Aurangabad-Early days 02

Jayanta used to live in a small two room apartment in the Rokadiya Hanuman Colony near Kranti Chowk with a few of his friends and I joined the gang. My interview for the post went well; there were no other contenders, but I distinctly remember the enormous office of the Vice-Chancellor of the University who took my interview, and bargained down my salary to Rs. 475.00 instead of the promised Rs. 500.00, but having no experience in such matters, I accepted the offer and joined the Office of the Deputy Architect to Government.

I was an odd man out in the office, as I was an employee of the Marathwada University, and supposed to work only on the University projects and reported directly to the head. But he was a busy person having a large number of Government projects, and had hardly any time to work on the University projects, with the result I was having virtually  no work, and was eagerly waiting for an opportunity to start my own practice with the UD-6 projects I had been promised. I did not have to wait for long. In the first week itself Jayanta told me that the Municipal Council at Sailu in Parbhani Dist. was interested in carrying out some of the UD-6 projects, and I set out for place which is a 3 hour journey by road from Aurangabad.

It was at Sailu that I met Advocate Kharkar, the President of the Municipal Council, who was later to act as my patron and set a direction to my practice. He had participated in the freedom struggle and was in politics for the ideologies he believed in, and was an intelligent and thoroughly honest man. Given the practical side of his profession I sometimes wonder how he could have had such a flourishing practice, and that too, in a small town like Sailu.

When I met him for the UD-6 projects, he already had his ideas about them and was very specific about the outcome. I prepared the entire set of project drawings in a week and when I went back to discuss them, Mr. Kharkar asked to give a presentation to the entire Council. My presentation was applauded by most of the members and I was told that my proposal was accepted without any change.

The only issue to be settled was the terms. I was too young (twenty-two and half years) and inexperienced in this matter, so was Mr. Kharkar who drafted my agreement with the Council, taking care to secure my interests as well as those of the Council. He asked me whether there were any norms and I gave him a copy of the IIA norms on which he based the agreement. (Norms prepared by the Indian Institute of Architects were the only ones available at the time. This was in the year 1977, the Council of Architecture norms came much later in 1989)

That started a professional relationship which lasted for almost fifteen years, and looking back, I think that it these projects which defined my architectural career. I had complete freedom in the design, the only things I was questioned about were the other technical issues like volumetric details, cost and execution. But this freedom also meant that I had to do a thorough research before making any proposal, browsing through a variety of norms, standards and so on. This process was to become a standard practice for me in my professional career, and paved the way for my teaching career eventually.

Aurangabad-Early Days-01

One of the first things I remember about Aurangabad is my unplanned stay at one of the cheaper hotels near the bus stand, which had beds like a dormitory and you had to keep your valuables for safekeeping with the hotel manager; there being no lockable cupboards. As I had no valuables to carry, that was not an issue; all that my luggage consisted was a small bag with bare minimum clothes. I do remember wondering all the night whether I had done the right thing in believing Jayanta, that this was the land of opportunity.

I went to Aurangabad by sheer chance. Jayant Pandit, my classmate from JJ was working in the department of Town Planning there. He had been to Solapur where I talked about opportunities for starting my own practice, and he had painted a rosy picture of how there were projects for taking in the whole of Marathwada region. Being in the Department of Town Planning, he had some valuable inside information.

At the time, the State Government used to finance the Municipal Councils under the UD-6 scheme for implementing the Development Plans, and huge sums of money were allocated for this purpose. However, as there were very few technical consultants available, leave alone the architects, most of the Municipal Councils in the Marathwada Region were unable to submit any proposals, and the funds were under-utilized, creating a problem of sorts for the Department of Town Planning, where Jayant worked. He saw an opportunity to start architectural practice here, but could not think of leaving the job to do it. So he thought of asking me to start the practice if I was willing to take the risk. He also found a temporary job for me in the Public Works Department (PWD).

Very few people are aware that there is a Department of Architecture attached to the PWD, but it is very much there, and it has regional offices, headed by an Architect (called the Deputy Architect to Government), who is in charge of providing architectural services for all PWD projects. The one in Aurangabad had recently taken up the task of providing architectural services to the Marathwada University projects, on the condition that the University would provide an assistant for doing all the drafting work, and it was this position that was advertised, and for which I had to give an interview.

