggling.It is all like this huge canvas in 3D composition. I love shadows. I love the way they defy the shapes that created them and assume identities of their own.

Thought for the day....

I know this is contradicting my own description of this blog.....but can you really think architecture? What is architecture if without a tangible manifestation of the thoughts that generate it? If it remains in the realm of thought alone....it cannot be architecture as it remains in mind space and does not get translated into physical space.
So what about all these thinkers who claim to be architects too...are they really architects? or are they just thinkers and no more? Should the ability to actually create tangible architecture be a critirion for the "architect"? Or just the ability to think space would suffice?
Food for thought........