Meanwhile, my practice was taking a good turn now, as my
first project got certain recognition from both the Sailu Municipal Council and
the Town Planning Department. The Sailu Municipal Council, impressed by my
previous work decided to demolish its own old office building and entrusted me
the task of designing a new one. I was, at the time, very much influenced by
the work of my former boss, Ar. V. T.
Kota, and the office building shows a distinct relation to his work. I
did a lot of experiments in the construction and the detailing, and I was glad
that I could get a good contractor like Mr. Balchandani to get it executed.
However, by the time the building got completed, the state
government dissolved the Municipal Council and appointed the Deputy Collector
as an Administrator. This fellow, in order to be in good books of his boss, the
Collector of Parbhani, invited him to inaugurate the Office Building and the
ceremony turned out to be a sort of anti-climax, with me & our contractor
felicitating the Collector for inaugurating the building instead of him
felicitating us and giving some public recognition of our contribution in
design and execution of the project. This was the first and only time it
happened, and I was too young to notice the irony; it was Mr. Kharkar, the
ex-president who pointed this out to me later.
Of course, as luck would have it, elections were announced
and Mr. Kharkar was elected President again, this time by direct voting,
instead of being chosen by the council members. He thus was now in a stronger
position and executed many more development projects in Sailu. It goes without
saying that I was entrusted with all the building projects in this scenario,
but I was also entrusted with a lot of other work, like development of roads and
construction of bridges, of which I had some awareness but not expertise. I
confessed this to Mr. Kharkar, who said that he had implicit faith in me to get
the right guidance from experts in the field, and get the works executed in the
most appropriate way. I was overwhelmed by his confidence in me, and hope that
I have not let him down in all the years I worked for the Sailu Municipal
Council.
I am proud of the fact that my work with Sailu Municipal
Council got recognition from the Town Planning Department, particularly by the
Deputy Director of Town Planning at Aurangabad, Mr. Patharkar, who was also an
architect himself. Two of my projects, a public library and a primary school,
were adopted as type design for the department, though I did not get any
royalty for the design. But I was content to be recognised, which made my work
with the department quite easy, as they were our financers. It was the Town
Planning Department who would approve the project, approve the budget and
disburse the money, so it didn’t hurt to be in their good books.
On the background of allegations of large-scale corruption
today, it may come as a surprise to many when I remember that at that time the
Department of Town Planning was once the cleanest department in Maharashtra.
The decisions were based on merits of the case, and I do not remember a single
incident of any untoward practice. In fact, after we got acquainted fairly, the
Deputy Director himself would phone me and take me with him in his own car for
his site visits to project at Sailu and nearby places, and he would not allow
me to pay even for the tea on the way. ‘Mr. Kulkarni’, he would explain, ‘the
Government pays me TA and DA.’ It reads like a fairly tale now, but I can vouch
for it as I have personally experienced the favours of the good-natured people
all my life without any expectations of returns.
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