Aurangabad : Early days 07

I have been teaching the subject of professional practice to the students of architecture for quite some time now, and there have been always questions about the ethical versus unethical practice, both from the students and the fellow professionals. A major portion of my work came from the Government & Semi-Government organisations as well as some corporate sector clients, and it is alleged that you have to use certain unethical means to work smoothly with such organisations.

My own experience is very old now, having stopped working for such organisations for about twenty years now, but I can vouch for the integrity of many persons of authority in the organisations I worked for and can state with certainty that ethical practice is not only possible but can be flourishing irrespective of whether it is a public sector work or private sector. It all depends on your own character, integrity, beliefs and intentions.

My practice started with Mr. Kharkar, a freedom fighter from Sailu and man of integrity, and since then have met many politicians and administrators who have been quite upright and honest, and in fact my practice was built on the support of these people. In course of my practice I have also met my share of the corrupt and unscrupulous people too, but I have always been uneasy and out of my depth in dealing with them. I get similarly upset and at a loss when people, particularly, building contractors and the like try to do me some favour, though in the course of my practice I acquired a reputation for straight dealings and was not troubled much in the later part of my career.

One instance I remember is about issuing false or incorrect certificates. In the early eighties, cement was in short supply and was allowed to be purchased only on a certificate of a practicing architect. I would usually do this for free for my own clients for their need of cement, but once I was requested to issue a dummy certificate by someone who was willing to pay me for the certificate. He told me that the government officers don’t bother about the correctness of the certificate and nobody keeps count so why bother?

‘You can cash in your qualifications and the fact that you are a practicing architect, nobody would even read the certificate except for the figures where you mention the number of bags of cement’, he told me. I had to tell him that it was my reputation at stake for such a certificate, and I had to read the certificate before signing it, so I would not do it. He was not pleased, and must have taken me for a fool to lose out such easy money.

Exactly similar to this is the certificates Contractors require to continue their registration with the government. As most of the projects in the private sector are done without the tendering process, it is easy to falsify the records and issue dummy certificates to contractors whom you may have never met and earn some extra money on the side without doing much.

In all my practice I have steadfastly refused to issue such certificates, and have been called a fool, a simpleton and many other names. But I have since met many of my own professional colleagues, touring all over the nation while working for IIA, architects who are also scrupulous about this, and feel a certain satisfaction in being part of the ethical brigade.

When I look back now on all these facts, I think I should give credit for this to the people of integrity I met in my early career, who shaped the character of my practice and behaviour. If I had not met people like Mr. Kharkar, I do not whether I would have been able to maintain such a straight path throughout my career.

Aurangabad : Early days 06

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.

Aurangabad : Early days 05

When I set up my practice in an independent place in Nageshwarwadi, it was a very humble arrangement consisting of a single room about 15’ by 9’, in which I had an office table in the centre of the room and two large drawing boards facing the rear wall, behind my chair, one for me and the other for the large number of the draughtsmen I employed one after other as the attrition rate was high. I could not afford to pay an architect, hence I followed the standard pattern of employing a draughtsman with ITI qualifications, and training him in the ways of architectural drafting standards.

The problem was, once the man got trained enough, he would seek a better paying office and leave the job, making me repeat the whole process again. Once, getting tired of this, I tried to appoint an architect-trainee, but his salary expectations were very high and he also left after a while. My finances were so strained at the time that I could not pay his salary when he left, and had to send him payment after a month. This must have surprised him, as his letter indicated, and made me wonder whether I was the only one from his acquaintances who would keep his word.

I also bought a portable typewriter from my uncle at a huge price of Rs. 1400.00 and practised touch typing on it. Of course I could not afford to pay for a typist, I used to type all my letters myself, and outsourced the heavy typing work for estimates and tenders etc. I even bought an automatic ammonia printing machine by taking loan from the bank, and the set-up of the office was almost complete, except for the telephone connection, which I got after 10 years of waiting in the queue. During all this period, Meher furniture works, graciously allowed to use me their telephone connection, and I used to have a lot of informal meetings with the manager Mr. Gaus as a result.

