Landscape Architecture Is The Mother Of All Arts Aniket Bhagwat

TITLE: Landscape Architecture is the Mother of All Arts | Ar Aniket Bhagwat CHANNEL: Q Head DATE: 2026-04-30 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Let’s go. Let’s go. Yeah. All right.

[cough and clears throat] I’m a complete newbie for this conversation. Never [clears throat] had a conversation on landscape architecture before, so I come here with a blank slate with a few or no assumptions about the field. Sure. I mean, I’m also aware that I’m sitting with the legend in this field and I’m I mean I feel really humbled by that. Not that I want to master this field myself. I would really love to understand it, but it seems really captivating. The idea of built environment blending with nature feels really fascinating. My intention with this conversation is to really inspire the budding upcoming landscape architecture I mean architects in India to learn from the insights and experiences you’ve been Yes, thanks thanks for joining me. No, no, thank you. I mean, and first of all, I have to compliment you uh for wanting to investigate and look at things uh which often don’t get looked at. But to show curiosity, I mean, I think to be curious like a child is something that is special and to even spend so much time, I think wonderful. So, thank you and welcome to Ahmedabad again. So, yeah. Thank you. [laughter] I looked at your uh statement you made and one thing that stayed with me was you said you once referred landscape architecture is the mother of all arts. Um Well, I mean, which is even above architecture and above all other art forms. And that statement is so surprising and even counterintuitive to most people. I want to start this conversation with this. So, first of all, I it’s not my statement, right? It’s something that I’ve repeated. It was said by somebody else before. Um and I believe it. I did not say it uh for effect or I did not say it because it just sounded interesting. At the end of the day when you look at any arts, right? I mean, what are you doing? Whether you’re whether you’re working as a painter or a sculptor or an architect, you are working with space. And you are creating things around that space, right? I mean, so that’s that definition of that profession. So, if you look at the idea of emptiness, that everything that it there’s an sense of emptiness. And then around the emptiness, a painter will then draw a line, an architect will build a wall, a landscape architect might plant a tree. When a painter draws a line, it’s in two dimension and it’s a definitive line. He might fuzz it, he might do everything with the line, but it’s a definitive line. When an architect does a line, it’s in three dimension, it encloses space, but it is static. When a landscape architect draws a line, he only has that much control over that line because finally, the landscape architect is working with something that is ever-evolving, ever-changing, and is nature. It’s a living, breathing thing. And using that, the landscape architect has to be able to create ideas of space, ideas of memory, and so on and so forth. Now, when you plant something, it’s that small. But the landscape architect has to say that I’m telling you a story, and that story has to make sense to you today, but that story has to make sense to your grandchildren 50 years from today. Right? Because by that time the trees will grow. And you have to begin to think of the idea of time in a very real sense. Wow. In a very real sense. You cannot talk about time in the manner in which you say people will perceive my work five years down, but they’re perceiving the same work. You’re different people will perceive the work a different work. And yet you’re the author of it. So, as a landscape architect, all you’re doing is you’re setting a ship to sail. And once you’ve set it to sail, all you can do is watch it from the docks. Cuz the ship then has got a life of its own. And you hope that when you set it to sail, you’ve read the winds, you’ve read the currents, Wow. and that it’ll go. And that’s why I think it’s uh you know, one It’s it’s a tremendously satisfying profession. And on the other hand, I love to say, “Well, you know, it’s a great profession because I’ve got God on my side.” If I didn’t have God as my partner, it wouldn’t have happened. Damn, and nature is God, and you have that as your partner. So, that’s why I think it’s a special discipline. So, you have a God component in your practice. Tell me about it. How do you see God in your practice? Every animate and inanimate object in the world has got a sense of being. So, just because it’s a rock, doesn’t make it inanimate. Mhm. It’s got a sense of being. It’s got a sense of presence. And I think that the idea that everything has a sense of presence, that you can begin to forge a relationship with everything around you can only happen if you believe in things that are not easily explained. And that finally is the idea of God, that you believe in things that are not easily explained and you repose your faith. And you say because that is there, things will turn out fine. Mhm. And I think that landscape is a little bit like that. It’s a you know, you really have to put a lot of faith in so things that are beyond your control. I mean, how do you know that one day there will won’t be a huge flood and wash out everything? How do you know that your soil will behave the way that you think it should behave? How do you know that your plans will be resilient? How do you know? 10 years from now, 20 years from now, how do you know? You can keep looking at it, but how do you know? And it has to you have to sit on this ship called faith. Without that, it’s not going to happen. [clears throat] That’s how you manage time. Yeah, that’s how you manage time. And you know, that’s what you that’s what you It teaches you patience, but also teaches you impatience. It also teaches you different ideas of time. Mhm. Meaning that [clears throat] the time of the dinosaurs Mhm. is equally important to you as the time of the butterfly. All ideas of time suddenly become very important because when the flower blooms or lotus blooms in the morning and then goes in the afternoon, it’s the time of the butterfly. And you plant a banyan tree, it’s the time of the dinosaurs. And you have to believe in all different ideas of time. So time is not the clock on the watch on your wrist. Ah. Yeah. It’s something else, right? So you have different lens of looking at time. I mean, this is amazing the way you put it out. Never thought time in in that lens. Want to get more into that. So how further have you seen time? I mean envision time the farthest? I don’t think that because you you’re engaged with the idea of time. You believe in the idea of time, but that doesn’t make give you foresight. I mean that doesn’t necessarily make you a soothsayer. That doesn’t give you the ability of gazing in a crystal ball, right? But you tend to get a sense of the manner in which things will play out. Right? And you get that very deep sense and and that sense starts pervading in everything that you begin to do is starts pervading in a relationship with somebody else. Starts pervading in the manner in which you set about doing a task. And you kind of know, you know, where this is headed and you know where this is going to end. Because in your head you’ve played all scenarios of time and all scenarios of possibilities and then you’ve chosen that one path and you hope that it’s going to work right. So to that extent you understand time differently. Um but you don’t really have any foresight into the future. That I don’t think one does. So did we lose the idea of landscape is the mother of all arts? No idea is ever lost, right? That’s a good thing about ideas. They’re never lost. Uh they can be buried for some time and they can be dormant for some time and one day they will rear their heads and show themselves somewhere or the other. Um do I believe that we lost it we lost our way for some time? Perhaps. Do I believe that we’re beginning to find that way again? Absolutely. I mean absolutely. I see young practitioners today that fill me with delight of the kind of things that they’re doing, right? I mean, so yes, I mean for any idea, right? I mean, there are times when it’s dormant, there are times when some other ideas are layered over it like debris. Um but finally, the idea, if it has power, has the ability to shake it all off and put a puppet’s head up and say, “Hey, I’m there and you know, I’ve got to I think you’re beginning to see that. Yeah, I’m seeing it in a lot of young firms in the country. And I think they’re they’re doing a great job. So, we’ll have good days, we’ll have bad days, but I refuse to believe that an idea is dead. Nice. So, do architects underestimate landscape? Well, you know, you can underestimate something that you understand, right? So, the problem with architecture is that they don’t understand landscape. They’ve not engaged with trying to understand the discipline. Now, it’s not their fault. I mean, it’s just the way that the discipline has gone out and said what it needs to say. Now, if a discipline doesn’t sort of go out and say very strongly that this is what I stand for and demonstrate it, you can’t expect the other person to get in your head and understand what you’re trying to say. I mean, that’s charity. But, the reality is that you will have to go out and demonstrate what that discipline stands for and then people will get it, right? And they’ll get it. Is there a sea change? Right? So, I remember when my father used to practice, uh you know, which is in the ’70s, the best architects in the country and the big names of the country would call him to work on a project. And they would call him to work on a project after everything was done. The buildings were built, the roads were done, the paving was done, and they would call the landscape architect to come and draw up plans, some plans, right? Now, you look at that and that’s 1970 and you know, we are now talking about 20 I mean this has happened for some time but still we are in 2026. We are talking about 50 years later. 50 years later I don’t think that there’s a single project where there isn’t a landscape architect on the There’s not a single project in this country of any scale. I mean it might be a small house and you know, that’s a different thing. But of any scale where a client will not say, “Oh but we need a landscape architect. Who’s going to do?” Now sometimes the architectural firm will rise up and try and deliver the services. But nine out of 10 times they will look for somebody who they think is right. So suddenly So there is absolutely no doubt that the landscape profession is being seen and understood a lot more. Are they doing what they should It’s going to take time. It’s going to take time. Uh in some cases yes, in some cases no. In some cases they’re still very subservient to the architect. And they are unable to state their case clearly. But I know enough and more projects where the landscape architect is hired even before the architect. So there’s that also, right? Um Should the profession be better understood? Yes. Who is to blame? The profession itself. You can’t expect other people to understand you unless you are willing to demonstrate through your work or through your writing what you stand for. And I think that the profession has not done well enough over the last 25-30 years. But I’m beginning to see green shoots. It gets somewhere. So what do architects don’t understand about landscape? I think most architects don’t understand So architects tend to the the very very poor architects, they tend to think that landscape is essentially planting some greens around the building to make the buildings look beautiful. I mean, I do know that 20-30 years back there were architects who said, “Please don’t plant big trees in front of my building.” So, you know, despite the fact that you were working in a very hot climate and they would say, “Please don’t plant because then my elevation will not be seen.” Which was, you know, stupid. Because from the inside of the of the house, do you want to look into vast wasteland or do you want to look at green? But, they didn’t understand that. And they were so, sort of, trying hard to protect what they were doing. Uh but I don’t think that they understand that the landscape architect as a discipline is that one person who has the ability of understanding land, fundamentally land. So, when you start dealing with land, uh you can’t treat land as a as a flat stainless steel plate. You have to treat land with everything that is in it, the organisms in it, the quality of soil, where water accumulates, where water will run, where you will start seeing some moisture in the ground, and so on and so forth. You need to understand and assess that land. And basis that, you need to start saying if you want this land to be better after we finish the project. Because that is your job. Then there are certain moves that we will have to do about the way water should flow on the ground, or the way sunlight should be utilized, or the way shade should be cast. Now, if you do that, then when you finish the project, the the chances of the land will get better and better and better. It’ll form a good ecosystem. Architects don’t understand that. They still tend to treat land as a flat piece of metal. And on that they will build what they want to do, and then they will supplant what they want to do. They don’t understand land as a living organism. That sense planners and architects just well, disciplinarily they don’t have. So, as a result there’s very little empathy on land. There’s very little empathy on natural processes. But that’s the real problem. I would think the day they begin to understand that and the same architect will be deeply concerned about building solar passive architecture or you know, doing this kind of ventilation or getting natural light. So, it’s not like they don’t understand it. Mhm. But they don’t really expand their understanding and saying, “Oh, if you’re worried about this, then you’re going to put foot on this piece of land.” So, when you put foot on this piece of land, you need to understand it. You need to understand everything about it before you’re going to do something to this land. You need to spend time with this land. That nobody does and I think that’s that’s a bit of a problem. It’s amazing way to think about it. Like before you want do something with the land, understand the land first. And then would that change the all the how the form would come up from the ground the It’ll Yeah, I mean it’ll certainly change the way you walk over it, right? It’ll change the way you occupy it. That definitely will change. But in the absence of it, there are different parameters that will come into play. Uh and those parameters may not be the parameters of the understanding of the land. So, the feeling of walking over the land, it’s really under appreciated. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Don’t take that into consideration when you design project. The the Yeah, the feel of walking bare feet barefoot on the ground of your own garden and uh So, you would say how humans interact with the land is also a parameter to consider when you Absolutely, and to observe it. I mean, you know, when we do projects um in the studio when they’re large pieces of land um we actually and literally, I mean, show you drawings later. Uh we actually spend months just drawing the land. Mhm. So, we’re just doing drawings of the land. It could be a barren of land, but we’re still doing drawings of the land. Why? Because you understand texture. You understand, you know, the kind of soil. You understand where it gets lumpy. You’re just doing those and you will understand where the tuft of grass has come up. And you begin to sort of become one with that place. And I don’t want this to sound like, you know, it’s some very philosophical thing, but the very fact that you engage with something for long, you understand the thing better. So, like we’ve done drawings of the way leaves will fall. So, let’s say our site has got three different kinds of trees, and when there’s leaf fall, they fall differently. And when they fall differently, sometimes they’ll fall make a little bed, and sometimes they will scatter, and sometimes the leaf will be heavy, and sometimes they’ll blow in the wind. No, I’m not necessarily saying that all this gets translated back into design. So, then if somebody says, “Oh, you made those drawings, but where is that now in your design?” It may not be, but you made those drawings, and hence you thought about it. And then somewhere in the back of your mind you cared. And perhaps somewhere it’s there in your design. And hence your designs are a little more sensitive, a little more thoughtful, a little more deeper than just doing something. It’s engagement. I mean, I don’t think it’s, you know, Mhm. You you have to be engaged with things. Would you say more sensitive you are more better the design? Absolutely. Without any doubt. Without any doubt. I mean, how can you design for a piece of land if you’re not been there at midnight? How can you design for a piece of land if you’ve not seen the sunrise in there in the morning? On what basis are you going to design it? You can’t design it by going at 11:00 and saying I’m going to spend 1 hour looking at the site and come back, right? And it’s not always possible to do it, but you sort of figure out a ways that you keep visiting it often even while you’re designing it. And go at different times of the day. Go early morning, go sometime late in the evening, go in the afternoon, go when the sun is really bad. You just spend time and some and you keep observing. And while you’re even sketching and drawing and people in the office are beginning to work on it, somewhere at the back of your mind you’re bringing all that conversation on to saying, “Hey, but you know, maybe we should do this.” And hey, but you know, that happened and and so on and so forth. I think I think there has to be this constant conversation with the process of design and the conversations of land. And they’re not a one-time thing. They keep happening. And slowly slowly you’ll reach somewhere which hopefully is thoughtful. So, I’m also fascinated by uh every human civilization had a characteristic landscape. Babylonian Hanging Gardens and things like that. Every civilization has a particular way of interacting with it. Landscape and styles are different, but that tells something very basic quality of human nature. I haven’t heard about Indian garden. Like we all about heard about British, Babylonian, Japanese, Chinese, all this, but help me visualize a picture of Indian context. Yes. So, you know about and you know, it’s a it’s a topic that I that’s quite close to me. So, about 10 12 years back, you know, I I’ve been practicing for a long time and it was beginning to bother me as to what is this idea of the Indian garden? What is this idea of the Indian landscape? If you start looking at our history, right? I mean, from the writings of Kautilya or you know, writing in Shakuntala, where the cloud messenger sort of is going up in the sky and the cloud messenger is going to deliver a message and while is going to deliver the message starts describing these courtyard gardens of the palaces and so on so forth. So, we have it in Vedic and post-Vedic literature. We all know, I mean, everybody that all our festivals, all our religions are deeply connected with processes of the land or nature. So, in that sense, you know, we like to tell ourselves that as a as a as a tribe, as a as a as people, uh we are very connected with the seasons or the our land. I mean, you know, today is the first day of the Chaitra month, which is Gudi Padwa for us, right? And that’s why, I mean, it’s also the day that Ram came back to Ayodhya, but it’s also the change of the season. And you celebrate it. The harvest season is celebrated. So, one knows that. But despite that, you don’t really find the expression of saying, “Okay, what does all this mean when you start talking about the Indian garden?” So, we sent out letters to everybody in the country. I mean, students, friends, everybody. And we said, “Look, I mean, if you come across in your region what you would like to call a garden. Whatever you’d like to call a garden, send it to us.” So, from Shillong, from Meghalaya, from north, from Karnataka, from, you know, from Visakhapatnam, everywhere, we started getting all of these examples. Different very different. So, we kept on looking at the nature of examples that kept coming. And slowly, I think what we began to understand that in the Indian context, you have you have to be able to define the idea of the garden as a space that is circumscribed, is defined. But the definition of that space is not the limit of the space. The space goes beyond. The garden jumps beyond, right? So, it it’s not my compound. It’s my compound and the sky. It’s my compound and the tree outside my house. It’s my compound and the hills there. It’s my compound and the river there. It’s my compound and the water, whatever it is. That the definition of your space is not limited to the immediacy of what you’ve created. That is connected to something larger. And in that, you enact a daily act of ritual. And that ritual can be very simple. That ritual can be I will go every day in the morning and pick up tulsi leaves and put in my tea. Or I will go every day in the morning and pick up three flowers for my puja. Or I So, ritual can be very very simple. But there is an enactment of a ritual that is engaged in that space everyday and somehow that ritual is connected to something larger than your garden. And then I started looking at examples across the world. And I said, do other people think like that? And I said, they actually don’t. They don’t. I mean, so it’s an Eastern thing. I mean, not you know, it may not be purely an Indian thing, but it’s an Eastern thing to begin with. The act of ritual in your