I was told that the job was purely temporary and carried a salary of Rs. 500.00 per month - a good offer compared to my then salary at V. T. Kota & Associates of Rs. 425.00 per month. This was my first attempt at any formal interview for a job. I had got the earlier job at with Architect V. T. Kota, by just declaring that I have finished my course and was willing to work. This was OK as I had worked in vacations in his office earlier, and he knew me and my work. Facing an interview in an unknown city  was  totally different matter. But the prospect of independent practice was attractive and hence I decided to resign and caught the bus to Aurangabad.

However, Jayanta failed to materialise even after promising me to pick me up from the bus-stand, and I had no option but to seek a shelter somewhere for the night, convinced that Jayanta was kidding me about the whole affair, and that I must go back the next day. Next day, I remembered that I had a distant cousin settled at Aurangabad after her marriage, and I decided to pay a visit before going back. As luck would have it, after listening to my story, her husband helped me to find Jayanta's office, and I finally met him. If that had not happened, I would not have settled at Aurangabad at all.  

One Year at Nanded City

The starting point was rather uninspiring. We shifted to the Nanded City flat only as a stop-gap arrangement when Pranav, Amruta and Nishant came over from USA, and this flat was ready and in our possession. We were all too aware of it being in the wilderness, what with only a handful of people living in the large 700 acre Township under construction, and the distance from the main gate to the apartment building was a whooping 3 kms. There was no public transport within the Township area, and we had only one car - I had sold off my own car when Pranav went to US leaving his car behind.

Nanded City at the time had absolutely no facilities except for water & electricity, and you had to bring almost everything from outside. Fortunately, Pranav & Amruta, having lived in Jacksonville for the last six years, were used to a similar set-up. There was also the small convenience shopping lot near the apartment block with one grocery shop, one selling milk and milk-products, and the third one selling ice-cream and coffee. The fourth shop was taken up by a curtain-maker-indicating that the people had just started coming in because the first thing you need in a new flat-more than anything else-is curtains for privacy. And nowhere else this was more important than Nanded city where most of the flats were designed to have a good look at each other's bedrooms. Incidentally nobody in India knows that architects have anything to do with housing-no builder ever mentions the name of his architect in his advertisements -so it is not really surprising that people are not aware of mistakes made by the architects in design.

As a long-standing teacher in architecture, every year I have delivered a series of lectures on the aspects of privacy in design of housing, and have hoped to make an impact in the future design of housing through its implementation-but students seldom listen to your lectures anyway. Then again, the major advantage in architectural profession is that you never have to live or work in the buildings you design. For most of the buildings that you design, you only need to have a few photographs-mostly taken from outside-to impress your next set of clients-who are typically builders-and interested in the external visual image of the building to help sell it to gullible buyers-they would never even dream of living in them.

So a flat buyer has to fend for himself dealing with all the commissions & omissions of the architect-but while you can manage the interior spaces & most of your old furniture in your new flat, the curtains have to be tailor-made for the windows of the new apartment. Moreover the typical design of the flats in Nanded city-designed for good views of your neighbour's bedrooms, made provision of curtains almost mandatory.

On way to San Francisco

After coming back from the second USA visit, I was wondering whether there would be any point in going back for the third visit. USA is a young nation, and there is not a single organically developed settlement anywhere. In my first visit, I had been around even through the smaller roads, which went through very small settlements, but all of them had the look of being formally planned along the main high-way. The smaller towns and villages are all alike-you have the main village road with all restaurants and shops, and then all the rest is low-rise housing. Everywhere you go, you meet a similar townscape. It is only when you visit the big cities that the skylines are different, but there too, you have very little variety. Housing in most places is mostly low-rise, with the typical European/British style, built in wood with sloping roofs and large windows-and this has nothing to do with the climate. The style is mixed, Gothic windows with verandahs in renaissance columns, and many combinations of the european/british vintage. So if you have seen one american city, you have seen them all.

Then again, the journey from Mumbai to any place in USA even by plane, is arduous (it takes about 36 to 40 hours door to door) and has always made me wonder how Srinivas gets the energy to carry on all these years. He being an IBM employee, travels by business class, and may have been able to stretch his legs a bit more on the long-haul flights, but it is a tiresome journey, and to top it all, he is supposed to do some work at the end of all that travel.