Industrial development at Aurangabad was in full swing, resulting in a large influx of people, and construction industry was booming. I had a large number of commissions, even when I had virtually no local contacts, save the ones I made socially like at Vasantrao Naik College. Of course, it did not bring in as much money it would have brought in a place like Pune or Mumbai, as majority of these projects came in from the middle class segment, people building a house for themselves for the first time in a few generations, spending their entire lifetime savings and naturally, paying architect’s fees was the last item on their agenda. I now realise that people were looking for cheaper options in architectural services, looking for a inexperienced person, and that it the reason I had a huge number of clients.

Of course, my projects with the Sailu Municipal Council gave me a certain financial stability, and I did not mind the miniscule fees I used to get for these projects, as was one way getting known in a city where I had absolutely no family ties or any other prior association. Of course the agenda was not for a great architectural design in any of these projects, but only a workable plan with least construction cost. That meant that most of the projects were based on load-bearing wall construction, a pattern I had learnt to work on a great deal while working at Solapur under Ar. V. T. Kota.

When I moved from this rental office to my own place at Shangrilla Complex, near the Varad Ganesh Mandir, I had already completed 10 years in the rented premises, and found out during the shifting process that I must have designed at least about 800 houses during all this time. If I had received even the miniscule fees I was promised for all these projects, I would have become a very rich person indeed. But the problem with architectural practice is that you never get any respect nor fees when you are young and gullible. May that is the reason why it is called an old man’s profession.

Aurangabad : Early days 04

The first project that I designed for the Municipal Council, Sailu was for a Multipurpose Function hall, with some sports facility. I still remember the day of bhoomi-pujan (ground-breaking), where I was invited to speak about the project in front of the assembled guests. I did the presentation well, and spoiled the whole impact by turning to the President and asking him if this was all I was expected to speak. Anyway, the project was completed to the satisfaction of everyone, the Contractor Mr. Balchandani turned out to be a good choice, the President and the Council very much interested in doing a good project than anything else.

President Advocate Kharkar was a freedom fighter and a man of principles, and would not allow any corruption to happen under his guard. This was rare, even in Marathwada, which was a backward region in many respects except corruption, but I did not know it then. I don’t remember even paying for tea in his presence and he rarely would come to Aurangabad those days so the question of my entertaining him did not arise it at all. Not only that, he would keep a strict eye on the happenings at the site, as I later found out.

Sailu Municipal Council was my only major client at the time, but there were others too. The most notable amongst them was the Vasantrao Naik College, whose Principal Dr. Rajaram Rathod, became a good friend over time, and I did many projects for the college. The first project was the design of the hostel, which was a straightforward block without much scope for design, but later I did the Principal’s Bungalow at the campus and also his own private bungalow in N-3, CIDCO.

But more than the projects, it was the friendships I nurtured here that have lasted me a lifetime. Many illustrious people were working as faculty then, including the Principal Rathod, Dr. Ajit Dalwi, Bapurao Jagtap, and many others. I had a lot of free time in the beginning of my practice and I enjoyed conversation with these learned people about anything and everything. I had a slight leftist leaning at the time due to my previous participation in Yuvak Kranti Dal activities in Solapur, and it turned out that the majority of people at Vasantrao Naik college were either leftist themselves or at least sympathisers of the cause.

This association with Vasantrao Naik College also gave me an opportunity to meet notable people, like Hon’ble Sharad Pawar, whom I met at a school run by Late Mr. Omprakash Shinde. Vasantrao Naik college was at the forefront of the Namantar movement, and many teachers had a direct rapport with the great leader. Pawar saheb was also the Chief Guest at the Inauguration of the Vasantrao Naik memorial at the college, which I had designed, and at time he remembered meeting me earlier, which I found quite remarkable for a public figure who meets hundreds of people every day.  

I became a part of the many activities that were taking place at Vasantrao Naik Collge, and when the college decided to take out a weekly paper, I wrote two articles with tongue-in-cheek humor, my first attempt at political satire, and I think if I had continued, I would have become at least a free-lance columnist, but I started getting more and more work after establishment of a proper office with a reasonably decent set-up, and all thought of being journalist was lost under the pressure of work at the office.