small garden. Now, sometimes it could be produce, right? I mean, with all in Kerala, for example, everybody’s got gardens that produce food. And there’s a fish tank in the garden, and there’s a coconut tree in the garden, and there’s a curry leaf tree in the garden, and everyday something is picked up from there. There is an act of enactment in that garden everyday. There’s an act of ritual. And I said, that is the idea of the Indian garden. That you’re connected with a human ritual that expands itself to a kind of cosmic connection. And I said, that’s good for me. You know, because then it suddenly allows me to look beyond styles. It suddenly allows me to look beyond form and structure. So, when you look at Mughal gardens, they’re about form and structure. When you look at British gardens, they’re about form and structure. But here, there are gardens which are not about form and structure. They’re about the thought that is embedded in them and the manner in which that thought is expressed everyday. And that I thought was and anything that fits into that is an Indian garden. So, in Kutch there is a place called Kala Dungar. Now, of course, it’s not a great place, but the place is called Kala Dungar. And earlier on top there used to be a temple. And legend has it that one god fought a war and many parts of his bodies were strewn all over and one part was thrown there. And it’s still and silent and from you don’t hear a sound. You don’t see a single human being. And then every day in the morning at the time of Prasad a bunch of wolves come from nowhere every day. And they eat the Prasad and go. And I said that’s our Indian garden. There’s nothing. And from there something happens. And ritual gets enacted and life goes back to normal. So I thought that was pretty good. And that’s the thought that has stayed with me as the idea of the Indian garden. Wow. Yeah. It’s not defined, right? Like even it’s a centered around a ritual. That’s the way to define it because otherwise you’ll end up looking at forms, right? And you will go and say the Japanese in a tea garden is going to form like this. The Japanese in a waterfall garden is going to form like this. The Mughal garden where it’s in the hills or the plains at a four square grid and water was taken in a certain manner. It responded to the earlier manners in which canals got water in the desert. The British, you know, had this idea of rolling landscapes and so on and so forth. The Renaissance landscapes were different. The Baroque lands But they were all about form. And the absence of form Something else had to happen, right? I mean, how can you have an entire nation that is planting every day, that has got little gardens every day and they don’t have form. It’s also true that India is many countries put together. Right. Right. I mean, that’s also true. We keep talking about India as if it’s one unified country, but we all know that it became politically unified not so long back. And despite that, our distinctions continue and we are different people. So it’s not easy to put India in the same basket as you’d put Great Britain or as one of the smaller countries. We are a complex country. And yet there’s something that binds us. I mean, you know, jokingly cricket binds us and cinema binds us, but I think though this idea of ritual also binds us. Nice. Like when someone says you’re one of the top landscape firms in the world, what does that actually mean in real terms? It means nothing in real terms. [laughter] To be honest, it means nothing in real terms. It just means that when you’re feeling a little low and down, you have a pick-me-up coffee. That’s all it actually means. See, I don’t think it means anything dramatically more than that. Um it’s a nice It’s It’s a good feeling, right? I mean, it’s a good feeling because um in India, you don’t really have enough and more forums to be able to discuss these things. For architecture, a little better. Uh landscape, not really. But there are lots of other disciplines that don’t have forums. Um when you don’t have forums of peers and uh how do you measure? How do you evaluate yourself? I mean And at some level, I think all of us need to measure ourselves. To say, you know, am I doing the right thing? I mean, as simple as that. This is not about any ego. This is not about feeling, you know, “Oh my god, you know, I’ve done something special.” It’s about I work every day in the morning. I get up. I come to the office. I spend 10, 12, 14 hours. 30 years I do this. 40 years I do this. Am I doing the right thing? I mean, you know, it’s a simple question. And who will tell me, right? Now, you can decide the measures or the metrics of doing it, right? So, a lot of people will turn around and say, “Well, you’re making a lot of money. And you have successful office and you have money to buy things. That’s the dumbest metrics. That’s the dumbest metrics to follow. Any fool can make money. So, and there are other ways to make better money than you know, doing this. So, that cannot be a metric. So, that’s out. You got happy clients? The clients? Well, you know, it’s not as if they know better. It’s not as if they know the discipline better. Based on their expectations, they’re happy with what you’ve done. Their happiness is not necessarily an indication of excellence, right? I mean, they’re happy because their job is served. So, that also can’t be a metric. So, then you say, “Okay, you know, then what do you do?” So, you look at peers. My and there are different kinds of peers. So, there’s that one kind of peer who will always walk up and say, “Oh, you do such but you know that’s not serious. You know that person doesn’t even know what you’re doing but you know, he’s just responding to he’s just being polite or something. Then you have some friends who can really light a fire, right? And those ones you really care for. But they’re also very close to you. Right? So, you even if they light a fire, you don’t actually know whether it was a conversation of the evening, whether it was a long-term thing, but them you really care for. Your family, your few friends. So long as if they don’t hold you in good esteem, then I think anyways you’re doing something very, very wrong, right? But beyond that, then how do you measure yourself? I mean, how do you do it? So, every now and then, you know, when something happens globally or you get people talk well about you or they write about you. It’s a good feeling. It’s a good measure to say, “You know, I guess you’re doing something right. Um but beyond that, I don’t think it It should not mean and it does not mean. It should not mean much. So, who are they? Are they IFLA? International IFLA. IFLA, okay. So, they are the ones who validate it’s a good work. Yeah, they do. I mean, when when So, the ISOLA, the Indian Society of Landscape Architects, which is in affiliation to the IFLA, was set up by us. My father and I set it up with a bunch of people. Uh and that’s how ISOLA came to India. And then, you know, in the first few years, I participated in the IFLA Pacific Awards and won them. And then I stopped participating because I said to this awards is also a problem. Right? I mean, one and I’ve also sat on juries. I said, you know, they’re not done so seriously. I mean, you know, you’re picking up something out of what is in front of you. That doesn’t make it good, right? Because if you’ve got bad entries and your entry is decent, then you’ll win. Um or if somebody’s not spending enough time and your photographs look better than the other person, you’ll win. I said, you know, that’s not a real measure at all. I mean, these awards are not Unless of course, you know, it’s a Nobel Prize or it’s a Pritzker or it’s a Pulitzer. I mean, some awards matter, but a lot of these awards don’t matter at all. So, what matters to me or what I heed carefully is when a serious practitioner or a serious writer or a serious academic talks to you and tells you what he or she thinks about your work or engages with you and writes to you and seeks your opinion. To me, those are the measures that So, there is a Wonderful, wonderful um landscape architect in Chile. Called Juan Juan Grimm. Brilliant. I met him many years back. We were in Australia and he was giving a talk and I was giving a talk and that’s how I met him. Spent 5 days with him. And that was it and after that he’s English is not very good. So he doesn’t stay in touch with me and even if I sent him a mail which initially I tried he was unable to read it. So then he would go to somebody to get it translated. He would never reply back. So anyways, I mean I thought very warmly of him based on that 5-day over intervention. And I suppose he thought warmly of me. Then one day his book was coming out. A book good publisher was printing a book on Juan Grimm. And suddenly the publisher got in touch with me and said, “Will you write an introduction to Juan Grimm?” I was like, “Me? I mean I just know this man for 5 days. I mean, you know, and I’m sure he’s in Chile and you you know, you have the world to He said, “No, no, he’s very keen that you write.” Wow. Right? I said, “Okay. I mean, give me a couple of months because I like to see his work and now really think about his work and write a forward.” Now, that means a lot to me. When a very good practitioner globally known says that I’m going to there’s a book coming out on on on me and I want you to write it. There’s some respect. He’s respecting the mind. He’s respecting the way that you’re thinking. He may not be respecting my work. Right? But he’s respecting the way that you are looking at work or you will look at my work or you will engage with me. To me that is special. These sort of things are special. So nothing changed after the awards? Let me tell you something. So there’s a magazine in this country that puts up a list of the 100 best designers every year. And a lot of people fight to get in this list. Uh you know, they get into this. Then they use their photographs. They get photographed wearing nice clothes. And they put it on the Instagram handle and say we are part of this 100 best people every year. So, one day, one year, we suddenly found ourselves on that list. So, I was a little surprised. I said, you know, I have not sent anything. And so, why I mean, how on the list? I said, “Anyways, you know, it was everybody was very happy. Oh, you know, all that.” Next year again, I found myself on the list list. I said, “What is this? I mean, what is this logic?” So, I wrote to the editor. And I said, “The next year, in case you are planning that we should be on the list, please don’t put us on the list.” Editor wrote back. Said, “That’s not your decision to make. Your material is in public domain. And if it’s in public domain, we can make our own list. We don’t have to take your permission to put you in the list.” I said, “Yes, but I would appreciate that, you know, I’m not there in that list.” He said, “Why?” First of all, I said, “I don’t like this horse trading and horse numbering. You know, what is this list? I mean, who’s making the list? And first of all, what is this list?” So, anyways, the next year again, we were on the list. On the fifth year, the editor changed. And the editor wanted some desperate help for some exhibition that they were putting up. And they wanted some material from us. And they really wanted it in a hurry. I mean, like, “Can you send it tomorrow? Can you send it day after?” I said, “I’ll will it to you on one condition. That you will get me out of this list for the rest of my life.” And so, I sent them the material and now we are off the list. I hate that idea. I hate looking for cheap public acclaim. Because ultimately, what it will do it hollows you. I mean, it you start thinking that that’s important. It’s not important. It’s one little measure along life. What is finally important is how you are engaged with your work every day. That’s what’s important. And if you start looking at that as a measure of your importance, then your work starts moving towards, you know, seeking that kind of acclamation or that kind of reaffirmation. And that’s a very dangerous space because then you’re playing with your own head. And why would you play with your own head? No, the least the one thing you want to do is protect your head. And not let it be assailed by these things which are not healthy, so. So, what does landscape architecture do that architecture alone cannot? So, there’s a friend of mine and one day I was sitting with him and you know, he had invited me to work on a project. And his sister is an interior designer. So, he said, “Aniket, what do landscape architects do?” I said, “Everything outside the building, we do.” Anything outside the building. He said, “You know, this is strange. I just met my sister and asked her, ‘What do you interior designers do?’ And she said, ‘Everything inside the building, we do.’ So, what do architects do? We just make that little skin. So, but it was a joke, but the fact is landscape architecture is a profession that is not dependent on architects. It has got nothing to do with architects. The only thing it’s got something to do with architects is that it’s called landscape architecture. It could have been called anything else. So, first of all, it’s a fallacy to believe that the work of landscape architects has not anything to do with the work of architects. It also has things to do with the work of architects. But landscape architects will do cities, they will do roads, they will do public parks, they’ll do natural reserves, they’ll do industrial landscapes, they will do wetland conservation. I mean that world is there and in that world they will engage with the world of buildings also. Wow. So first of all I the scope or the breadth of what landscape architects have done not in not in India I mean in India a little lesser, but globally have done is that anything that is part of {quote} unquote the outside is the realm of the landscape architect. It could be a forest, it could be a highway, it could be a river, it could be a city road, whatever. This is something that a landscape architect can lend his skills to or her skills to. Sometimes he or she might be part of a multi-disciplinary team, sometimes they may lead the team, whatever. But they have certain skills. I think the sadness in me sometimes is that we really haven’t understood the breadth and the power of this profession. Right. Right. I mean you cannot do an urban planning exercise without having a landscape architect on board. You can’t lay a highway without having a landscape architect on board. You can’t do a irrigation project without having a landscape I mean you need that one person who makes the connection between land and the act of man in a manner in which you negotiate it so that the right relationships are expressed and fostered. You are really that person. I think that’s the that’s the truth, right? I mean So, I’m not very fussed about whether architects understand landscape architects or not. I mean, they’re just one little part of what you do. Wow. Yeah. The breadth is so amazing. Absolutely. India really under-appreciates this field, and most of them do not know this field exists. I mean, as I said earlier, it’s changing a little bit, but I think you’re right. Right. Yeah. [laughter] You know, many years back, my father had just started the practice. And you know, those days no nobody knew what a landscape architect was. So, he was going around looking for work. So, somebody told one very big industrial house in town saying that there’s so this is a man called Bhagwat, and he will do your garden for you. This state said, “Call him.” So, at 7:30 in the morning, my father reaches the house of this industrialist. And he’s on a scooter, and along with him is his man Friday who used to execute those gardens. He would come on a cycle, they decided to meet at a place, and then they landed there. And they’re waiting outside the gate. There’s house not allowed inside the gate. The watchman goes and tells them that so somebody has come for the garden. So, in the balcony the industrialist is shaving, and he steps out in the balcony, and he sort of is looking down. And he tells the watchman, “Where are those people?” He says, “Here they are.” He says, “No, no, who’s going to do the garden?” He said, “Them.” “But he’s wearing a pant and a shirt. How will he do work?” So, that was the notion that the landscape architect was somebody who would I mean, there was nothing like a landscape architect. The guy would come and start digging your soil and start working, and he would make you a garden. That somebody would design your garden. That somebody would design the space. That somebody would design think about everything, do drawings, and then give it to somebody who would then execute That’s an idea didn’t exist. From that we’ve come a fair long way now, so Your father indeed started this field in start the field. In India, fathered off the field. I mean, yes, he’s often called as the first professional landscape architect in the country, but I think uh there are four people Mhm. that this discipline owes its gratitude to. There is somebody called Ravindra Bhan in Delhi. There’s somebody called Satish Khanna who’s still living Wow. in Delhi. There’s somebody called Ram Sharma in Delhi, and there’s my father. Four people in the ’50s came to India from education or learning about landscape architecture in different parts of the world. My father went to Denmark and then went to England. Uh Satish Khanna and Ravindra Bhan went to America. Ram Sharma, I’m not so sure. And they all came back with learning new things because, you know, the first professional course of landscape architecture in the world was in the 1950s. Right? So, early days. And they came and they really set the foundations of this discipline in the country. So, yeah, I mean, we owe it to them more than anybody else. Tell me about that person, your dad. Not about his work, but as a person. Who was he? My grandfather was an accountant. And uh near what is now Dombivli in Bombay, he used to work on a flower farm. And he used to keep accounts. And Dombivli wasn’t a very good place to live in. In those days, it was really outside nowhere. And so he wanted to get a job in Pune so that his children could study and so on and so forth. So one day he went to Pune. And he went around asking for jobs. And somebody told him that the Empress Botanical Garden has a job for an accountant. So luckily, they had an accountant before him who uh coincidentally was also called Bhagwat. And who had swindled some money. So that accountant had been sacked. And so this man came and he knew how to write accounts. So he was kept on the job. Now, you know, in a botanical garden, there are not so many accounts to do. I mean, what accounts do you have to do? So he had a lot of time. And because he had a lot of time and he was living on the botanical garden, he started learning about plants. Started reading about it. And very soon, he became very, very good at understanding plants. And you know, the British were beginning to leave the country or they’d left. They had to decide who was going to become the next superintendent. And they realized that this Bhagwat, who was actually an accountant, had learned enough. So they made him the superintendent. And once they left, of course there were financial troubles. It was not working well. And he did many things so that he made it financially solvent. My father grew up on that botanical as a young kid. And he learned about plants from the age of four. And so the gardeners there taught him about understanding and looking at plants. So from the age of four and five, he started developing an incredible affinity of looking at plants like they were members of family. Wow. I’ve seen my father crying when he would see a certain tree on bloom or when he would see you know, the wind that would waft through a tree and the way that the the the leaf was held and it would sort of run in circles and he would keep watching it and call me and say, “Look, look, look.” I mean, he had that sort of love for plants in his life. Wow. Uh so, of course, you know, when he grew up there, went to the agricultural college in Pune and he told my grandfather that, you know, if he did well would my grandfather send him abroad. My grandfather said yes, knowing that he would never do well, right? But, he did. So, he topped. And so, he got sent to Denmark. He worked with Sørensen, who’s a great landscape architect. I have a drawing of his in my cabin. And Sørensen realized that this man was keen on learning landscape. So, he said, “Look, Bhagwat, if you really want to learn landscape, there’s a new program of landscape that has just started in Newcastle in Tyne in in England. That’s perhaps where you want to go. Brian Hackett was teaching there.” So, my father went there. Um he was a good student. Uh and but decided to come back to India. Brian told him at that point of time that, “Honey, you know, Bhagwat, you don’t realize that if you go back to India in the world of landscape at that point, even in England was where you will need to deal with, as he said, this Britisher you’ll have to deal with barbers, butchers, and beggars. You know, that’s the quality of people that you’ll have to deal with because they won’t understand your profession.” He said, “Whatever it is.” And so, he came back to India. My grandparents were getting old. Um and I a checkered life. I mean, came back to India, settled in Bombay, taught at JJ College in those days. Realized that he was not going to get any design work. He was getting contracting work, but not design work. And he wanted to be a designer. So, he decided um to go to IIT in Kharagpur and decide to study more. So, he became a town planner. Started in the 19 I think 52 53, he tried to start the first program of landscape architecture in Kharagpur. It didn’t work. I mean, I think it they ran it for maybe a year. Didn’t work. Um And by 1962 63, he had come to Ahmedabad to give a lecture. And NID was just being formed. And in the middle of the