The only redeeming feature of this kind of travel is that you acquire a bit of edge over people who have never made such trips, and may be able to show off a bit, but finding such people (at least in Pune) is becoming difficult these days, what with almost every other household has a Son or a Daughter (in many cases-both) in some or the other part of USA. Marathi can no longer act as a code language in any of these trans-Atlantic flights and you generally tend to find people who have been doing these flights much longer than you have ever done.

But Mrunalini was quite insistent, and we buckled under the pressure. And anyway, I had always had the urge to see San Francisco, right from the day we saw a mock-up of one of its street views in Orlando. It is a favourite location for Hollywood, with streets sloping in almost an impossible fashion, which is actually the result of putting a straight grid-iron pattern layout on a hilly ground. In some cases the slopes are so steep that the footpaths have steps and you keep wondering whether all those cars parked along the street can stay that way all night.

So it happened that we planned the third trip, and made it this far. Incidentally, we came via Zurich, which is a very straight-forward and easily navigable air-port. On the second trip, we had a stop-over at Paris, and the Charles De Gaulle Airport is a nightmare for the occasional traveler. It is built in stages, has a series of curved terminal buildings which are connected by an underground railway, and after making what seemed to be a correct choice at the time, we got off at the wrong end of the terminal E, and were cheerfully re-directed by the security people. Taking the train back in search of our boarding gate, when we finally reached it, the staff was in the process of closing-we could have easily missed our flight to Atlanta that day.

So when Pranav told me that there would be a stop-over of 6 hours at Zurich, I thought we had made a good decision. Not only we would have sufficient time to find the terminal, we would be able to have some breakfast and wander about a bit, both of which we had missed at Paris earlier. But the Zurich experience turned out to be an anti-climax. After reaching the air-port, which was virtually empty save our own flight, I found out that the incoming and outgoing flights would be operating out of the same terminal. So in a matter of minutes we were at the departure gate. There was virtually nobody around, and all the shops on the terminal were closed. True, it was 6.30 in the morning, but like a railway station, you normally expect the airport terminal to function 24x7. Probably the Swiss had never heard of this. The terminal had a laid back look, and all around the airport you could only see the sleepy hills, and not a soul around. It felt like we had come to a holiday destination when nobody was expected - something that happens when you arrive at Mahabaleshwar in the rainy season.

I also located a deserted smoking lounge, and toyed with the idea of smoking, but had packed all my stock in the checked-in baggage, and there was not a single shop open at the terminal where I could buy cigarettes. So when the duty-free shop opened I was the first one in, only to be told that you can only buy a minimum of ten packs, and that put me off. So finally I settled on a cappuccino at the inflated rate of $7.00, but the fellow at the kiosk said the change shall only be in swiss franks, which I had no use for, so I settled for some cookies at an additional price of $3.00 and gave him the $10 bill, and that was that.

Still, there was a lot of time on my hand, and wandering about I located a kiosk at the airport which promised a free internet for one hour-all set-up with laptops. It was thus I checked my email and sent message to Pranav that we had arrived safely at Zurich and were on our way to SF without any hassle. I even logged on to my facebook page, something that I do very rarely, but found nothing much to comment about except for the fact that we were at Zurich. Finally, around 10.30 am, people started coming in and the terminal was full, and after waiting interminably for the boarding announcement, we boarded at about 12.50 pm.

The flight from Zurich to San Francisco was uneventful, and almost like Zurich, when we landed, ours was the only incoming flight and virtually no queue at the immigration desk. We were outside in a matter of minutes again, and in fact had to wait for Mrunalini & Saurabh for some time. The weather was pleasant and the fresh air smelled exactly like what I had experienced at Jacksonville, when we made the first trip to USA. So here we were, all set for yet another visit to the New world.

Back to square one

This has been so long in coming. It looked as if it was only yesterday that the house was full of people, with so much of confusion and chaos everywhere in the house that I could not find a single thing, and Nishant moving all through the mess as if it was some kind of game.