Aurangabad : Early days 03

After doing the agreement for architectural services with the Sailu Municipal Council, I decided to resign from the job, which was anyway a contract appointment and would not have continued for long. I remember getting Rs. 95.00 for the last six days of my work, and the argument about the experience certificate, which the clerk refused to issue for the entire duration as I was not allowed to have any leave but took one anyway and there was a break in service. Finally we settled on a certificate which stated two separate periods, before and after the break, but I have lost the certificate now obtained after so much trouble.

We had now moved to another place in Osmanpura, which was an outhouse of a bungalow, and had already two residents, Avinash Gore and Prakash Patwardhan. Avinash was a steno-typist in LIC, and Prakash was his cousin, working in the ST Workshop at Chikhalthana. The two cousins could not have been any different. Avinash was short and a bit overweight, a bit diffident and looked every inch a white-collar worker he was, while Prakash was 6’ tall, about 4’ wide and had a rough voice and manners. It was Prakash who would get us tickets to all the movies, by pushing forward with exact cash in hand at the crowded ticket window. This was before the advent of television, and the ticket windows at the Cinema halls were always a battleground, which made it a perfect place for Prakash.

Avinash was an LIC employee and a better wage earner than all of us, and being of a generous nature, did not mind sponsoring a lot of activities of the group. But we were all actually in the category of struggling youths. When I decided to leave my job to start full time architectural practice, we were not sure whether it would work, so Jayanta decided to retain his job at the Town Planning Department and support me in his spare time, so what started as a partnership idea eventually landed me in an individual practice without any security of future.

When I look back to those days now, it looks like the worst way to start any new venture. Not only we were living in an out-house with two totally unconnected partners, there was virtually no set-up there for an office. We would draft the drawings ourselves sitting on the floor, and the typing work was done initially by Avinash, as he was a professional. But there was no way we could call it an office space, and we did not have any money then to start with a decent set-up. It was a wonder we could retain clients, with the kind of set-up we had, or maybe, nobody had any idea as to what should be the proper set-up for an architect’s office. After some time we again moved back to Rokadiya Hanuman Colony, which was a better accommodation, but still a shared residential space. It was here that I first met Ashok Desai, the structural consultant, who was a next door neighbour, and became a very close friend later on.

Jayanta got transferred to Nanded and I was left alone to carry out all the tasks involved in practice. Fortunately my two year stint at V. T. Kota and Associates at Solapur had prepared me for this and eventually I was able to open my own independent office at Nageshwarwadi after two years of landing in Aurangabad.

Karad Diaries-7

One of the other subjects that I was fond of, apart from mathematics, was Sanskrit. I scored easily in the subject, and was dismayed when I was not given the lead role in the college Sanskrit play ‘Columbus’. I just did not have the personality for the role, but this was something I could not understand at the time. I also had a morbid fear of public speaking, and participated once in a debating competition at my school to overcome this. I remember mugging up the entire speech, and delivering it mechanically, but that was all. It was only after I joined IIA and was invited to make a speech at the IIA National Convention at Nagpur, that I thought I need to do something about it. I wrote the entire speech, punches and all, and read it at the Convention. I still remember the butterflies in my stomach sitting on the stage before delivery of the speech, but I started out in earnest, and I received good response from the audience, which encouraged me to continue.

After this event, I tried every opportunity of speech at every public event, either by submitting papers to conferences or by impromptu interventions in the form of questions from the floor at every event, which sometimes resulted in invitation to the dais for making a small speech. Eventually I became quite adept at it, which gave me some recognition in the IIA circle, made me Chairman of the IIA Centre at Aurangabad and many other positions later.

This was a far cry from the shy and introvert demeanour I had as a school student in Karad. In spite of my participation in many outdoor activities with my friends, I was essentially an indoor person and did not mind staying put at a place and spending time alone, reading something or the other all the time. I remember reading almost all the hindi novels by Premchand one after another borrowed from the Municipal library at Karad. So reading ‘Dostoevsky’ was not a one-off activity, it was part of a pattern. Looking back, I think all this reading also made me a bit more introvert and less a man of action, which I tried to correct in my later life by joining the Communist Party, but that was after I started my professional career at Aurangabad.