lecture, Gira Sarabhai, who was the doyen of NID, offered him a job. At the same time, he had a job. He was offered a job at the Punjab National University as a as the dean or something for the Department of Landscape Architecture that they wanted to start. This is 1964 65, the winds of the war, and war was breaking out, and he wondered whether Punjab was a good place to go Mhm. as against Ahmedabad, which is closer to Poona, where my grandparents were. So, he took the job that was closer to my grandparents. Came to NID, worked in NID till 1972. Then left NID, and he was called to go to Delhi to start the first program of landscape architecture in Delhi. He went there, didn’t like Delhi. He thought it was too bureaucratic, it was too stuffy, it was too political, and his, you know, and so, he just came back. Um He left that job. You know, now he didn’t have a job. So, all his friends, including this friend who had, you know, by that he had become a friend by that time. Uh, Navneet bhai is his name. And another friend called, uh, H.M. Joshi. Uh, they said, “You know, Bhagwati, start an office now.” He said, “Look, I don’t have money.” I mean, so So, one of them had a barsati, a little terrace room, which was, I think, literally this size. And I remember going to the inauguration. And he said, “You take that place and, you know, make it your office.” The other, Navneet bhai gave him a check. And said, “How much money do you need to run your household every month?” And I think in those days it was some 3,000 rupees 4,000. He said, “You keep this check. At at the end of every month, if you run short of money, you fill in that extra amount. So, that your household is running, and you come to me and take another check.” Luckily, he didn’t have to do it, but that’s how he started the firm in 1973. Um, I think First of all, I don’t think that there has been anybody in the country, and I don’t think there will be anybody in the country before and after him, who knew plants as well as he did. And this was not botanical knowledge. This was not This was knowing plants like knowing people. So, it’s not about saying I know the Latin name, and I know how it’ll grow, or what its root system is. That, of course, he knew. But, it’s about knowing these little things about every plant. You know, he would turn a leaf around and say, “Look how this green is so different from the top. Or look how the venation in this leaf, if you hold it against the sun, see how what happens to it. Or look what happens when you take this flower and crush it your hand and smell it. He knew things like that about every plant. Like he was encyclopedic in his knowledge. Wow. And I think that was his great love. That was his biggest love. Uh he didn’t come from a design background, right? I mean, he was agriculture and then landscape architecture, which really wasn’t focused on design in those days. He came from the love of plants and the love of nature. And And he’d done town planning, so he understood some planning. Um and I think his, you know, my my grand my grandmother on my mother’s side was a teacher in the village. My mother was a principal in a college. My father had spent enough time teaching. And I think that was in the blood. So teaching and imparting knowledge, I think, was more important than doing work or doing projects. I mean, you did projects because you because you had to survive, but I think his greatest joy was to sit with young young people and tell them stories. And even when he taught, I don’t think he was ever bothered about, you know, whether his students doing well or not doing well or is the student lazy or hardworking. He was like rain. You know, he just battered. He just fell on you. You decided to have fun with it, good. You decided not to have fun with it, one day you would realize that you had fun with it. And he was just like that all his life. So, it’s something he was a different man. So, what did he teach you that you couldn’t that couldn’t be taught in the classroom? You know, fathers teach children many things. And relations with fathers and sons always fraught with love and tension. Um but I think more than anything else, I think I don’t think it was about what he taught me about landscape. I mean that I’m sure genetically I imbibed something I should hope. But I can’t put my finger on what that was. Um but I think he taught me middle-class values and and we stuck with it. I mean that, you know, being ethical above all. Being honest above all. Being hard-working above all. And you know, you just realize that later in life. You realize later in life that at the end of the day that’s all you have. You have your ability to work hard. And you have your ability to protect protect your reputation by being ethical. That’s the only currency you have. You have no other currency, right? You don’t have a factory. You don’t have land. You don’t have ancestral wealth. Your only currency is your ability to work hard and protect your reputation. That’s your only currency. And that currency you never let I get diluted even a little bit. Wow. And I think that is something that has stayed Luckily, we’ve not strayed. You know, we held on to that and it’s worked. So, why did you decide to continue the legacy? No. Where was the first time you fell in love with the idea of landscaping? I didn’t. I didn’t. I’ve said this publicly and you know, I have no shame in telling you this story. Um it’s a story. So, as I was just saying, you know, in the break, I was a very good student in in school. And I used to do a very good school. I was a good mountaineering, youngest climber in India at the age of 14. I climbed, yeah. I had my name in the papers. I was on the basketball team and I used to do something called social service league. And every weekend and holidays we would go and work in the slums and uh dig foundations, clean up things and I used to enjoy that. This was a Catholic school. A Jesuit school. And one day we went to a camp we were working. I was completely stupid but there was a dog and he was had a Christian name. I said here I’m in the middle of nowhere and how does this dog get a Christian name? I was young of course. 13 years old. And somebody said oh but you know he had this name and they didn’t change it. I said no that’s not right. I mean how can you do that? And somewhere in the back of my head I said you know so we I go and people like me go and do this work and then it gets used for things like this and this is not right. So I went and picked up a fight with the father in the school. A wonderful man. A father Arrupe. I mean I owe a lot to him. I said this is not right. He said I can’t do that. I said no no but it’s not right. You should have told me I said. You know you should have told me it was fine. I was hot headed. And I decided to leave school. And they came the father father Arrupe who was really like my father came and said don’t be silly I mean you can’t do this. Headstrong. And I leave school. My mother was a principal in the in another school in Ahmedabad and you know I could get admission for the 11th and 12th there. This was an all boys school that was a co-ed school. Girls. Uh and also distraction. And I had a whole bunch of friends, some of them are still friends, who didn’t really think that, you know, education was anything. And I was a very good student in Xavier’s. So, I joined this place and for 2 years, I don’t think we attended too many classes. We’re mostly outside the classes and doing this and the other. And of course, my grades plummeted. So, by the time the 12th standard happened, my grade was 50.something or 51.something. Those days, of course, you know, there was no I mean, anyways, medicine was not something I wanted to do. So, you know, that was anyways out, but also not what I So, you couldn’t get admission in medicine, you couldn’t get admission in engineering. The only admission you could get was in BSC, right? So, I took admission. I was mindless about, you know, what this is going to be. A friend of mine, who was a very good architect and still continues to be a friend, and we were in school together in Xavier’s. He one day came cycling to my house. He says, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I don’t know.” Yeah. He said, “Why don’t you apply for architecture?” So, I said, “Yeah, sure.” You know, I had Maybe my father was a landscape architect, but his father was an architect, also very well known. He says, “Why don’t you apply for architecture?” I said, “Okay, fine.” So, we went In those days, you could apply in CEPT with a very poor grade. Like today, if I had to apply for CEPT, there was no chance that I would have gotten in, right? I mean, they would wouldn’t have allowed me to even apply. So, there was an open examination and, you know, both of us did very well. And I got into CEPT. There was no real love for architecture. I mean, I was no sort of floating in life. The five years went and you know, I was in and out of class. I was not really there on top. Occasionally I did well, but mostly I didn’t. Mostly I was there. And so five years of architecture is done. You’re you’ve wasted, you know, whatever life. So now what do you do? Right? So just seemed like the natural thing to do is to well, your father’s a landscape architect. So maybe you should become a landscape architect. So I went and applied in Delhi because in those days that was the only program. And I got admission. And in the second week in a class discussion I was saying something. And this is girl who continues to be a very good friend today and she was from Delhi. And she kind of looked at me and said you’re from SEPT, right? So what does that mean? See, you guys from SEPT can only talk, no? I mean, you can’t actually do anything. And it hurt me. It hurt me so badly. I mean, it was like one little incident, but it hurt me. I said, “Damn, I mean, what is this? Really? Is that what they think about me? Not about us, about me?” And then for the next two years I don’t think I slept at all. I mean, I would I read every book. So anyways, I’ve I’ve always been a good reader. So at the age of 10 and 11 I’ve I you I’ve read books that people don’t read till they’re 30. I mean, so So for two years I read everything that there is. Everything that was possible. Art, philosophy, landscape, whatever. Started topping. I started topping in everything that I was doing. In the first three or four months I realized that you know topping here is not going to mean too much because the faculty wasn’t that great. It wasn’t such a great program. So if you’re going to top in a mediocre college in you know you know you’d be good for your head but [laughter] So I said no but you know now that I’m beginning to enjoy this. I started creating for myself completely abstract questions within the projects that we had to design. So if somebody turned around and said here design the landscape for a stadium and that’s your brief I would say yeah you know you have to design the landscape for the stadium but within that I would explore the meaning of kindness aesthetic theories. Do an assignment on the history of Indian art but within that I would say now I will look at the paintings of Abanindranath Tagore and Tintoretto’s painting and Susanna and the elders and through that find the idea of space. So I started creating for for myself these sub projects. And I enjoyed I just enjoyed. I just enjoyed what it was doing to my mind. I just enjoyed the kind of questions that I was and I think it became an addiction. I mean you know and then because you started enjoying that you started you know asking deeper and deeper questions. So this wasn’t first love. You know this happened and even when I joined my father I was a good student. I mean by that I topped I got the gold medal whatever. But it didn’t necessarily [clears throat] mean I was a good designer. Right? And my father had a very different style of doing work. So the first few years was not easy because you know there was a reconciliation of two completely different ways of doing things. And for the first two years, yes, I was doing a lot of work, but I don’t think I was very confident about the work that I was doing. And so in ‘86, ‘87, I started doing work. There was an architect in town who was a senior from SEPT, and he was doing a lot of real estate work. And, you know, he liked me, I guess. So, he said, “Come, you know, whatever projects I’m doing, you do the landscape.” So, I would do the landscape for that housing colony or whatever, and because I was doing the whole landscape for the housing colony, a lot of the people who had homes in it um would commission me. So, you know, every year I was doing 30 projects and lots. After 2, 3 years, I went to see those projects, and none of them existed. Because, you know, these are small gardens, and housewife didn’t know. You also didn’t understand that, you know, you thought that your job ended the day you did the planting, hm not realizing that the day you did the planting was childbirth day. You had your job then to take, you know, you didn’t understand that. I said, “This is not good.” You know, I have a list of projects, but nothing. Luckily, there was an industrial estate that was beginning near uh Surat, which Hazira. And the office has got a lot of big projects, like 500 acres, 1,000 acres, stuff like that. This is 1990. Wow. And so, I was working on all those projects, and I said, “You know, at least the industrial projects will stay.” Mhm. And realized, of course, that, you know, the moment that they wanted to expand and build a new factory, the first thing they did was dig the garden, you know, because those it wasn’t like the factory had garden space. Right. But whatever was left open was what was given to God. So this is 1993.

I’ve been working for 8 9 years. And had nothing to show for it. Really nothing to show for it. I mean if you had met me in ‘94 and said show me work, I would have been very ashamed of myself. I would have given you a list of these are my projects.

[snorts] But you were if you had said no show me work I would have said no no you know I haven’t photographed them. I mean those days anyways you didn’t photograph. Shruti, my wife who you met yesterday. Oh you Do you meet her yesterday? No you you’ll meet her today. So she we work together. Sitting I said Shruti, what are we going to do? I mean you know 8 years and is this going to be our life? Like is our life going to be like everybody else’s life that we will keep saying we’re doing projects but think no. So we said no no this is not right so we are not going to do work till such time as somebody comes and convinces us that they care about landscape. Mhm. Which was very stupid because in those days Where are you going to wherever I started saying this to people they used to say hell with you and you know nobody gave me work. Two three years again with no work. Then fate luck something happened, right? And suddenly three projects happened. And in all those projects I realized that here was a chance here. Here was a chance if I could do something with those projects then it’s okay but if I don’t that ship was going to sail. And so I killed myself on those three projects. And they all turned out fine. The world started noticing. The world started taking photographs of those projects and they all opened in 1999 and 2000. Three projects or four projects. Five years of work. The five years of work. The landscape anyways takes three and four years. I mean, you know, there’s nothing that that’s in one year. But they by the time they got completed and you know, you could photograph them. And in all those projects, I had I said anyways there’s nothing to lose, right? All those projects had bright things that in my head were there all the time. Ideas of symbolism, idea of of abstract ideas, some philosophical ideas, storytelling, narrative, culture, space to be of different nature. I said, let’s do it. Let’s see what happens. Turned out fine. So, this wasn’t luck. This was luck. I mean, there is no grand plan. And the right thing the right thing happened. There’s a pretty good chance it wouldn’t have happened. Who the hell knew, right? And you know, I would be still doing some work for some real estate here and there and surviving, I guess. Luck. So, no grand plan. No no great intelligence. Nothing. So, what in your work ethic would you credit and you would say it has luck? I think I wake up every day in the morning literally with a smile on my face. And that smile is because I get one more day to design. I mean, and I treat every day like that. Wow. And for so many years that has not changed, right? The day that enthusiasm goes, the day that sort of, you know, fun goes, maybe that’s the day to hang up my boots, but so many years it doesn’t matter. I get up in the morning, I’ve got a smile on my face because I know I will get a day to design today. I’ll get a day to do something today. Just that, I think. That’s the only thing has kept me afloat. That whole ethic of saying you get there at 9:30, 10:00 every day in the morning, and you work. Wow, that is simple advice and yet profound. Yeah, that’s it. And you don’t worry about what’s going to happen. He’s going to talk You work. And you treat every project like it’s your last project, and you treat every project like it’s your most important project. That’s what you do every day. And then one day something happens. So, what does your work give you that nothing else does? It gives me a world, right? It gives me a world that I can be engaged with. It gives me a space to talk to myself. Soliloquy is a word that I like to use often. The ability to converse with myself. Wow. And my work allows me that, right? I can talk to my work. It’s a great companion. Yeah, okay. I mean, you are designing. You’re actually talking. You’re reflecting. You’re checking yourself. So, you’re not controlling. No, no, you’re not. Of course not. I don’t know. You can’t control things, right? Can’t control. You can You can pretend that you can control things, but you can’t control things. That’s what you call process. That’s what all architects will call, designers will call process. What is the idea of process? That things happen. That there’s a there’s a method to that things happening, but things happen. And you let those things happen. You make sure that they don’t go off rail. You make sure that you don’t fall in the cliff. That’s the only thing you can do. But you don’t know where it’s going to go. Wow. No, you It’s true, no? How do you know? Does a writer know how the book If the writer knew how where the book was going to go, the writer would sit one day and over 3 days write the book, no? He doesn’t know, no? He writes a little bit, then he reflects, then he goes for a walk, then he has coffee, then he has a drink, then he goes to sleep, then for 5 days he doesn’t write, then he again looks at it, then something happens. He’s talking to his work. A painter is talking to his painting. It’s a gift. You’re lucky. I mean, you’re one is lucky to have this as your job. Right. Most people would want to find a hobby. For us, our job is better than our hobby. I mean, you know. Those are very great insights on the process. Talk to your work. You converse with your work. Like, how do you really listen? I’ll tell you something. This conversation is sometimes the work pretty much holds you by your throat. So, even if you don’t want to talk to it, it’ll demand you. It’s not that you always have the choice. Sometimes you have the choice. Sometimes it’s a demanding friend or an angry lover who will demand that, you know, pay attention to me. Look at what you’re doing to me. Look at what is happening to me. So, this is not It’s not a very civil process where you walk in a room and you have a conversation and you walk out. No, it’s not that at all. Sometimes it’s a bad friend. Sometimes it’s a terrible lover. Sometimes it’s an angry person. It is many things. And you’re doing this. You’re dealing with it every day. And you’re enjoying it. That’s how you see the way how you work. It’s a conversation. Yes. Even with the process or even with landscape, or even with the nature. Absolutely. I love going to sites and you know, I’m the happiest when I’m not in the office. Or I’m the happiest when I’m sitting over a piece of paper with a bunch of kids in the office talking about design. Oh. But I love I love going to sites. I love going to projects that I’ve done alone. And not with no agenda. I just go and sit there, you know, ask for tea, spend an hour, spend 40 minutes, come back. Great happiness. Great happiness. And there’s no agenda. Why no agenda? I mean, sometimes you go to sites because you’ve got work, right? According to me, the best way to go to sites is when you don’t have work. Wow. Right? So, I tell everybody in the office, I say, “Please don’t go to site because the site is calling you. Go to site because nobody’s calling you.” But when somebody’s calling you, you know, no, that you have to respond to this, you have to make these drawings, you have to check this. Your your mind is occupied. The act of doing nothing at a site, and site communicates without words. Just you taking in the way, I mean, the fact that you’re paying attention. That’s the that’s the communication. there. Right? If you’re if you’re there at the edge of a mountain, and the cool breeze comes on your face, all you’re doing is you’re there. That’s all you’re doing. The breeze is doing its bit. Sometimes it’ll hit your face, sometimes it won’t hit your face. That’s all you have to be. Just be there. Don’t, you know, there’s no need to be very profound and very philosophical. I mean, just be there. And if you’re be if you’re there in the present, things will happen. Yeah, coming back to your father, since you guys practiced almost similar field, I mean the same field. [laughter] So office. It’s still The name of the office is still his name, so yeah. So, where did you quietly disagree with him and where did you go on your own way? The two points of departure and I wouldn’t say that they