The Indian Express organized a three-day seminar on the making of Chandigarh, and this piece appeared on the front page on the opening day of the conclave. I lived in Panchkula, and used to often drive home via a small village called Kishangarh. Little urchins would be playing on the narrow road, next to cow dung heaps and the tall wire-gauze which separated the golf course from the village. Both worlds juxtaposed. But the urchins would be often be playing a strange game, trying to push a ball with twigs into a hole. They called it golf. Hide and seek was not among the preferred games. Sometimes I think there is something that Chandigarh’s architecture does to a person.
A soul for ‘city of stones’
S P Singh
Chandigarh
"ONLY cities with a soul entice writers to write about them, like Paris does. Chandigarh is such a khushk city, who will write about it?” Mohan Bhandari, Sahitya Akademi Award winner, rued when asked how many times he has come across references to the city of Chandigarh, its town planning or architecture in popular literature.
Shiv Batalvi too called it a “city of stones.” And many had found cause to protest when Sunil Khilnani, in his much acclaimed The Idea of India, had said that Chandigarh belonged to a nationalist album. And though for Nehru, Chandigarh was “an expression of the nation’s faith in the future,” Khilnani said the city was “also, and ultimately most decisively, the fantasy of its architect.”
“Twice in the twentieth century India has been visited by architectural megalomaniacs: Le Corbusier began work on Chandigarh merely twenty years after imperial New Delhi had been completed to Lutyen’s plans… In his design, Le Corbusier remained blithely unencumbered by any understanding of the world he was building for. His role was that of a prophetic artist, and he played it to perfection,” Khilnani wrote in his unforgiving tone.
But while the city did figure in some popular writings, though too few – Balwant Gargi’s The Naked Triangle and Nayantara Sahgal’s Storm in Chandigarh come readily to mind – a number of litterateurs said far more men of words live in the city than have written about it.
Chandigarh has seen some concerted efforts to take a look at itself, preen hard and prepare for future. Foremost among these efforts was a three-day conference in January 1999 organized by the Chandigarh Administration. Then President K.R. Narayanan, did praise the city highly, but nevertheless awakened us to some of the flaws.
Moving further than just saying, ‘architecture is frozen music,’ Narayanan said, “it is rather a frozen concert (and) like every living city, Chandigarh may be a concert with many a discordant note.”
Narayanan said Le Corbusier’s idea was to “fix the (city) in the matrix of Indian civilization standing tiptoed at the doorstep of the modern age,” but, at the same time, did not forget that design and layout of modest dwellings “does not approach the housing architecture of Laurie Baker who specializes in cheap, but attractive, houses (using) energy-free materials.”
And such is this emotional connection that there is a long line-up of those ready to dig trenches and declare war at any thought of “change.”
But then there are many Chandigarhs – the Chandigarh north of the Madhya Marg is different than the other half, just as Kansal villagers live in an altogether different world, also called Chandigarh. People fighting for water, for electricity symbolize a breaking down of urbanity in the desirable sense, and as these forces of change gather momentum, may be it is time to take again a look at the city, lest we are forced to take a last look at City Beautiful – a city which was once beautiful.
(December 12, 2002)