In Karad, the only other activity I remember had to do with the religion or at least a practicing branch of it. Datta Bal, a spiritual Guru, had become famous when we were in school, and I used to attend the prayer meetings run by one of his disciples every Thursday evening, with some of my friends. The meetings were held in a closed room, with the light coming only from an oil lamp in the room in front of a large photograph of Datta Bal, the Guru, and the room would be normally filled with the smoke from the incense. We would try to concentrate on the diagram of Omkar painted on the wall, and recite the prayers en masse. I do not recollect getting any better intellectual or spiritual capacity as a result of these meetings and when I went to 11^th standard, with the pressure of study and other matters like clearing the Intermediate drawing examination for architecture admission, I stopped attending the Thursday meetings.

But the religions and their associated philosophies are fascinating topics, and my interest in religion has continued all my life. Recently I came across ‘The Case for God’ by Karen Armstrong, which stipulates that all religions in the world are basically trying to make their adherents better persons by prescribing a set of rituals about how to go about in life. I never considered myself a religious person as I do not carry out any of the rituals prescribed in my daily life, but found out that by Armstrong’s definition, I was actually a deeply religious person, though a bit gullible one, as many of my forays in being a good Samaritan have resulted in a good bit of trouble for me and my family - but that is a subject of another blog.  

Karad Diaries-6

My college life thus started with stay at my uncle’s place during the term and back to Karad in vacations. I was thus at Karad for the winter vacation in the second year of the course when the youngest of my brothers, Srinivas, was born. My father was away in Mumbai, and the task fell on me to write a telegram to him to come back as mother became suddenly very ill and it seemed that she would not survive the childbirth. I was 17 at the time, and was more worried about the wording of the telegram than the seriousness of the situation we were in.

I later felt guilty about this kind of frivolous concern taking hold of my mind at the time, but I am told that the human mind works in funnier ways than this. Anyway, father came back as a result of the telegram, mother was admitted to the hospital, and everything turned out to be just fine.

It must have been my feeling of inadequacy that was responsible for this kind of concern rather than the problem with the language, which was a part of my studies in school, and moreover, my journey of the English literature had started at Karad well before the admission to architecture. I was already an avid reader, one of the tenants at my mother’s place in Kolhapur was owner of a bookshop and used to have a number of new books delivered at the residence, which he graciously allowed us to read, on the condition that we read them then and there without spoiling them in any way. It was thus my hobby of reading was nurtured, and has stayed with me ever since.

When we moved to Karad, my next door neighbour was an enterprising and ambitious young man, Anil Kulkarni, who gave me a copy of ‘Crime & Punishment’ by Dostoevsky, told me it was a classic and insisted that I must read it. As my knowledge of the language was limited, I read the entire book with a dictionary at my side. In retrospect, it seems a bit too heavy a book to try out in a new language, but strange though it may seem, I developed a taste for English literature because of this first experiment. Anil eventually went over to USA after his graduation in Pharmacy and was quite successful there, became a US citizen and married a Punjabi girl. I googled him and wrote to him when I first went to USA in 2009, and he invited me to visit him, but somehow or the other I could not make the trip. 

Anil was my mentor in many other ways. He lived with his family next door to us, and all of his family members used to carry out all household tasks all by themselves. We were also from the same middle class section of the society, but we had maids for cleaning the utensils and washing the clothes, and I never thought that you need to do anything about it yourself. Anil taught me many of the skill involved in these tasks, including ironing the clothes and I remember we also did a lot of experiments including taking out a blue-print and measuring time by using the solar shadow angle and so on.

He was admitted to the first batch of the pharmacy college that opened at Karad, and I remember attending a cultural event at his college in winter, in which Anil was one of the actors in the play “Shantata Court Chalu Ahe”, a serious drama, the depth of which I could not really understand at the time, but remember a very sad incident on the way back from the event, where I saw a bunch of college students burning a blanket in the bon-fire depriving its owner, a poor man, of his protection in the winter. This happened at least 50 years ago but it is etched on mind as some kind of proof of human carelessness and pointless cruelty.