were very clear at that point of time. They are clearer now in hindsight. I don’t think that they were very clear when, you know, that departure was beginning to tear away. One is that because he was essentially a person that came from an agricultural, horticultural sort of background. He looked at the idea of gardens essentially as a repository or a place to find home for many different plants. For him, that was a big joy. Because I came essentially from a background of architecture and my own knowledge on plant material was not as good as his. And it’s still not as good as his. That wasn’t a space that I could possibly occupy or compete with. Right? And so, I had to dig in and find out the manner in which I would deal with it. For some strange reason, I have always been from the age of 12 or 13, a reader of sociology and philosophy. It’s odd. I mean, I have read Sartre’s work when I was 16 years old. Right? Jean-Paul Sartre’s critique for pure reason. I didn’t understand it then at all. I had to reread it and reread it. But I read it the first time then. Didn’t understand much of it. I sort of understood Jaspers’ work at a very early I would read books like Solzhenitsyn’s books on Gulag at a very early I was always interested in art and music. So I read a lot. And so my mind was occupied and has been occupied with trying to sort of make connections that make a commentary on the way that we are. Not necessarily always in a profound way, but to say that look, I want to make a connection of the times I’m living in immediate past. And I started trying to investigate that into the work that I was doing. It luckily worked. And so first that was a departure. He looked at gardens in a way different way. I started looking at landscape. Those financial. Because he came from the early manners in which landscape architects were treated. He did not believe that his services were to be valued. And so he charged a very small fee. And I remember that one distinct one fight. And that parts of that project are still there today. So, there was a gentleman for whom my father had done the residential garden. And now he wanted to do a landscape for his office. And the office was also a bungalow on CG Road. And he wanted the landscape for it. That work was given to me. And I started drawing it up. And then a time came when when I had to ask for the fee or write a fee proposal. So, I remember I wrote a fee proposal for 50,000 55,000. And I gave it to my father to see it. And he lost his temper. He said, “How can you do that?” I said, “What?” “How can you charge so much money?” I said, “How much should we be charging?” “Not more than 10,000 rupees.” I said, “You know at that scale I don’t think that you are going to be able to build a practice that is going to generate a little more for you to do other things. And if education matters, if research matters, if these sort of things matter then I don’t think it’s going to be possible.” He said, “I don’t care.” He said, “All these years I’ve done fine. And life has been good. And you’ve never had asked for anything in your life.” Which was true. “So, I don’t think so.” I said, “Look I agree with you, but if we don’t ask for the right fee first of all, we will not be able to hire the right talent. And sooner or later I don’t think I had the words. I don’t think I said it in this way. Must have said it slightly differently. But it was a fight. It was a raging fight. And he basically asked me to leave the office. He said leave. Luckily, I was a good student. I had many job offers. I could have gone to Delhi and easily found a job. So, that wasn’t such a big problem. So, I said, “Look, let’s do one thing. Let me float these fees. If he comes and tells you that Bhagwat, your son has is stupid. And what does he think he is? I will leave the office. And I’ll go to Delhi. Or wherever I’ll go. If he accepts the fee, you will let me then take decisions on these matters at least in terms of determining fee values for the rest of our lives.” He was so sure that this man was not going to reject it. I sent it to him. He didn’t say a word. He said, “Okay, fine. Take the fee.” I think that day my father suddenly sort of grudgingly, I don’t think he was very happy. But he grudgingly sort of realized that maybe there’s something here. And he started slowly allowing me So, I was still on a salary. I mean, I was on a salary till about 20 years back. So, I was still on a salary, very small salary. And then slowly, bit by bit, I started becoming a partner in the firm. Uh But he at least started believing that maybe what I was saying could make some sense. Yeah, that’s how, you know, those two things always stand out in my head. And uh I I the way he did his gardens or he his landscapes had a very different value and a very different sense of gentleness, a very different sense of the way plants were brought in. The way I do my work is a little different. I mean, there’s definitely a difference. So, how did you feel about inheritance? So, there were two parts of the inheritance, right? So, what was the real inheritance? And a lot of people I think make a mistake about understanding that. They say, “Oh, you your father was a very well-known landscape architect and hence you, you know, already had.” But, that’s not true at all. When I started doing work, I think the town there were enough and more people waiting to see me fail. Right? Because they were saying, “Oh, you know, Bhagwat is what he is, but his son So, I think there was it wasn’t like the world was waiting that this boy will also do something. So, what I had to deal with that. You were not left alone. People were watching you very early, waiting for you to make the mistakes. So, you were kind of in the spotlight even if you didn’t want to be in the spotlight. And that was Okay, I mean, that’s fine, but that was there. That was the truth. I think to me the biggest inheritance is the things that we talked about earlier. That you bring rigor, you bring honesty, you bring discipline, and you bring ethics to your work every day. I mean, to me, if there is one inheritance that has stayed with me my entire life, it’s it’s this inheritance that I’ve gotten from my parents, my grandparents, uh And to say that it doesn’t matter, I mean, times will be bad. You know, I have this joke about honesty and you know, if somebody points at somebody and say, “Oh, he’s an honest person, right?” I said, “How do you know he’s an honest person?” But he’s an honest person. I said, “How do you know?” I said, “Look, you can only know when a person is honest when the person has the opportunity to be dishonest without being caught. And the scale of dishonesty is disproportionate to his present living standard. Right? Or present thinking. So, let’s say there’s a bank clerk. Right? And he is getting whatever 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 rupees salary. And one day, the bank clerk realizes that he can get five crores. Mhm. And nobody’s going to know. Nobody’s going to know. And at that point, he doesn’t take the money. Then he’s an honest person. But if there’s a bank clerk who is entire life has done something, and you’ll say, “Oh, he’s an honest man.” He had no opportunity to be dishonest, no? You give somebody the opportunity to be dishonest, and you sort of demonstrate to them the the fruits of dishonesty, and even then if they stay honest, then they’re honest people. Wow. Right? So, in the architecture or the or the you know, design profession, being dishonest is very easy. It is very easy, right? You can get kickbacks. Contractors are willing to give you money. Material vendors are willing to give you money. People are willing to pay you in cash. There’s huge components of dishonesty that can very easily fall into place. But to turn around and say, “I will not do it.” Not by an inch. And you sleep better at night. I don’t know whether it’s a smart thing to do, but you certainly sleep better at night. And you hold your head high. I mean, you know, people can say many things about me or the firm. They say, “Oh, he’s arrogant or he’s not arrogant or they’re fast or they’re slow.” But nobody will say, even our worst enemies, won’t say that we are not ethical. And that I think is great. That’s a great thing to have. So, what is the honest work in landscaping? I think that honesty translates into things, right? I mean, if you live that life, then when you’re doing a discussion, even in the studio, very often, you know, you you hear people say, “Oh, do it, you know. Do it. He’ll the client will be okay with it. Or do it. Nobody’s going to know better. Or do it. There’s a mistake that’s happened, but nobody’s noticed.” You know, you you should try and speak to everybody in the office, and they will tell you these conversations don’t exist in this studio. They do not exist. You make a mistake, you go and own it up to the client. You say, “Sorry, I made a mistake. My mistake.” Or made a mistake, badly executed, I want to break it. My mistake. But this is not what your project should have. Or just because he hasn’t asked us to think like this, we don’t need to No, no, of course you need to, yeah. Of course you need to. And it sort of I think it it gives us strength to believe that it’s okay to be honest about everything. In fact, it’s good. Then honesty is not just a, you know, word. It’s something you believe in. It’s something you say, “If you’re honest, then you will find that rigor in what you’re doing. You’ll enjoy what you’re doing.” And that enjoyment can come only from honesty. It can’t come otherwise. If you’re dishonest with your work, how can you enjoy it? If you’re just drawing something and sending it off, or you’re pretending that you’re doing something and sending it off, or you’re copying something and sending it off, how will you enjoy it? The only way you’ll enjoy it is if you’re honest with it. This honesty even transcends how you interact with the land in the profession, not just how you interact with your colleagues. in the manner in which this office of 70 people has got one mail ID. Mhm. One mail ID across 70 people. Everybody in the office sees that one mail. That mail has got fees, money coming in, money going out, balances in bank, contracts, projects, everybody reads. That’s [snorts] how transparent you can be, and people build mountains of fear. Oh, if I did this, this will happen. If I did what will happen? You know, we were 2 days back we were sitting and, you know, we have this uh thing where all the books of the library are tagged and are available now for anybody to refer to. This is okay. Now, you know, she’s been sitting there for the last year and a half, 2 years, tagging all the photographs that have been taken over the years. And, you know, 100 projects, hundreds of photographs of large. So, we are discussing. I said, “Should we put this online?” So, Jigar was there, Vaidehi was there. They said, “Yeah, we should.” What will it mean? It’ll mean that it’s an online resource. Anybody can go to anywhere and download whatever photographs they want. If some architect wants to say, “I want to show a client a photograph of a certain flooring, might find it here. He might take it or a certain architecture. So somebody said, but then you know, it’ll be misused. I said, what is the misuse? I mean, define the misuse. Do you call that if somebody takes it and copies it misuse? If somebody copies something good, it’s good only, no? How that misuse it? Forget copy, it’s good only, no? So this has been an office when the strangers of people who may we may not know. Yeah, I mean, we know, but not can call us up and say, you know, you’ve done this project and that was a nice drawing, nice detail. Is there some way that I can get to know it? What we do is we send all the drawings. What is it? Take it. This architect that you are going to interview later on in in in in when you’re here, senior. At some point of time he had visited one of my projects. And this was a wedding landscape. And he had been commissioned to do a wedding landscape. And he went there with his colleague. And his colleague was taking measurements of the way the pathway was done and uh so the owner of this landscape is a friend has become friend. So he suddenly called up and said so-and-so is here. Oh. Do you know he’s here? I said, no, I mean He said, no, no, I’ll call him to the office and get him a cup of tea and then I’ll connect. So he called him to the office and called up. I said, sir, you were going to go there, you should have told me, no? I would have come with you. He said, no, no, everybody was talking so much about this landscape that you’ve done. And I have a similar landscape to do, so I thought I should come here study it. I said, “Yeah, but I mean you should have told me. I mean I would have arranged it. You didn’t have to go around measuring it. I mean, I didn’t say it, but you know. I said, “Yes, yes.” I said, “So, how can I help you?” He said, “No, I just wanted to know how some” I said, “Sir, you don’t waste your time. You go back to the office. I’m sending you all the drawings.” And I sent him the whole set. He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe it. But, what I mean, what will people take away from you? What What is it that you will lose? I I just don’t understand it. This whole secretiveness, this whole behavior of holding everything close to your chest. Oh, I’ve done it. Have you not done it? Yeah, somebody before you had also done it, no? You have said that design can only be transmitted, never taught. Yeah. So, what is the difference between transmission and teaching? So, for example, if it is a certain skill, like, you know, cutting an onion. You can teach somebody to hold the knife and how do you slice it? If you have to teach somebody how to sand a piece of board, you can say, you know, hold the sandpaper like this or hold the sander like this and make these movements so that over a period Now, this you can teach, right? These are mimicking or learning to mimic and then internalizing actions of the body, which lead to a certain result. These are not actions of the mind. Right? And actions of mind, how do you I mean, how do you teach? Wow, actions of the mind. Right? Actions of mind, you can because I I I don’t know how to walk. And so if I watch you think you walk like this, then slowly I’ll start mimicking you and then one day I’ll notice I can also walk. Swimming is taught like that, right? But those are actions of the body and they are not actions of the mind. Design is an action of the mind. And you can’t. You can only set an example. You can demonstrate. You can talk about it. You can show something. You can work together. You can do many things. And you can hope that one day that person also starts taking the actions of his or her mind. That’s all you can do. And the only thing you can do is to plant the seed of love. If I plant in you the seed of love. If I plant in you the seed to love design. The love of landscape architecture. Let’s say I’m teaching you landscape architecture. Can I teach you landscape I can’t. Can I plant in you Mhm. this hunger to know about landscape architecture. And tell you that it’s a meaningful hunger. Because you know you’ll say why should I be hungry about it? Well, what what do I care? What will I get? I have nothing to promise you there also. I can’t promise you. What can I promise? But if I manage to convince you that no no or if this is a world you start discovering world is wonderful. Keep your mind inquisitive all the time. You’ll be happy. You’ll find meaning in your mind. You’ll find a sense of worth. You’ll find a sense of purpose. If I can instill that little fire in you, that’s all I can do. I can’t teach. That’s all I can do. And if once I’ve instilled that fire, that fire will take care of it. Sometimes it will be a winter night and the fire will burn brighter or not. Sometimes, like an idea, it will be buried and then one day it’ll come back again because it’s been planted. Sometimes it’ll come 10 years after you’ve graduated. It’ll come. Sometimes it’ll come and you will know that you’ve not lived that idea. You need to lament, but the idea will come. And you’ve been teaching for 25 years? mean I stopped teaching, but I started teaching in ‘86, taught for about 25 years, taught everything from landscape, post-grad, some classes in urban design, architecture, interior design. I used to have fun. I taught for 25 years and then one day stopped. Why did you walk away? that’s another reason. So So I used to enjoy it. I used to enjoy it and I was a very popular teacher. I think I was a very popular teacher. No doubt. When you’re a popular teacher and particularly when you’re younger seen as a successful professional in the discipline you can speak well. You can connect things well. Students start looking up to you. Right? Students even at post-grad level in the context of India come very often from colleges or locations where they’ve not had charismatic teachers or teachers. And they have have indifferent teachers. And so when they come up on something like this, they start literally hero worshipping the teacher, right? First of all, I think that there’s a problem there. You know, I think there’s already a problem there. There’s nothing I can do about it. But it’s a fact. There’s a problem there. For a moment, if I were to choose to ignore that problem, and say that’s the nature of it, and you know, if you are a good teacher, yeah, the students will hero worship you. Let’s say I ignore that problem. Then the next question would be, after they’ve graduated, will they stop hero worshipping you, or will they will they find their own feet? And I was beginning to find that even that was not happening with the generation before me. With teachers before me. People that were the teachers that before me were idol worshipped. And there were generations of students who were saying, “I am so-and-so teacher’s student, and my life is fulfilled if he or she looks at my work kindly.” And I was beginning to find that their ability to de-link from this person was fractured. And on the other hand, I was also observing, and there are people that, you know, I can tell you names later, good names, that they were also feeling in a slightly exalted position. As if they’d reached demigod position. So, they would love when they would sit and students would come fawning them, surround them. They would love it. When they walked in the room, and they created a flutter among students, they knew it. And I said, “This is a dangerous process, every which way.” And what it will do is that it will you know, first it will create a sense of wrong self-worth. Because because you’ve got 100 kids who treat you treat you like God every year, you think you you start actually believing at some point of time that you’re walking on thin air. When you’re not. They’re little kids, yeah. I mean, they don’t know better. But you are using that little aura and that popularity that comes from it. I thought it was a very insidious and a dangerous space. Mhm. And so one day I just stopped. I said, “This space is good. I mean, you know, it’s good for your ego. It’s also good for students. I mean, students are getting to listen to good things. I mean, you know, at the end of the day that’s also good. But I said it’s not a There has to be a better way of doing it. I’ve not figured out a better way after that. For years people used to come and, you know, complain and tell me you have to get back to teaching and blah blah and all that. Stayed away from it. Uh I love teaching. It’s not like I don’t like teaching. I would be very happy to teach. But I don’t like what goes along with it. Mhm. And you see it today, right? Right. You’re seeing it today in the colleges in in the country. You have kids who will graduate yesterday and they were probably top of the class. They barely graduated. Six months or three months later they’re join joining as teaching assistants. They’ve done nothing in their lives. Two years later they are they are teachers. Three years later they are walking as if they’re walking on thin air. Absolute pressure. And on what basis do you think you earned that right to believe that you are something special? You’ve not even earned that right. Right. But that’s how it is. I mean, I used to run this thing called 12 on 12 which was uh something I ran for 5 years. And it happened one day I was teaching um in Zep. And I was teaching with two three other people. And I suddenly and you know this person was saying something to the student, “No, no, you can’t do this. Listen.” The other person was saying something. I was thinking I said, “You know they’re saying this to the students, what are they doing in their own prac What are they doing in their own lives? Is there a a sort of, you know, a match? Or they’re saying something but in their own work they’re doing something else altogether.” And also realized the dishonesty of this conversation, right? I mean I can come to class and pontificate. But then when I go and leave the class and do what I have to do outside the class, hm, I do exactly the things that I should not be doing, right? So I set up something that was called 12 on 12 uh in Zep. And I said I will call 35 or 40 35 teachers. And I’ll give you 12 minutes on the stage, right? And you have 12 minutes to do whatever you want. Whatever you want. But you’ll basically reflect about your life. Everybody thought it was a good idea. You know, I I also could convince people. Hm. Uh so Doshy and all everybody came. And everybody thought I was joking about 12 minutes. They thought you know, “No, no, Aniket we know he’ll let us talk.” I said, “No, 12 minutes.” The bell would go. You’d be escorted off stage. And then, you know, it went on to be successful and we ran it for many years but the fundamental reason was that if I’m a professional, I’m only as good as my last project. Right? I do three bad projects this year, next year people will say, “Ah, he used to be good earlier, but not the same, you know. They’re slowing down or not the same talent or