But I think we should now get used to all this quiet. We started the family with only two of us, and then with Pranav & Mrunal, and now both have their life-partners, have moved out and we are back to where we started-just the two of us.

But this time there is a lot of difference-there is a constant reminder here of people who should be here but aren't. On the dashboard of my laptop, the US East coast timer is on, my mobile has weather forecast for Jacksonville & New York, and hurricane Sandy had a larger presence in our lives than would seem logical.

Of course the life is easier with gadgets, we can see & hear across all this distance through internet. But the first time I saw Nishant on Skype, I could not forget that there was about 20000 miles seperating us, and all I was seeing in front of me was a digital image - devoid of the sense of touch & smell. All this was make-believe-something like what you see in cinema.

Acting Grandfather in Florida

When I made my first trip to US to visit my son Pranav, I had toured most of the east-coast places with him, and had been to some of the great monuments of modern history, including the Guggenheim Museum at New York by F. L. Wright and Seagram building by Mies.

But when it came to the city-scape, almost all the cities had a discernible pattern, and barring the form of individual buildings, there was hardly any difference between one city & another. This similarity of appearance was more predominant in the suburbs than in the main cities, but that too was due to many of the old cities having a historical core, with dated buildings. All in all, I had my fill of the American cities. So after we did the east coast cities I was weary of visiting the west coast cities, though I was told that LA was one of the cities I must visit. I had seen enough, I said, and planned my return journey.

On the way back, little did I think of any more trips to USA. In the first place I was reluctant to make even the first trip, and did it mainly on the insistence of my son Pranav, and my wife, Sampada. After the trip, however, I realised that this was an experience worth having. I had generally known about USA, through literature and movies, but experiencing the spaces first hand definitely surpasses that. The experiential quality of space you visit physically is rich with all the senses - vision, touch, hearing & smell, while the images give you only a part of the experience, and that too has gone through a process of selection by the person who has shot that image in the first place.

But having a grandson changed all that. It was not the question now of visiting any place, it was only a matter of being where your grandson is. So if he is in Florida, you make a trip there, never mind the distance or the expenses. If Pranav had been a scientist working in a laboratory at the Antarctic we would have made a trip to Antarctic. The atmosphere of the place would only have made a change in the kind of preparation we would have made for the trip-a matter of logistics.

So what do you do when you first become a grandfather? It is actually very simple. When you become one, you get into the role automatically. The only difference in my case was that this was an american grandson and that put a lot of responsibility on his father. He had to be present at child-birth, and had to share the entire parenting process. I had not had any of this experience when I became father for the first time. In fact, as I remember, I was told to keep off, as childbirth and everything associated with it is a all-women affair in India.

So it should not come as a surprise that my son, who had become a father in the USA had gone through a training programme on parenting, and when I reached here, it was he who started giving me lectures on 'taking care of the baby'. Never knew he had it in him.

Dada (my father) turns eighty-Sequel 1

When we shifted to our own house in Aurangabad, a special slot in the new house was reserved for the old radio bought by my father way back in the '60s. It was neither working nor repairable - spare parts were no longer available. Still none of us could think of throwing it away, so many memories were associated with it. I remember as a kid the excitement we had when it was brought first in the house, none of the neighbours had it. It must have been very costly at the time, but Dada would never bother about minor details like cost.

In fact, in the matter of money, Dada was (and still is) an aristocrat, he would never mind the cost of things he had a passion about - like when he used to buy tickets for drama. Drama tickets in the sixties would cost about Rs. 8 to Rs. 10 per head (equivalent to about Rs. 1000.00 in today's terms), yet the entire family would be going for the drama.

And it was not that we were rich. We were not, and even at that age I knew it. That is why I remember once asking him whether we should buy used text-books (which were cheaper) in order to save money, but he would have none of it. Every year, each one of us three brothers would get brand new fresh smelling text-books.

Looking back, I think I have inherited this strand of his character along-with a lot of other things. Like most men, I have always been passionate about gadgets & stuff, and did not think twice before buying one of the first generation of mobiles (it cost Rs. 8500.00 in 1998 - about Rs. 30,000 by today's prices). I am a bit more cautious now, and defer a lot of my purchases- I have been planning to buy a bicycle for about an year, but that is a conditioned response.