Aurangabad : Early days 9

It was when I went with Sanju for some minor complaint at Dr. Joshi’s clinic at Paithan Gate, that we met Milind Ranade, who offered Sanju a job in AAMCOL, a company where he himself was working, and who needed a bright young recruit. Sanju had just come back from Warangal REC after completing his graduation in mechanical engineering, and Srinivas was about 8 years old when we moved to Auranagbad, the family was together again after quite some time, except for Viju, was then working at Mumbai, and living with Wamankaka at Tardeo Police Quarters.

It thus started a whole new set of friendships, when Sanju met Suresh Karkare at AAMCOL, and a lot of his friends eventually became my friends too. Ashok Mudkavi, Sanju’s friend from REC Warangal had also come to Aurangabad and had joined Arwind Machhar’s company ‘Anil Chemicals’, and for the first time after coming to Aurangabad, we were part of a small social circle. Though a lot of my time was spent on travelling to the many construction sites I had all over the Marathwada Region, we used to spend a good deal of time together.

It was also a phase where I did a lot of experiments in my practice, which included a Cinema Theatre at Parbhani. Jayanta actually got the project for me, as the owners, as always, were in search of a young architect who would do the job for lesser fees. I did the entire services for a contract sum of Rs. 5000.00 (about Rs. 1,00,000.00 in today’s value) which was a good deal of money those days for me.

This project became interesting because of two factors. One, it was the first ever and the only Cinema Theatre that I designed all by myself, and intermittently supervised the construction at my own cost as it was not the part of contract.

The second was the consultant for the air-cooling services was from Mumbai, who suggested that we built the ducting for the cooling system through the load-bearing main walls of the auditorium. I was quite confident now about the load-bearing construction system, having executed a few projects already, and designed the external wall of the auditorium accordingly.

This was also the project where I did the line-out for the work at site because the contractor was unable to do it on his own. The main theatre external walls were not parallel, and not at right angle with the end walls, posing an almost impossible problem for him, though having a good command of mathematics I had provided all relevant co-ordinates in the basic drawing, but the contractor could not execute it at site.

Ultimately, I had to go there at the site and physically draw the centre lines on ground. I also had the sight lines drafted accurately, but the owners did not believe in my expertise, and ended up with a flat slab for the balcony and the steps were made in brickwork, but of course, I had stopped visiting the work by then.

Looking back after all these years, I think most of my clients either were neither aware of the architectural services nor were they interested. What they actually needed was engineering services- making plans for approvals, getting the work done at site and at times checking and certifying contractors bills. If the building turned out to be looking better or designed functionally in a better manner, it was a bonus they had never asked for in the first place.

There is a lot of hue and cry about rights to architectural practice after the recent Supreme Court Judgement, which refuses exclusive rights to architects on practice, but whether the law decrees or not, I do not think you can make your services mandatory if people do not need them.