they’re taking it easy.” If you’re a teacher, how do you validate the right that the right to teach? What is the validation? There is no validation, right? Once I’m a teacher in a college and once I become a professor, I have no measure of validation every year. I said, “We have you know, there is that’s not right. You have to have a process whereby you have to earn the right to teach every year.” And you have to earn that right. We just don’t have those processes. How does a teacher earn the right to teach? You You were a good teacher 15 years back. Who says you’re a good teacher today? That’s the way in the world, of course. You earn the right to teach by the way that you write or you publish, you do research. Many universities have a method whereby students will evaluate you, but I don’t necessarily think that that’s the best way to do. But I think that we don’t have the honesty to sort of tell ourselves that, “Hey, hang on. I don’t think I’ve earned my right to teach this year.” And I should do something about it. Maybe I should not teach or maybe I should do something about it. There’s no internal mechanism, no? And there’s no external mechanism. So, mediocre people can continue teaching for the rest of their lives. Or they are smart people when they start and become mediocre down the line. They take it for granted. So, I’ve done it for so many years. Positions get harder. Students are like that only. It’s a holy job. It’s a noble job. It’s a job that only a chosen few should be allowed to do. The world would be a better place if you have great teachers. They are the most fundamental citizens of your society. And teaching is a calling. It’s not It’s not a profession. It’s a calling. A good teacher is somebody who’s invested in that student, not in students. In the student. Individual. Of course. Because in a class, if you got 40 students, each student is different. Some learns faster, some learns slower, some understands better, some understands less, some is more skilled, some is not skilled, whatever. If somebody comes from a village, doesn’t know what an urban situation is, somebody comes from entitlement, thinks that I mean, there are all kinds of people. A good teacher is somebody who’s invested in improving the knowledge of every student. Not students as a class. Not students as a group. Students as an individual. And I’m invested. Something in me says I want to make sure, you know, that something he he learns. That’s a good teacher. Not Not somebody who has knowledge. Not somebody who knows the profession inside out. Not somebody who’s got all the facts and figures. That’s okay. I would say important, but that’s okay. So, what’s a good metric for right to teach? It’s all internal, not external, I feel, no? Being comfortable with yourself is the first metrics to be able to qualify. Even qualify. Mhm. If you are angsty yourself, if you are unsure yourself, if you are in a stage of life where proving your own worth is more or is important to you, you should not be a teacher. Because anyways you’re dealing with young minds. Do you want those young minds to now suffer the fact that you are yourself anxious? You yourself are paranoid about where your place in the world. No. At least when you enter the classroom don’t be that person. Don’t be that person who goes to prove how smart you are or how knowledgeable you are or how much power you wield. Don’t. If you do any of it you’re not qualified to teach. Lunch? Yeah. Now we can break for lunch. Earlier when people used to work in the office the only computers didn’t have an auto save. Mhm. So you had to manually save your drawings every you know whenever you remembered it. Right. And then people would be so busy working and you know like one hour would go, two hours would go, they’d be working and they’d forget to save it. And then suddenly the lights would go off or something and oh the whole office would collapse because two hours of work across the office. [laughter] Now of course they auto save. Yes, I’m pretty excited for to see your project and walk through. And uh never seen a landscape project in detail and also want to see a new lens of seeing landscape projects. Yes, so let’s go. Okay, so I think what we are going to try and do is uh going to try and run through a cross section of projects uh uh of different scales and different typologies. Uh just to give you a sense of what the world of landscape architecture can be and I think this is a very limited sample. The world of landscape architecture can be much more than this. But nonetheless, this is one sample and you know, we can talk about all the other things that the world can do. So, this is a project that happened that my father did. In the 1980s and I remember I was I think 20 years old. Well, 18 years old, something like that. And I had gone with him to this place called Timba. Uh Three of us had gone. There was my father, Dilip Patel, Dr. Mr. Dilip Patel, Dilip Kaka for me, who was an architect. And along with us was the owner of this quarry that we went to. And his name was Indubhai Patel. And Indubhai Patel was the owner of a company called Sayaji Iron in Baroda. And they manufactured construction machinery and they also had quarries. And I remember very distinctly reaching and you know, there’s this road and on the left-hand side are all the quarries and his quarry was one of them. And on the right-hand side there was still agriculture and then you drove a little bit and there was a beautiful farmhouse that was on the river. And so, we went and uh you know, had breakfast. And then Indubhai said let’s go to the quarries. Now, I was disinterested. I mean, in in my head, you know, this is what my dad was doing, but not part of this. So, anyways, we all got in the car and we drove to the quarry and I kind of looked around for a little while and it was it had been decided that I will not be interested in this. And so that I could look around and the foreman would show me something and then I’d go back to the farmhouse. So, we went, I looked around and I went back to the farmhouse and the plan was that they would spend the better part of the day and come back in the evening. I barely got into the farmhouse and settled down and there was a deck overlooking the river. And suddenly within half an hour, there was a flurry of cars. And my father came along with Indubhai. And they suddenly went and you know, sort of sat in the living room and limbu pani was brought and given to my father. I couldn’t I didn’t know what was happening. Much later I heard the story. So the story is this. It was a peak hot summer. You were in the bowels of basalt rock because it’s basalt. Temperatures are emanating. And Indubhai is showing my father the quarries. My father has been actually called there to do the landscape for the farmhouse. And my father apparently looked at all this and said I think I’m going to grow a forest. And Indubhai looked at him and thought that the sun had hit him. And that you know, so apparently my father insisted that he was going to convert this into a forest. And Indubhai was very sure that he had been hit by the sun. And that he was not feeling well. And that’s why he was saying things like this. So apparently they’d taken him to the shade and quickly called the car and said that he’s had sunstroke or something and he’s saying things. And got him lemon water because they were worried because here was a man who was sitting in the bowels of a basalt rock and saying I’m going to make a forest. Didn’t make sense. Later on in the evening I could make out from the conversation that something had happened in the morning that was an extension. So the conversation was, “Bhagwat, do you really know what you’re saying? And what did you say in the morning?” And you know, things like that. And my he said, you know, “I’m going to make a forest.” So, what do you mean you’re going to make a forest? He said, “Well, you know, if I’ve learned something in life and if my teachers have taught me right, I do know that nature has the ability of healing itself. And all that nature requires sometimes a little bit of help. And that help we can provide. But that’s all that nature needs. Nature doesn’t need too much more.” So, anyways, Indubhai was a wildlife uh expo you know, enthusiast, a naturalist. And so, it was also something close to his heart. And you know, he said, “Why not? I mean, let’s see what will happen.” So, that’s how this whole project started. Now, you know, so that’s So, just to give you a sense, that’s how you know, that basalt quarry looked like. It’s like solid rock. Wow. Uh it’s about 80 ft of solid rock. Anybody who knows basalt knows that it is one of the toughest stones that you can work with. It’s like granite or harder. Uh there are no cracks. It’s monolithic. You can’t break it with your hand. You have to blast it. And he’s was standing in the in the bottom of that and said, “I’m going to make a forest.” Haha. It didn’t look remotely as something that was going to be possible. Luckily for him, what was happening was that nearby, so basalt because of its very nature, uh doesn’t allow water to percolate. So, whatever rainwater comes sort of, you know, gets held up. Uh and those are the quarry operations, what you can see at the back uh is overburden. So, that thing that you see at the back, that whole you know, heaped soil is all the dust that comes out after you’ve done the blasting and what gets left behind. So, there are these huge piles of overburden. There is this hard basalt. And you know, it has the capacity of retaining water. The process actually is you know, in retrospect is not very complicated. So, stage two is where you have finished you know, the quarrying operation. The quarrying is over. There’s a lot of overburden lying all around. And so, what he said so, he started sort of visiting the local fields, the nearby fields. And in Marathi, I mean, I’m sure there’s an equivalent word in all languages. There’s something that’s called pugdandi. So, in the fields, there is always a place where, you know, you walk between fields. And if you notice, that area always has got some amount of, you know, grasses and weeds and something growing. He went, I think, in the next couple of trips and gathered as much soil as he could from these areas. And he sort of put a carpet of that soil on the quarry lands. Like a thin carpet. Knowingly well that that little soil held life. [snorts] It held little seeds. It held all kinds of life that was just waiting to germinate. So, the first monsoon, you suddenly began to see in that entire place little shoots of grass, weeds, crab, stuff like that What he really wanted to do was he wanted to create a little microclimate so that the other layer of trees could start coming up. So, he created that little layer and he was very happy. Now, this has happened. So, in landscape there’s something that is called seral stages or ecology there’s something called seral stages. You have to think of seral stages like a staircase. You can be on the top of the staircase or you can be at the bottom of the staircase. When you’re at the bottom of the staircase that means your landscape is really degraded. When you’re at the top of the staircase it means that you have a climax stage forest. So depending on which plants are there you can decide where are you in the staircase. So if you find a certain kind of plants it means that you are at the bottom of the staircase and you’ve got that much more to climb up. If you’re slightly higher up you’ll see plants and you know you just have a little bit more to climb up. So he started looking at what was available and started deciding how far is the journey up. And then started getting plants. Pieces started collecting. That’s him in the in the cap. And next to him is that gentleman who was his lieutenant in the operation and then a few years back just about four years back we went again. And that’s him older now below in the boat we met him. He’s still he’s still he’s still [clears throat] taking care of these this this place. So nearby there was a little stream and he could tap that little stream and divert that water into the quarry so it started filling up. So that happened. And then as I said with the first rains he started you know getting these little saplings to grow right? Then in the rock he put dynamite and blasted it so that the fissures got a little bigger and then he packed it with soil. So that stuff started growing from there also right? Everybody imagines that there’s this very scientific science and you know, there must be some really ecological knowledge and things about how, you know. And so, a lot of people have asked him, “How do you go about planting?” And And but he was quite simple about it. So, uh I have to get volume on this. Wait. I remember the date is the 24th of May. And outside temperature was 110°. At 12:00 afternoon. I was standing in the pit of a timber quarry. And I said I said, “In the way, I want to make this forest.” The old quarry, I want to make it the forest. In the way, put his hand on my head, see the temperature. He thought I had a sunstroke, called the car, put me in the car. Told the guest house that cook beat me in the nimbu pani. Plenty of that and put him in the dark room. In the evening, when we sat down on the river bank, he said, “Are you serious?” That means you want to create a forest. This is Nowroji. This is Nowroji. Okay, so when Nowroji I set up a camera in front of him, We used the word afforestation. Afforestation. Yeah, that means you want to create a forest. I don’t want to create a forest. I want to establish the vegetation. I’m expecting the nature to take it over. And that’s a very, very important division that one has to make. And I had to do it in a much cheaper way. So, my pit were not more than a foot deep. And I didn’t want forestation. So, I gave the workers two ropes. One knot at 3 m, other knot at 4 m. And they said, “You meet the knots. However they come, you dig the pits.” But they said, “It won’t come in a straight line.” But I told you, “I don’t want a straight line. Well, do you walk in a straight line?” No man walks in a straight line. He goes like that. We had a problem with manure. So, I collect all the foliage and dump it there. Then came the biggest challenge. How fast, how quick I put the greenery in this barren land. I was thinking. Then I said, “We should take area that becomes a green of the forest remains.” There’s a bug that needs bug that needs a bug that needs a bug. So, went to the farm, collected soil from the bug that needs And the before the first monsoon, I threw it all around the area. And believe me or not, in the first rain, the entire area was looking green. Absolutely, nobody believed that. But that becomes the starter. And then we planted the plants. Birds came. Snakes came. Otter came. And within 3 years’ time, Timba became self-sufficient. Well, and so that was really, you know, the plan. So, uh uh as you can see, it was 200 acres. Everything that is colored dark is where there’s water. And everything, the rest of it was a forest. And literally, you know, this was how it was when it started. And about 8 years later, so these the photographs that I’m showing you are the photographs of exactly the same place taken 8 years later. And something like this, 8 years later, became like this. Wow. Eight years. You know, these people were Jains, of course, and you know, but one day somebody walked up to him in Dubai and said, um, you know, there’s a lot of fish in this lake. So, can we can we my, you know, fish the fish? And he was willing to pay him enough money every year that would have recovered the cost of the development within one year. Wow. But, of course, he didn’t allow it. Dr. Salim Ali came here to see it. Um, and so, this happened, I think, in 1985-86. Um, my we lost my father about eight years back. Um, until he was there, we would occasionally sort of go, but now even now, every couple of years, people from the office go. Indubai’s family ran into trouble. Their company shut down. They had to sell the quarry to another quarry owner. That quarry owner, after some time, has sold it to yet another quarry owner. And every time we go, I know, you know, this is when it was done, there was no development around. And now over, you know, last 40 years, the town has [snorts] come all around, and then development has come. So, every now and then, when we go there, we ask the question, and we see, “No, no, there’s so much of development. This is so pretty. So, don’t you want to do you have you ever thought that you should build a few cottages, and you know, the weekend?” And every quarry owner has said, “No.” Wow. They’ve said, “Here’s a land that was gifted back to nature. Somebody before us gifted it to nature. And all we can do now is be custodians of it. I think it’s I mean it’s fantastic. I mean, you know, three owners have changed and they continue with this it’s almost become a temple for them. I mean, you know, different quarry owners will, you know, if somebody wants to sell it, somebody will buy it, but nobody uses it for any commercial gain. There are no picnics. There’s no music. There’s one little cottage where, you know, you can go and rest, but it’s one wooden shed. And 40 years, Timba still remains a benchmark project, and globally and also in the country, of course. Wow. Yeah, so it’s been this amazingly beautiful project. Do you go frequently? Not as frequently as one should go, but yes, I go. Once in a year? Once in a year I go, yeah. Oh. What do you see differently each time? Well, you know, I mean, the forest is is clearly self-sufficient now. Um you know, it’s a system that takes care of itself. You don’t have to take care of it. Uh you keep finding new birds and new species that keep coming. Um you know, a fresh forest is one thing, an old forest is something else, because an old forest, while the new trees grow, there are trees that die and wood that falls on the ground and leaves that fall on the ground. So, the forest floor has gotten formed. Initially, there wasn’t a forest floor. Now, there’s a forest floor. So, you’re walking over leaves and trampling over things. So, it’s literally become it’s magical. I mean, it’s just beautiful. So, Amazing. Yeah. So, this is how I you know, very often people turn around and say, “So, you know, have you done your best work? And I said, you know, with the project like Timba done in the studio, you’re never going to do anything better than that. So, so [laughter] that remains special. That remains very, very special. So, what small decision that made I mean, that gave rise to this transformation? So, my father has always believed that and you know, he’s and he he said it very simply and I think he wasn’t the kind of person to make something sound profound for the sake of it. I mean, he was he was an honest man. He spoke plainly. And he said, “Look, you know, at the end of the day, we underestimate the power of nature. We just underestimate the power of nature. Um and nature doesn’t need too much. I mean, you know, it needs a little bit of respect. A little bit of care. That’s all that nature actually requires. But that too I mean, is being biggest hurt and pain. Well, that too we are not willing to give it. I mean, it’s asking so little of you. It’s not asking too much of you. It’s not this uh you know, difficult mistress that’s saying, “I want I want this.” It’s asking nothing of you. Half the times it’s only asking you to say, “Leave me alone.” That’s all that it’s asking you. And even that we are unable to do. Just leave nature alone. Nature has the ability to regenerate. Nature has the strength to regenerate. The least we can do is to either leave her alone or occasionally lend her a little hand. So, for him, this was really the act of nature or the or the theater of nature playing itself out Wow. in the manner in which it best can. He never took credit I mean, he was happy about the project. But I’ve never heard him saying, “I did Timba. He’s never said that. He’s never said I did Timba and I did this miraculous, you know, project that restored such a difficult Never. For him it was always these stories of how I picked up soil and things started growing or, you know, how I looked at the water or how I looked at this. Little actions. None of them that sound profound by themselves. And yet what happens is so profound, no? I mean to envision this kind of transformation from that barren land is And also to not make it sound as if I have to do such a complicated job. No. Pick some soil, throw it here, watch the weeds grow. Walk around, take some baits, plant the trees, watch the trees grow, tap a stream, divert it by itself. Doesn’t sound like rocket science, right? And even that restraint to not to do more, just enough. Yeah. Yeah. If I would be doing this or are we just in a hurry to see the transformation Patience. Patience. And this was not even a professional project, right? Because this was a challenge he had taken. Nobody was commissioning him. Nobody was saying, “Okay, we are asking you to restore a quarry.” He was saying, “I want to restore a quarry.” Passion. It was a passion. It was a passion project. So nothing was done after that. No interventions, just initial No, first five, six years he went, six, seven years he went. But then later on it took care of itself, you know. Mhm. Just took care of it. Didn’t need any intervention. So when do you call it self-sustaining? At what stage? I think in the first after about four, five years you knew. Mhm. After all the first four, five years I think he knew that now it will take care of itself. So long as nobody goes in, you know, you don’t allow cattle grazing inside, or so long as you don’t start cutting the wood, because the very fact that, you know, seeds got formed, and they fell on the ground, and they started regenerating, was already a sign that a system had fallen into place. And once that system has fallen into place, if you don’t disturb it, I mean, the fact that biodiversity comes walking in, that’s a Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. good compliment, like icing on the cake. Yes. Birds, fish, insects, all kinds. And it’s a little heaven. I think somebody should document a project of biodiversity in that place. Yeah, but you know, the sad part is Well, not the sad part. It’s not sad, but it’s just the way that education has become, right? So, every year we will get two or three inquiries from some student sitting somewhere in the world, or in India, saying, “Can you send us the detailed SOP of how it was done?” And when you tell them that the detailed SOP was big soil, and divert a river, and dig pits, they somehow get the feeling that we are not telling them the truth. They want something far more profound. They want big words. Jargon. And and you know, complicated ways of talking about it. We said, “No, there wasn’t There really was nothing that complicated about it.” It was just faith in nature, a basic understanding of how trees grow, patience. So, what were planted? Like, what Which are the plant species? So, this is a So, this belongs to a dry deciduous teak non-teak forest series of this part of the world. So, which means that there are things like Anogeissus latifolia, Dalbergia latifolia, neem, a lot of neem was also planted. Azadirachta was planted. A lot of Ficus was also planted. So, initially there was a mix of about 10 11 species that he saw as part of the climax stage and he started planting with that. And now over a period of time birds have brought in seeds, so new new species have come in. So, Boswellia has started coming in. Uh Diospyros melanoxylon in some parts has started growing. So, now it’s a mix of things that grow. Wow. And in their life when he was alive and uh in the way he was alive even they didn’t picnic here. They came, they went for a walk. They had a cup of tea. I mean, it’s such a temptation, no? You have a place like this and you have a farmhouse across. Right. It’s so easy to say, “Well, let’s set up dinner there.” or let’s uh you know, whatever. The fact that the three owners didn’t even think of putting up something there, altering in some sort. Nothing. That itself is uh Nothing, yeah. I mean, they deserve a compliment. Absolutely. Right. And also something something about that place, no, must have done something to these people, no? Yeah, there’s a film. I don’t know whether I don’t know whether Vaidu has put in a film, maybe she has. Oh, there it is. [music] [music] Wow. This film was done a little recently. It was done, I think, think 3 years back. Timba is in Gujarat? Yeah, yeah, it’s about 2 hours. When was this shot? This is shot about, I think, 3 4 years back. I I had to go for a lecture. So, she what she did, Shilpa is photographer, she there’s a quarry next door that’s still running. So, she took some pictures of how that quarry was and then went to Wow. Can’t even imagine what kind of kick it might give, no? To see the transformation. only cottage there, that little ramshackle thing there. And that’s the guy who worked with my father, who’s still the caretaker. He was a young kid. Trees have grown so big. Yes. Beauty of life. How about the birds, like Yeah, yeah, yeah, lots of them, lots of them. They were not introduced. Some of them are. Some of them are. Okay. But lots of owls and strange rock owls and all sorts of things, yeah. Wow. Something about this And you can look at all around and see how barren it is and all the quarrying operations going on and Right. And homes are coming up. Yeah. This is like a central park. Yeah, yeah. [music] Yeah. Wow, really touching. If this [clears throat] place had not been touched or intervened, even that small intervention what would have happened to this Oh. Or how long would it take to reach this stage? How would it even reach It wouldn’t have reached that. It needed a little help. I mean, that’s for sure. Because if you had just left it as barren rock which it was uh and if you not tapped that stream to create a sense of soil moisture then there are enough and more quarries all over the country that remain like that. And then over a period of time you get a little bit of scrub, a little bit of grass, a little bit of tuft of trees here, but you can still make out that it’s a quarry. Uh so on its own I have no knowledge of how long how many decades or centuries it might take. But it would have been difficult because I have seen other quarries that have been abandoned and left. And even after being left and even being abandoned and I’ve been to them, they you can still make out it’s a quarry. I mean, you can still make out it’s a quarry, but now you can see some grass somewhere and something there. So, there’s no doubt in my mind that it required two things. It required protection. Because lot of the quarries also not protected, right? I mean, so even when something does grow, you’ll have cattle or fodder or you know, will go and sort of graze on it. So, it required protection for sure. And it needed a little bit of yeast to start the bread. Uh it needed a little bit of starter. Uh and that’s what he did. He provided that little starter. He provided that little yeast. And then of course, you know, Wow. the yeast did the rest. There was no planting of a tree as such. There was just the yeast. The small microclimate. That also and there was also planting of saplings. It wasn’t that there wasn’t a planting of saplings, but it was more towards, you know, saying get it started. I mean, it was really saying here is somebody who wants to go back to what it was, get it started and it’ll then find its way as again saying, you know, I know exactly what the end is going to be. Now, this really I mean, you can say it. I mean, he said it. I want to grow forest. It’s a nice thing to say, but nobody knew. Nobody had done it before. So, I mean, on what basis could you say it? Right. I think he had a conviction. He knew that, you know, if I set it on the right path, it’ll go. But you know, I think the biggest thing in this is patience Mhm. and perseverance because after this I’ve tried to do one project in in Maharashtra on a on a basalt hill and I failed miserably. Failed miserably. I had all my sort of science right. I had all my details right, but finally these projects require someone to be their custodian on a daily basis. Right? I mean, you can you can imagine everything. You can you can design everything. You can give all the information. But the man who walks this ground every day is perhaps as important if not more important. All right, as a as a landscape architect, you can visit it every month, every 15 days, maybe once in 2 months, once in 6 months. But that but what happens on it every day is what actually matters the most. And if every day somebody is walking this land and noticing, so I’ll tell you there is the name will come to Derek Jarman. Mhm. So, there’s a filmmaker called Derek Jarman. And in England. And Derek Jarman was diagnosed of AIDS. And he knew that he was going to die. And so, a little outside London, on a wind-swept beach, Derek Jarman got a fisherman’s cottage. He started living. Here’s a man who knows that he’s dying. And he would go for a walk every day in the morning. And there was strong wind. This is one of these really, you know, as you know how it can be. Strong winds that would rip apart shallow roots. And he would go for a walk and he’d spot these little plants that were struggling. And every day he would pick up one or two, pick up one or two, pick up one or two. And he would bring them to his cottage. And then he would put that plant and then he would observe that plant. And sometimes he noticed that the wind from the north was too strong for this little plant. He would pick a little boulder and put it so that the north wind didn’t touch the plant directly. And he would keep observing. Wow. And keep making little little changes to take care of their comfort. Slowly his health failed. But he kept on doing it and then finally died. And what is left behind is now the garden of the most beautiful orphans. It’s a beautiful garden of orphans picked up from the beach and all of them have found home. Here is a man who was dying and as he was dying he found life. Wow. And I think that’s that sense is what is needed for these projects. That sense is what is needed. It’s not It’s not knowledge. It’s not not getting the science right. Yeah, it’s not about getting the science right. It’s not about saying I know my ecology or I know my plant material or I know how plants will behave. No, that many people know. That many people know. But what you don’t know or what you cannot know or what you have to believe is the idea that life will find its way and you just have to be there. And so that young boy who now even today walks these forests was that man that my father entrusted with saying every day morning you will do this, every day you will walk like this. If you see something like this then you will put some little soil next to it, you will create a little bond. No. Whatever. He must have heard few things, he must have learned few things, he must have observed few things. Now that’s become his forest of orphans. Wow. His planting trees equals restoration. Planting trees is not restoration, first of all. So first of all, most of the landscapes or most of the lands that we see around us today even if there’s nothing happening there have historically gone through a certain layer of human activity. So there’s nothing like a pristine landscape. So many years back in 2014 you were doing a massive study on Banaras. I put together a group of 30-40 professionals and you know, we the government wanted us to do a comprehensive understanding of Banaras. And one day I was sitting and you know, I’d been to Banaras. Everybody talked about Banaras and you could sense that you could you get a palpable sense that there’s something special about that place, but you couldn’t put your finger to it. It feels special, but you can’t put your finger to it. So one day I was sitting with a German person who had been living he’s married to somebody in Banaras and what is this what is the story of Banaras? He said, you know, if you want to eat wheat, what will you do? You’ll go to the local market and you’ll buy some wheat. But do you know whether the wheat is got insecticides and pesticides? You don’t know, but if it’s a good supplier, you’ll get that wheat. But if you don’t want that, then perhaps you will go to somebody who uses organic fertilizers. Nonetheless, it’s still not original wheat. Sometimes you will not even know whether it’s a genetically modified wheat. And so you will struggle. But one day you’ll say I really want to eat wheat that’s untouched. So what will you do? He said, you will probably walk up some mountain that no man has climbed and hopefully up on that mountain you’ll find a patch where there’s wild wheat that is growing and then you will see what real wheat is. He said, Banaras is that. Banaras is that wild wheat in the act of human civilization. This is where you when you want to find the truth, you have to come. So, I mean it was very profound. Mhm. You take that whole conversation and talk about it as the act of restoration. When you talk about restoration, restored to what? Is the first question. Nice. Are you restoring it to what this land was 2 million years back? Are you restoring it to what it was 50 years back? So, the whole act of restoration is actually a not so honest act. Right? In our case, restoration only means make it better than what it is today. Mhm. And if you manage to do that, then yes, we will claim that we have restored it. But you’ve actually not restored it. You’ve just improved it. Restored means what? To get it back to its old glory or to bring it back to its original form. That’s what the word restoration means. Restoration doesn’t mean there’s a patient who’s sick and you’ll make him a little less sick. That’s not restoration. There’s a patient who’s sick and you’ll make him into a healthy human being. That’s restoration. That kind of restoration Mhm. I don’t think is Think. is easy. And do we even need to restore? We need to restore for ecological reasons and you and I understand that. The world understands. And why do we need to restore? All of us know the reasons. I mean, you know, it leads to better natural cycles, leads to better biodiversity, leads to better soils, leads to better climate resilience. We all understand that. But I think what we really need to restore is because in the act of restoring them you give your society a sense of hope. Mhm. You give them you give you give your society a you give yourself a sense of hope. Right? And to me that mental act of what it does to the mind is very often more important the physicality of what you express. Right? Wow. The joy of restoring is not physicality the physicality of it. And that is important. Mhm. That’s important. It’s a feedback. But but yes, but what does it do to your mind? What does it tell your mind? It tells your mind that things can get go bad, but they can get better. Mhm. And then you start using that idea in everything that is happening in your life. Whether there are relations, whether it’s the way that your businesses are going, whether way your health is going, whether way something else that is bothering is going, it tells you that it can be dealt with. It tells you that with a little bit of attention, a little bit of care, things can get better. And I think what it does to the human spirit is more or equally important as what it does to the environmental regime. There are you know, there are other reasons why you should restore. Mhm. Because when you restore, you start putting back a link in our understanding of our past. What happens when the link breaks? If it keeps breaking, our relations with our past start getting distorted. And because of that what happens, we get schizoid. We get disconnected with our own being. To me, those are the more important reasons. The scientific reasons, yes, but to me, those are the interesting reasons too. So, it’s not about restoring the past, it’s designing a new future in physicality of things. I’ll show you something that that is pretty much that. You know, in in 19 And this is one of the projects that happened in 2000 and changed our trajectory. Mhm. So, in 1994, 1995, I got a phone call and somebody said that a certain lady wants to speak to you. Didn’t know who she was. And you know, she was obviously a very important lady because three people had called me in advance to say she wants to talk to you, she wants to talk to you. Stay next to the phone. This is, you know, there were no cell phones. Mhm. So, stay next to the phone and she’ll call you. Which year was it? 1995. 1995. 1995. I think but probably cell phones had just started. I remember I didn’t have a cell phone. Um and so I was sitting in my office waiting for this call and suddenly this phone came and a lady at the other end, with choppy sounding voice, and said, “Are you a landscape architect?” I said, “Yes.” “I want you to do something for me.” Uh there’s a place I’m doing next to Udaipur. I want you to come and see it. I’ll come. But who told you about me? So, there was a junior of mine in school in SEPT, an architect. And he had done some work for her and she had asked him that I need somebody to look at the landscape and he had said, “You know, guy in you know, in the country, I think he’ll be the right Anyway, I had no knowledge of what I was getting into. So I and I didn’t even know whether she was going to pay me for the trip. I didn’t know who she was. And this was a little hour outside Udaipur, so I couldn’t even take a train. You know, if I’d taken a train, I’d still have to hire a car. I didn’t have too much money, so I managed to get a beaten-up Ambassador. Peak summer. And I started driving from Ahmedabad and just before I reached this place called Devigarh, um I realized that, you know, I was sweating, not not air-conditioned. So I stopped at a little place nearby and washed my face. I’d taken a spare change shirt, changed my shirt, and I thought this was going to be a formal meeting. You know, I should be well-dressed. So I reached this place and I’m sort of waiting and suddenly this young this not young old lady, but diminutive lady walks up. “You’re Aniket?” I said, “Yeah.” “Come.” Start walking. Now, this is a fort that’s built on the side of a hill. And it goes 100 ft up, right? Forts like this. And it’s a dilapidated the bats. There’s bat The stuff that has fallen down. “I want you to do gardens for this place.” Yeah, sure. “This is going to become a hotel.” I said, “Okay.” Now I understand a little bit. So that’s how we found this fort, right? And it was completely dilapidated. And then, you know, so it’s really built along the hill. Mhm. And there are courtyards at every level, right? So there is one which is the court that you enter into. Two was where the stables were and there was a large piece there. Three was the courtyard that happened when you first entered the palace. And then as you went up, there were courtyards which had names. Mhm. So, there was a courtyard that was called Darbar court, royal court. There was a courtyard that was called Kamal court. There was a courtyard that was called Zenana court. Mhm. Ladies court. But you actually went there, there was nothing. Like there was some stone and some mud and there was nothing, just just names. So, okay. So, I said, “Okay, you know, here is history.” It’s not a protected monument. Not a It’s not a protected And yet it’s history. It’s an old fort. So, what does one do when confronted with history? Wow. Right? So, do you really now sort of start imagining what it could have been and try and recreate it? Or here is a chance for you to say “I don’t actually know what it could have been, but there’s some clues left for me here. Mhm. And now maybe I want to do my conversation with the past so that it’s relevant for today and maybe tomorrow.” Because this was not a protected monument, because of this and you you had the liberty of thinking like that. And so we started working and I said, “Each court has to be almost like a philosophical or a metaphysical sort of space.” Um and I said, “Let’s try it. I mean, let’s see what what’s going to happen, right?” So, the entrance, of course, I mean, that the fort when it got restored. And so we what happened was there was there was an old water collection system that had choked and had dilapidated from the first court. So, we dug dug dug, found out all the channels, did whatever it is, and restored it. And so finally we knew that this is Rajasthan, so water is important. So finally made sure that all the water ran down from one court to the other and then came down into this court and just next to it behind this bench we built a massive water tank. So all the water sort of gets collected and goes to the water tank. But what we decided was that when you look at the Mughal gardens they’re not about water conservation, they’re pleasure gardens. So here we have a system where a large amount of water is going to come in a short period of time monsoon being limited but it’s going to run a certain course. And at the same time you want to mark that course to say here ran water or here runs water for 5 days in a year or 10 days in a year. So what we did is on top of it so there are water channels, the main water channel runs below this water channel. Right? And then we created a shallow basin on top, right? Now what the Mughals did is that they had an axial manner in which the water channels were done. But we said we don’t want to do that because, you know, it’s a Rajput fort. So what we did is we did that, so the drawing there shows you how that water channel runs and it bends as you see at two locations. So what it really does is that it takes you from the entrance gate to the gate of the palace, so it actually becomes a marker of and it bends every time it finds history. So the first bend was when there was an old temple. The next bend which you see here is when there was an old jharokha that we found which got restored. So as you went along you found two incidents, an old temple and a jharokha, and every time you found something you bent it. And so the channel sort of bends at two places and And you finally come to the entrance. The place is called Devi God. And Devi the female goddess but strong strength. To represent her, rather than doing like an idol and this, we got these two big stones Mhm. and put them in the center of the court. And we said, that’s the strength of the lady. But she’s a lady and she requires protection. We planted this Bauhinia over her and almost like a baldachin, like a shawl the Bauhinia sort of Mhm. spreads over the lady’s head. You can see the strength of the lady but the femininity of her is defined by the way that the veil over her head happens. So, you really had these two stones Wow. and the Bauhinia that happens and the Bauhinia literally grows like a baldachin. So, grows in a manner in which it covers her head. So, you come there and you know somebody’s strong but she’s feminine. Also, so that was the way that we said Wow. that we will talk about the Devi God, the Devi goddess. Then we found a court that was called the Kamal Court. There was nothing in the Kamal Court. So, we decided that we will take a modern version of a lotus Mhm. and circumscribe it to run about 160 ft like that. Right? Now the trick is you got to have to run you you have to get the water to come from the center and you have to got get to run lazily 100 ft by gravity and I don’t know whether this photograph or the maybe the next photograph will help. Okay. Mhm. So, now if you see, can you see I mean can you see at this point? Right. Now, this is the trick, right? There’s a connection. Okay, no, no, no, no, it’s a it’s a trick. Mhm. So, the water has to run like this, run like this, run like this, and this water can’t go there. Okay. It has to go around. So, you have to get your levels done so perfectly that you can see one water running like this and the other water going like this and this water not going there. Wow. And you do it to precision. You do it to precision. So, the drawing is like this complicated drawing with levels every And luckily the the chap who constructed it was an equally madman. So, you know. And and you increase the depth as you can see at the beginning it’s shallow and as you go the depth slightly increases still it reaches the end, right? Right. Because it’s just going by gravity. So, there’s it’s not being pumped. The water just being released. It just goes by gravity and it has to run perfectly like the delicateness of a flower. So, this water can’t go there. So, you actually there are places where people you observe you find two different streams of water. One that is going like this and one that’s going the other way despite the fact that between these two there’s only just a little level difference. It’s not a dam. What’s the symbol of that I mean why is this What is the symbol of that? Just the perfectionness of how things should be. The just the perfection of a flower, no? You look at a lotus flower. There’s I mean you don’t see a flaw in it, right? Look at flowers. If you’re going to do something that’s an ode to a Kamal Court you could either plant lotuses. That’s an easy way of doing it. Or you can say just look at the beauty and the perfection of a flower. You will keep marveling at all of it. And this is one way to make you to, you know, I mean those who get it get it. those who don’t get it, don’t get it. Some people look at it and say, “Oh, wow, beautiful modern interpretation.” That’s okay. But, to me, it was this. Wow. To just see, look at the way the water’s flowing. Look at this water. Look at that water. Don’t meet. They meet, but they don’t cross. Wow. So, this water then goes and it falls into another court, which is the Kamal court. Then, the next court was something that was called the Darbar court. And this is a royal court. So, what we did was we took a stone and carved like a little throne. Mhm. And we planted a tree of life. We planted a banana behind it. Now, if you look at the image on the left-hand side, you can see that white line Mhm. defining like an orb, right? And it’s very subtle, but you can only slightly know, because I’ve told you, you slightly now make out in this image, otherwise you won’t make it out, right? You can see the the flooring running like this. Mhm. And you can begin to see a circle circumscribed. Oh, right. And to us, it was a story that, you know, you could be This is royalty gazing over the cosmos. And it’s on the But, all the same, it’s always always at the edge of the cosmos. Mhm. Royalty would like to pretend that it’s the center of the universe, but it never is. All it can do is gaze upon the cosmos, but the cosmos has got its own life. And so, the throne is there in the corner, and you know, stone sort of goes. Wow. So, what is the inspiration for that interpretation? Like Look at royalty. Look at royalty. I mean, royalty is so pompous, and they always always feel like they’re the center of the universe, and I am the world revolves around me and you know what I have I everywhere I look is my world. Half the time they don’t realize they are the edge of the world. They They have only one perspective towards the world. The world is what the world is. They may pretend that they are the center of the world, but they never are. Mhm. So, it’s just a comment on people who are headstrong and power hungry and to say it doesn’t matter how royal you are and So, you always search for a metaphorical narrative for a design. Not always. When you have a chance, you do it. Right? I mean, you can’t always do it, but when you have a chance, you do it and That’s beautiful. Yeah. So, And why specific banana tree? Well, because the banana tree has to be replanted all the time. So, that was the other thing. You wanted something that looked You You wanted a plant that grew quickly, Mhm. that nourished, but was not permanent. So, royalty is always that, used to nourish even if it’s good, but it’s never permanent. Something else will always Some new planting will We could have planted a banyan tree. Oh. But, there’s an ephemeral sense about power. Even good power is ephemeral. Never They’re never permanent, right? It’s like Annadata or you know, the doyen of the family or whoever. It’s always ephemeral. There’s no There’s no permanence to this idea. Mhm. But, when they when they give, they give with bounty. They give plenty. Right. But, it’s never permanent. It has to be replanted. It has to be recreated. Wow. So, every component has a thought behind it. [laughter] That’s not a shallow thought. Wow. And then this was the Zenana court and there was an old swing in that court in the center which we restored. And of course we planted this with just white flowers and you know Parijat and then we built this fountain. This fountain is actually like this. Now when you see most fountains the water spews out. Right? Right? In this fountain intentionally the water goes in. And we wanted to make a comment Zenana court, ladies court. In Rajasthan feudal culture. And we wanted to make a comment on the way women are treated in feudal right? That they take in all that is thrown at them. And they put down deep in their womb. And they assimilate it all. And they still glisten. And they still hold their space, right? And we said that’s how we treat women and then we found this you know column somewhere in the palace and planted it almost like a phallic symbol in the middle of the fountain. And we said that’s how we treat our women. You know, you look at what they go through. You look at how much they have to take every day. And they cannot talk about it. They can’t do anything about it. Society doesn’t give them any space to you know go stout and do things. Everything is put inside their womb. It’s put inside their womb. And yet they’re expected to glisten and shine and be there for everything that is required, to stand up for their family, society. And it’s under this dominance of this phallic egoistic male symbol. And so we built a fountain for them. Ah. Symbolism. And is this your first project with symbols symbolism? No, there was one there were a couple of two before, but they were timid. There was there was one before. This execution is a very Yeah, so though there was one before so these three projects happened at the same time and they all had layers of symbolism. So the other project that happened at the same time was a house that’s called the Gooma house which became very popular. It got photographed all over the world and I was very I am interested and I was interested about the idea of different forms of nature. That you know there’s tame nature and there’s untamed nature, but they’re still forms of nature. So I wanted this whole interplay between tame nature and untamed nature and so this house tries to tell it. But as a result what happens is along the house the house is essentially a long walk and there are courtyards that happen on sides and then the house sort of fills in. So the first courtyard is done with earth. And there’s tulsi that is planted and behind the tulsi there are boxes of fire to tell you the story of how tulsi was born and you know how tulsi was born, right? I mean tulsi was the wife of a of a king. Vishnu assumes a low role of lover and so seduces her and because of the infidelity she’s ashamed and so she goes in the funeral pyre and when she goes to the funeral pyre she curses the god and the god says, “I’m sorry, but when you’re born again, you will be a symbol of purity.” And so the first courtyard tells you that story. Why do Indian households have tulsi courtyard? I mean tulsi courtyard. Purity, you know. Purity. Something that will absolve, something that will clean, something that will purify. So symbolic for that reason. That’s why every house is going to Tulsi Vrindavan. Right. There was another house. The other one was a wedding place that we done. And you know, this is a time when weddings would happen in so-called party plots. And these plots usually used to be just large pieces of very bad lawn. Mhm. With a ramshackle toilet. And if you had a wedding in that family, then if in that what you you hired that place, and then you spent money in putting up with flowers, and you spend money on putting up lighting. This is nonsense. I mean, every time somebody has to get married, look at the amount of money that they have to spend on props. You know, we decided to design this, and the client is a great friend of mine. Now, we said, you know, we should do a place that if nobody wants any props, it should be fine. And yet, if somebody wants props, it should be possible to do. Mhm. So, in that, we built this huge, long, 100 to 150 ft long that almost builds like a crescendo. It was almost musical in the manner in which the wall starts. And it begins with smaller arches or smaller openings, and they they sort of geometrically keep increasing, and the height of the wall keeps changing almost like the act of celebration that starts on a quieter note, and reaches like a crescendo in the end. And then in the flooring, we took leaves of bananas and also follow and printed it in concrete. Wow. Also, but this was more powerful. I mean, this was this was So, how do symbols occur to you? I mean, you have to be Well, I mean, you need to have a good taste with I mean, of course, art, and also need to know perspectives, and also find a physicality of things and then I mean it’s a great craft, right? I mean symbolism I never thought I’m sure you’ve read the Freud and Jasper and man and his symbols and so on so forth. And I mean even as a kid I know that or I I’ve thought about and I keep thinking that sometimes you need a little trigger Mhm. to to take your mind and supplant it somewhere else. And it happens to all of us, right? You’re sitting in a place something and suddenly something will pass or suddenly a bird will go up in the sky or something will happen and suddenly your mind will register that act and suddenly your mind will be transported. You suddenly start thinking about something or you’ll be reminded about something, you know. Finally these are triggers, you can never predict. You never predict what trigger will work or not work. I mean that God alone knows. Right. I mean that’s not in your hands. Mhm. But what you can certainly do is that you can sit in a place and say because I’m in this place, what are the stories that this place would like to tell? Mhm. So if we go to a place called Zenana Court what are the stories that a Zenana Court will like to tell? Will it like to tell the stories of how women dressed very beautifully and danced? Will it like to tell the stories of them watching a starry night? Or maybe they also want to tell the story of their lives. I mean who knows I mean then you pick then you pick what is the story that comes to you and sort of knocks your head. Mhm. And if it knocks it hard enough and you say okay, that’s a story. And now what is the way to tell it? And your tools are limited. Your tools are plans some stone, a little bit of water. You You have to make sure that you don’t have too many tools. Mhm. But once you have too many tools, then something starts going wrong. But you keep your tools to the minimum. So, that’s my tool. Earth, water. And then you try and construct a story out of those tools. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I mean, that’s When you finally get the picture of it, that must be a serendipitous feeling, right? Yes. It’s a moment. Right. It’s a moment. Like you would jump. If you are taking a bath, you would run naked [laughter] Yeah, the moment it happens finally, you’re saying, “Okay, done now.” I mean, you know, now whether people get it, they don’t get it, it’s right, it’s wrong. Mhm. Do it. You know this is right. This is the right know it’s right. It feels right. it’s right. It feels Right. At that point, it feels right because you have exhausted yourself. You’ve thought as much as you could possibly think of. Your mind is now hit a wall. You realize And this seems This is it. This seems like the thing to do. There’s something beautiful with instincts, right? Rather than just reasoning and But instinct is also a heck of a lot of reasoning. Mhm. What seems like instinct is the product of a lot of reasoning that happens in another mind. Why do we have good instincts? Because we spend years and years honing them somewhere else. There’s something on. This is something. And then lower, we found a piece of land uh lower. And I don’t know whether you know about the original four square garden. No idea. So, if you look at Mughal gardens, Mhm. the idea of the four square garden is a universal idea. When the Romans were creating havoc on Christianity, Mhm. and the Christians were running away from Rome and trying to establish their relation their religion. They ran and created monasteries far away from the normal routes in which the Roman armies would go. It was not till 1976 or 79 AD Mhm. that Constantinople declared Christianity as a state religion. Till then it was not a state religion. The Romans were out to plunder. And so these monasteries got built. Then Gaul monastery in Switzerland is one of the oldest surviving monasteries. And if you go to that monastery and if you look at the plans of that monastery, you’ll see a four square garden. So what was the four square garden? The four square garden was something where there was a water head or a water source in the center. And from that center water was distributed in the line of least resistance to be able to irrigate Mhm. the quadrants. They grew herbs. They grew flowers. Because this way of doing or moving water became important, different religions started attesting different meanings to it. So this happened in Christianity. In the Hindus, Mount Meru became the center. Mhm. And from Mount Meru flew the rivers, the different rivers. The Mughals or the Muslims called it the garden of paradise. Mhm. That this was a garden of paradise and the four squares of were the four ideas of divinity. But it’s a universal idea. Wow. Right? We think it’s a Mughal idea or a Muslim idea, but it’s a universal idea. And the universality of it is born in something very basic. That you take water, you lift water, and then you let water flow by carefully organized data or level. And water will flow in a manner in which it will situate or irrigate your fields, and the extra water will go back to the channel. Mhm. So, it was a very good piece of engineering. Right. Right? Topologically speaking. So, this one is designed where from the center the water is brought out, it’s put in that channel. Now, as it flows along the channel, each of the bed is done with a certain relationship to the depth of the channel. Ah. The side of the wall has got little Mhm. you know, stones. So, as the water starts flowing, you can open them, and the water will flood that quadrant, right? If it floods the first quadrant, the slope of the first quadrant will go from the right-hand corner to the left-hand corner. So, the extra water will then go into the next channel. Mhm. So, there is no water that is being wasted. You can control almost with weir-like how much you want to flood one quadrant, how much you don’t want to flood one quadrant, how much you just want the water to soak it. So, it’s a bit of crafty engineering or good engineering in the simplest way. Mhm. And I was It was existing No, I made it. Oh, wow. No, no, I made it. It was It wasn’t there. There was nothing there. Wow. I said, you know, here’s a chance. Let me see whether I can do it. So, you already knew about the engineering part. I mean, I read about the engineering, I knew about the engineering, I knew how to it. But I wasn’t sure whether I would get it, but yeah, it worked. Wow, what a pleasure, right? Absolutely. And what was the most difficult part? Like when you started you were might have thought okay, you could do it, but when you really executing the design, what was the most challenging part? See, one is that you can do it by trial and error, right? And you can start and then you sort of say okay, here’s the water and then you start laying the channel in slope and the next one in slope and you can do it by trial and error. You’d probably get it right. I didn’t want to do it like that. I wanted to get it right on a piece of paper first. And sort of balance everything on a piece of paper and then be sure. And 100% sure. Now you can’t write slopes. So when you write a slope for soil and when you write a slope for stone, they’re two different slopes. They’re If you’re saying a stone can take a slope of 1 in 100 and the water will flow at 1 in 100 it won’t flow on soil because soil is more rough and it will hold water. So it requires a different slope. So you have to understand so you need to sort of in your head Right. think all this out Right. out all these little levels, all these slopes, everything else, the width of the channels, how that channel will get formed without any civil work because you know the end the way the stone has to stay, it has to stay with its own self dead weight. It can’t stay by putting cement it because it’s a mud path. So you know, you don’t want to use extra cement. You don’t want I mean, it’s all those little nuances that excited me in in doing it. And so we grow vegetables here which feed well some part This is crazy water engineering. [laughter] So this was fun. And it goes back to the original source tank. So it runs along like this and then it will go back to it. It will So it will take a route every time it will sort of loop back to the source tank. I’m just thinking in terms of slope, how did you manage to to are delivering Mhm. and two are returning. Right. So, I mean so I did it, but in actually you don’t need to do it because you don’t actually have that much water going back. Okay. Which part of the site is a lower so if you go back to that plan Mhm. Just because there was a space available you there was a piece of land that later we found which is outside the fort. Later we found that that also belonged to the fort. Okay. We didn’t know when we started and as we were working somebody said “Ye bhi fort ka hai.” This belongs to us only. So, what you do because it’s at a depth. So, it couldn’t have been a guest area. Mhm. So, and it was lying there doing nothing. So, what to do with that land? I said “You know, let’s do this and it’s not going to cost us too much money, but you’re going to see it from top.” Wow. You see it from every terrace down. And then you know, in there was in the corner in one place of the palace which is really the back of the palace. I mean, it’s a place that people guests don’t go. Mhm. Uh we found these boulders lots of old boulders. So, we carved these boulders out and we planted the Sansevieria there. Almost like headgears Mhm. of soldiers in an army. And we lined them up with the center one aligned to the dip of the mountain there. Mhm. Almost like soldiers waiting for war to happen and enemy to come and there’s no enemy, it’s peace time, but they’re waiting. [laughter] So, so a little bit of humor. So, you know, I mean, I aligned it exactly to where that you know, valley sort of sort of comes down. Mhm. And so there and then in some of the other terraces, we got this floor and cut these lines in grass. Mhm. And if you look at the mountains across from that terrace on top, they have exactly the same manner in which the topography sort of gets done. Wow. Right. So, was there any symbolism the way you uh laid out this path of the soldiers? No, not the soldier, the path for the uh like people to walk here on the terrace. This one was on the right or on the left? No, no, the left. Left? Actually, it’s a place that uh it’s a backyard of the hotel. It was a place that was left and it was a place that you were going to see from the top. People are not even going to go there. I said, “What do you do in that place?” And we had these boulders. So, I said, “Let’s have some fun. I mean, everything else is getting so serious.” So, [laughter] it was There’s not too much symbolism there. Just line them up. And here you see the Yeah, so this very clearly though I mean, different mountains have different ways in which the formations of the mountains happen, right? And some of them and you look I mean, you know this, right? Himalayas look very different from parts of the Himalayas from top of the Deccan Plateau. And this particular thing, the mountain almost is a zigzag sort of mountain, right? And we just wanted to enforce that in that terrace. Wow. I mean, you’re looking at this, but that’s the kind of job Consistency, natural, and nice. And what’s in the center like you played We uh there if you see in that concrete, you can see leaves of uh the toddy palms the palm printed in the concrete. But, I mean, there was no symbolism. We’re just doing a terrace flooring. We could have done a regular terrace flooring, but we said, “Let’s have fun.” So, I mean, that’s what happened there. There’s no symbolism there. And the pasture of land, why did you kill life to these? Sometimes I don’t know why I do things. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, sometimes I’m unable to explain. It felt good. That’s all. At that point, it just felt like the right thing to do. So. Wow, it was. It’s beautiful landscape even the No, again, what’s interesting is So, this was done this palace opened in

2000. Okay. 26 years now. Uh the original owners sold it uh to an investment company. They ran it for 7 8 years. And then they sold it to RAAS Resorts of Jodhpur. So, now they own the hotel. Every time the owners have changed, the interiors have been re-hauled. The restaurants have been redone. Something has been The landscape hasn’t been touched. Wow. Not once. And people go there. I haven’t been there for a long time, but people go there. And it seems that now they have made They must have heard me talking about this somewhere or they must have read about it on the website. So, they now have a person who tries and explains all this to people who are interested. So.

[laughter] And did you study the history of the original uh the setup? Like, you know, what is the real history of this place? man, you know, he was he was a minor thikedar, a minor king belonging who served the Udaipur royalty. So, there was nothing great or exceptional about him. Uh the stone of this area is particularly interesting. So, this is very close to the uh to Shri Nath Ji. Uh the Jain temples of Shri Nath Ji, which is literally 40 minutes from here. Uh so, there was not any dramatic historical context other than this was a drunken ruler who was in debt, of course, and essentially his forefathers served the royalty at Udaipur and paid their taxes to them. This had been received by this last person who was drunken and he sold his entire palace, if I remember correctly, Mhm. for something like 20 lakhs. Okay. The entire palace was sold for 20 lakhs. So, it was I mean, it was it was junk. It was Nobody would have touched it. It was this lady had the courage to recognize it and make it one of the world’s best hotels. So, Right. She also felt something. She saw She saw something in it. But, there’s so many of these places lying all over Rajasthan, even today. So, how do you intervene a place that already has a history? Well, you know, I mean, in the sense that Do you have to be mindful about intervening a place which has a history? Okay. So, my way of looking at history is not or intervening with history is not the popular way in which intervening with history is talked about, at least in the Indian context. Mhm. So, in the Indian context, if you are working in the presence of serious history, so, let’s say that you were asked to do the gardens of Taj Mahal. Mhm. For the right reasons, I’m not I mean, I’m not I’m not fighting that. But, for the right reason, somebody will do deep archaeological studies and try and as hard as they can to try and recreate what perhaps were the gardens where Shah Jahan did it. I have no argument with it. I have no complaints If I was asked to do the landscapes of Taj Mahal, I’m sure I would not have tried to recreate it the way Shah Jahan did. Mhm. I’m sure that I would have tried to find out the state of mind then, the state of affairs then, what life was then, what was the story of plans then, and without being disrespectful, I would try to tell the story anew. So, that’s the way at least I like to engage with history. And you know, I’m not showing you this right now, but uh Have you heard of Sidi Sayed ki Jali? No. The Sidi Sayed ki Jali is Ahmedabad’s most important monument. Okay. Mhm. This is a 600-year-old monument built by an Abyssinian slave who then became a leader. And it is considered as some of the most delicate Jalis done in sandstone in the world. So, those the set of Jalis. And those Jalis are have become iconic and representative of Ahmedabad. So, every time somebody has to give somebody a memento of Ahmedabad, it’s a memento of the Jali. Mhm. The IIM in Ahmedabad for the longest time had the Jali as their logo. Wow. is that important. I’m just to give you. So, if any visitor came to Ahmedabad and said, “Where should I go?” Then without doubt, people would say, “Oh, you must go and see the Sidi Sayed.” I mean, it’s that important. Now, as as we speak, there’s a Sidi Sayed ki Jali and next to Sidi Sayed ki Jali, there’s a piece of land. Sidi Sayed Jali belongs to the Wakf Board and the Archaeological Survey of India. It’s a protected monument. The land next to it, literally adjacent, belongs to the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. And for 2 years, you know, we I’ve been speaking to the ASI to get permissions, and finally work has started. So, work is going Now, I could do I could have done something that was an empty repetition of the jali and the forms and the geometry of it. I could have done that. I could have done something that tried to recreate the idea of the jali with modern material. Or I could have done something that didn’t make a statement at all and was a simple you know, ground where people could wander and see the jali because from this land you can see the jali the best because the jali from the exterior. What I chose to do is that I looked at the symbols of the jali. And the symbols of the jali because it’s Muslim. Uh there are no human figures, of course. So, there are flowers and the motives. And there’s some beautiful symbols. There’s a beautiful tree of life. And then there were some beautiful symbols of flowers. I could have decided to even replicate that. But I when I was reading about it, I found that this is what is considered one of the best examples of what is called the Ganga Jamuna Tezi. The Ganga Jamuna Tezi in the Indian Hindustan is when Hindu and Muslim craftsmen got together and worked with a sense of camaraderie. And they created something that was neither Ganga, neither Hindu, neither Jamuna, neither Muslim. And they came together to create a new tehzeeb, a new language. And this is a symbol of what was called the Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb. The Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb was essentially a story of when religion was put aside Mhm. and people got together and brought their best to do something. In the times that we live today, Mhm. that’s threatened. And so, my response to it was to do a sunken seating Mhm. that is shaped like a wilted flower. So, it’s a flower. It’s not dead. It’s not fresh. But, it’s wilted. Mhm. And it’s a wilted flower with leaves that petals that fold over and petals that sway. And you can go inside this wilted flower and distance yourself from the traffic all around and sit down in the bowel of the earth. Well, that was my way of telling that story, right? I mean, it’s it’s being executed three If you come again in 6 months, it’ll be there and finished, right? Was that the right response? I don’t know. I think it is. No, no, I don’t know. Yeah, yeah. I don’t know, right? But, did it feel right? Mhm. right. It felt like I thought hard enough about it. It felt right that in today’s time I needed to make a little statement like that. I didn’t want to be jingoistic. I didn’t want to be harsh. I wanted to say, “Hey, you know, I’m a little crestfallen about times.” That’s all I wanted. Wow. To answer your question, that’s how I would engage with history. You respond to the contemporary times. I respond to I try to make the past the present, right? I try to make the past relevant to the present. I try to make something that we can read today so that we can think about tomorrow better. Otherwise, what is the meaning of the past? Do you get So, that’s your history, but what do you do with it? If the visitor doesn’t understand the symbolism there, would the play still work? Based on what I have observed, uh sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. First of all, I’ve noticed that when you want to make these kind of symbolic references, I think that you have to be very clear about what kind of audiences you’re talking about. Um if it’s a very one-on-one client who knows you, you know, you’re doing that work, then that symbolism is very often a product of a conversation and hence and it’s also meant for a limited set of people. The moment you go into the public realm, so the we got is quasi public. I mean, it’s still a certain class of people who will go there. But the moment you go to public parks and things like that, my I notice that when you do something like that, people are at least intrigued. Mhm. And they’re sort of, you know, saying, “Why is this like that?” Or why is this done the way it is done? And to me, that’s a beginning. To me that’s a beginning, right? But at the very least, I think people notice that something here is happening which requires them to at the very least say why is this like that? And to me that’s a beginning. Mhm. Right? Some people curiosity. Yeah, and then some people will want to ask more. Some people will want to in their head figure out an answer. And it doesn’t matter whether they end up with the same answers that you thought you did it for. The fact that it then becomes a lens through which you can begin to see the world in the way that you want to see the world is already very important. Mhm. So, I’ve talked about this garden that I love. Uh it’s called Nishat Bagh in Srinagar. And Nishat Bagh was done by Azam Khan. And it was a garden of pleasure done on the edge of Dal Lake. The nine terraces. And each terrace represents a zodiac sign. Mhm. It’s It’s a beautiful garden. Now, you can walk up and say what a beautiful example of it is of a Mughal gardens of the hills. Now, I went to that garden in the recent many years. And you already kind of knew the story of Kashmir. You knew the story of Kashmir what happened with the Sikh rulers, what happened in 1947, how villages were razed down and Kashmir became so-called a part of India. And its birth was in blood and pain. Mhm. And it’s palpable. I mean, when you go to Srinagar, it’s palpable. You know that there’s this beautiful with beautiful people. And the sorrow is sort of just here. It’s waiting. If you look at Kashmir, Kashmir is a valley, of course, and you enter it through a narrow mouth. And as you enter Kashmir, there are plains and there still water. But as you start rising up, the water gets turbulent and starts flowing. And as you enter, there low hills and then slowly the Pir Panjal ranges take over and you’re engulfed in this valley. So, this I knew. And it weighed on me. And so, the first time I went to this garden, I went in winter. Where, you know, everything was brown or white. I mean, there was some snow. But there were no pretty flowers. So, you Earlier, of course, you used to enter this garden through the Dal Lake. But now you this As you start rising, you have the expanse of the Dal Lake behind you. And you’re still connected with the sense of openness. Pretty much like you would have entered the sense of the plains. You’re entering through a narrow As you start rising a little bit, there are large limpid pools of water. Much like the pools of the plains. You start rising and then the water starts rustling down. There are charades and the water becomes like water from the springs. And then slowly the chinar trees start rising and they start engulfing you. Now, Now, to me, my lens of that garden, and then you reach the last terrace. And when you reach the last terrace, there’s a little pavilion, and you wonder why the zenith of this entire journey is a little pavilion. And then you look up and you see the Zabarwan hills. And you suddenly realize that this is a moment between the Zabarwan hills and the Dal Lake. It’s a moment of time. No, that’s the way I want to see this garden. I want to see this garden as a telling me the story of Kashmir. It’s a moment in time. It’s a moment caught between two stories of powerful nature. It’s a moment where water is still, but water is constricted and bound like joy is constricted. It is tells like the mountains rise, so do the trees of the chinar trees. I didn’t make it up. I didn’t go there wanting to write that story, but I felt it. I mean, I felt shaken, and I was wondering why I was so shaken, right? So, maybe somebody else will see something else. The fact is that when you do something with the deep desire to want to connect, whatever it is that you want to connect, the past, the present, the future, the story, the love affair, whatever. You may tell that story because you want to tell it in a certain way, but because that story’s been told with a certain degree of truth and passion, other people will find their stories in it. And that itself is a big thing, no? How does it matter whether they see the your story the way you want to tell the story? I’ve written somewhere that, you know, finally when everything ends, all we are left with is stories, no? Stories of our childhood, stories of growing up. Finally, we are a sum of our stories. Otherwise, what is there? Yeah, so it doesn’t matter whether people understand it, don’t understand it. It’s an experience beyond knowledge. So, when we say place carries a memory, what does it actually mean in special terms? Any place, genus loci is a word that is used, the genius of a location. Mhm. The Latin word that is used by architects very often. What is the genius of that location? What is the sense of that location? And every place has its past. Sometimes it’s an ecological past, sometimes it’s a social past, sometimes it’s an anthro- biological past, sometimes it’s a political past. But every place has a past, right? And to be able to unearth that, to be able to understand it, and to try and bring it slightly in your forefront, is what that memory of that place is. And to try and keep that memory A memory is a A memory only if it’s alive. Mhm. If it’s not alive, it’s not no more a memory, right? I mean, it’s gone. It’s wiped out. Right. The very fact that a place must have memory is when you recognize that this place was something before you walked into that place. And you acknowledge that fact in some way. And that acknowledgement is not always the physical manifestation of that space. Like, there’s this public park that we’ve done uh in in Bombay. And this is in Worli. And this is where all the shiny new buildings of Worli are coming up, right? Mhm. And this used to be textile land. And at some point of time, as we know, Bombay was the Manchester of India. We know that it had 400 mills and so on and so forth. And then Datta Samant one day led a labor strike and felled that entire industry. And the new Bombay rises over that land. And so the flooring of this park is done in cement with metal poles which are embedded in cement. Which is to say that you’re actually walking on the graveyard of these textile mills. On this graveyard will you build your future. There’s nothing wrong in building the future, but you should know that you’re building your future on the graveyard of something that was before you. So, it’s a way of just reminding ourselves of where we come from. What was the past? Why are we connected? Why should we be connected? That’s what I mean by, you know, using memory as a powerful way of staying in the present. And what are you How can you stay in the present if you don’t have memory, right? Like if a visitor knows nothing about the history, are they still experiencing that memory? Have you been to places which have made you pause a little bit? Have you been to places where it has made you more reflective? You We go to that space. We All of us go to those spaces. And you yet you don’t know anything about that space. Right. But something about you slows down. Something about you starts looking around a little more keenly. Something about you gets your mind to race a bit, right? So, not knowing and sensing are two different things. I may not know, but I can sense. The fact that you leave the fragrance of that idea is enough. That I think is the job of a spatial designer. Any spatial designer, whether it’s landscape, whether it’s architecture, whatever it is. Yeah, you’ll you’ll create spaces for people to use. You All that you’ll do. But what will you do beyond that? What will you do beyond that? And I think that doing something so that we stay sane, doing something that we stay humane. Or letting that fragrance stay in everything that we do is the least we can try. I’m not saying you’re successful or that you always are or that all projects allow it. I’m not saying that. Some more, some less. But at least that should be uppermost in your mind that uh my job is not to make pretty places. My job is not to make effective spaces or efficient spaces. My job is not to make only resilient spaces. My job is not to respond only respond to the program. My job is to do a lot more than that. Wow. Because if I do anything lesser than that then I squander a tool that I’m lucky to have. Where does this tree guide you? And where you yourself allow it to deviate? History at the end of the day is a perspective. Mhm. You know, that we now know. It depends on who has written the history. Correct. Right? So there is no absolute truth in history. There might be truth in the events, but there may may not the truth in the interpretation of the events Mhm. is always a perspective. So when people say your history is incorrect and mine is correct, it’s a problem. I mean, you know, all history is a problem. All history is an interpretation of depending on who’s writing that history or who’s looking at that history. And to me the idea of history has to be something that allows me to be anchored in my present. If that does not happen then why exactly am I looking at history? I mean, why why why should I look at history? Why should I worry about what happened 500 years back? Academic knowledge, sure, but beyond that how does it change the way that I look at my life? So, if it doesn’t influence my life, if I if it doesn’t let me calibrate my life better then what is the point of history? And which means that if I have to calibrate my life better, I will have to speak to history. And in in the same manner in which it’s an old companion that I will have conversations with and I will write my own history. I’ll write my own interpretations. I’ll just be humble about it. I’ll try and be as fair as I can about it. But nonetheless I will converse with it because I want that conversation to be landed in the present. If it’s not landed in the present, you’re fossilizing an idea and you know, there’s no point in fossilizing things. You have to keep the fragrance alive. And that’s the way I see this whole thing about, you know, the relationship of history. When you design symbolism and things like this do you see yourself as a designer or storyteller or a translator? I don’t I’ve never thought of it as trying to bracket myself into this or that or the other. I see myself as a landscape architect trying to do something. That’s about it. I don’t like to add labels to it. I am a landscape architect. I’m an architect. But you tell stories with your Yeah, I try to do it. I try to Yeah, and I try to dignify the profession. I try to expand the profession. I try to test the limits of the profession. Try to see what the profession can do. I think that’s the pursuit. To really see here’s a tool in your hand. What can you do with it? How much can you stretch it? In which direction can you stretch it? When will it crumble? When will it crack? When will it not crack? When will it become elastic? I think everything that I do or we do is really about testing what has been given to us. And seeing what we can do with it. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. But we are very sure that it’s a resilient tool. It’s got a tool with unexplored limits. And it’s a tool that is valuable depending on what you want to do with it. And so your mind will determine its limits more than it will determine its own limits. So infuse a lot of storytelling in your design elements more than logic or It’s not more than logic. It’s after logic. Right? None of these designs will matter if they don’t perform at a primary performative level. Right? So, a public park is not going to perform unless it doesn’t take care of the basic requirements of a public park. I mean, you’ll need pathways that work, you need planting that works, you need lighting that works, you’ll need drainage that works. So, all that logic has to be there. The question is what you do beyond that logic, not at the cost of logic. These are not indulgent journeys. These are journeys where you’ve dealt with the primary responsibility. And then you’re saying, “Okay, now that’s done. Now what else can I do with it?” Right? Storytelling is icing on the cake or something. essence of the design It’s not icing on the cake. It is it is the essence of it. It is not the icing. It is the essence. It is what makes it. In the absence of it, it is nothing. In the absence of it, what is it? I mean, you can have a Forgive me for saying this, but you can have a very ordinary engineer. Or and he will make a building. It won’t leak. And the staircase will work, and the lift will work, and the windows will open. And the light will come in. Will it Is it architecture? Of course not. It’s not architecture. Construction. When does it become architecture? It becomes architecture when it starts negotiating with these abstract ideas. And whatever, each person will figure out his own abstract idea. Somebody might be fascinated with the idea of tactility. Somebody might be fascinated with the idea of light. Somebody might be fascinated with the idea of craft. Somebody might be fascinated with the idea of storytelling. Each designer is on and whatever they want to do. But it is when they pursue that journey does it then does it become architecture. Without it, it’s nothing. So this is not icing. It is what it is. It is. And without it, it isn’t. So landscape architecture, if it is a pretty garden with some nice plants, is not landscape architecture. It becomes landscape architecture when you start wrestling with one of these Whatever. I mean It could be an ecological idea. It could be whatever. I mean beyond the immediate calling. What is the calling that you wish to pursue? And when you pursue that calling, then does it become a part of your discipline? Otherwise, it’s not. I mean there is no There is no doubt in my mind that a lot that we pass off as architecture is not architecture. And you know, the people like to get away by saying, “Oh, it’s one form of architecture.” No, it’s not one form of architecture. I’m sorry. It’s not one form of It’s construction. Nothing wrong with it. Construction. Don’t call it architecture. I mean all these apartment buildings that get built, I don’t call them architecture. I mean they’re done by architects. Just because they’re done by architects doesn’t make it architecture. Not at all. You need them. They’re the background noise in every city and you need them. Every now and then an apartment building will become architecture like Kanchanjunga that Correa did in Bombay and suddenly he took an apartment building and it became architecture. Because he tested ideas of a bungalow. He tested ideas of very different ideas of living, right? Because he tested ideas. And when you’re not testing any ideas, you’re cloning them over and over again efficiently and packaging them, it doesn’t become architecture. It becomes construction. Good, efficient construction needed for society, needed for us. Nothing wrong with it. But don’t call it architecture. Mhm. So, when somebody does a nice pathway and plants a few plants and put some benches, looks like a pleasant enough space. It’s not landscape architecture. It’s a pleasant enough planted place. Good. I mean, we need them, too, but it’s not The discipline demands much more. The discipline demands you to raise the bar every day. The discipline demands you to imagine it differently. The discipline had invests you with the responsibility of using that discipline to make a better society. And a better society is not providing good footpaths. That is but beyond that, a lot more. Well, that was a great discussion for this project. Now, let’s move on to Right. So, let’s go to something that’s called Palava. So, Palava is of course You know, we started this in 2011, around 2011. So, we’ve been working on it for 17, 16, 17 years now. And we had just finished a large development housing development in Bombay, which is I think 150 or 200 acres. And that had turned out fine and then this client had acquired or has acquired close to about 5,000 acres of land. 4,600 acres of land. And the idea really was to build a city. Mhm. You know, build our city. Now, I mean, I don’t want to bore you with too many statistics, but when you look at different places in the world, you start looking at density per hectare, right? And you can quickly see that Bombay already has some of the highest density of people per hectare. So, where London would have 29 people per hectare, Bombay already has got 238 people per hectare. Hong Kong is lesser, New York is lesser, Paris is lesser. If you start even looking at the kind of open space per person, Mumbai and India in general has got some of the lowest open space per person. I mean, well say in the world, it could be 10 square meters to a person and you know, whatever, but India is barely one 1.1 meters squared. So, we asked ourselves a question saying, how does one design a city for a population of over 2 million people and still expanding in a spread of 4,000 acres. So, that’s 1,100 people per hectare, which is kind of one of the highest densities in the world. Right? When global then examples are with much lesser population and much So, you really first have to I have to understand that we’re talking about a density that’s a higher density than parts of Hong Kong. It’s higher density than London, New York, whatever, whatever. So, first of all, why higher density? You know, that’s the first question to ask. So, density or the need for a certain density is linked to economics and is linked to the ability to deliver our infrastructure. Right? If you have your land economics permits you to have a lower density and you have the money to deliver the infrastructure to lower densities which means everything, transportation, water, electricity, ability for people to move from one point to another then of course, you can get away with lower densities. Now, that is a luxury that is afforded to different countries, but that’s not a luxury that’s afforded to India. Mhm. It is at that point of time we were doing a study and we found out that close to I don’t remember the figure now, so I don’t want to quote it, but a fairly large percentage of Bombay was living in squalid chawl-like housing. Mhm. And we did a math to just take care of the housing of Bombay if if we decided that Bombay needed quality, respectable housing. Again, I don’t remember exactly, but we did a math and we realized that Bombay would need about 11 to 15 of these kind of projects. Oh. Just to take care of basic housing. Right? Mhm. That’s the problem. Dignified housing, yeah. The dignified. Mhm. With dignity. Mhm. That’s the problem of housing in the country today, right? Now, in that light there was this possibility. Now, you know, we quickly realized that we knew nothing about building cities. Well, nobody knows how to build cities, right? So, we did a lot of work and we saw when did new cities get built? Mhm. And we realized that new cities get get have in the past gotten built out of two trajectories. One is there’s a war, Mhm. the large destruction, and that necessitates the rebuilding of a city, right? Post World War, Second World War. The other is that, you know, you are the emir of Dubai or whatever, and you have the money, or you’re China, and you can build a city and then tell people to go and live in it, right? You have money. You have capital. How do you build a city in a free free market economy? Mhm. Right? Which means that you don’t have the capital. That means that you have to keep building the city and keep acquiring the profits of the city to build the next part of the city, to build the next part of the city, right? Wow. Now, this is the challenge. And first of all, why was it important to ask that question itself? Well, it’s a real estate project. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have become viable in the first place, right? I mean, no developer has the money in this world to say I can lay out a 4,000 acre city and then invite people to come and stay. An American say that. China can say that, but otherwise, it’s not possible, right? Unless government is funding that kind of development. It’s not possible. So, you need an economic engine to be able to keep fueling the growth of the city. And in this case, because this is in Dombivli, which is a little out of Bombay, the economic engine is the sale of your apartments. You can keep selling housing and make keep making profit out of it and keep plowing it back into future phases. So, that’s one thing we realized. The other thing we realized is that we don’t know anything about how to make a city. So, we spent a year and a half saying, “What are the things that cities, from our perspective, we weren’t doing the architecture, we were doing the master planning, are doing the master planning and the landscape and the infrastructure coordination?” So, we said, “What is it that we should be worried about? Do we know what urban lighting systems are in India? No, we don’t. Do we know you know, how play spaces are done? We don’t. Do we know how good roads are laid? We don’t. And so on and so forth.” And so, we spent a lot of time just researching all that. And finally, it led to a book, which is available on Amazon, called Destination 100, The Making of Smart Cities in India. Four of us got together and wrote that book. Wow. Right? And we said, “Let’s first learn Mhm. what I mean we knew that we would not reach 100%. But we said, “Let’s at least learn. I mean, then we’ll see what happens.” And then the master plan got drawn for about 1,000 acres. So, this is only 1,000 acres. It’s four times this still, right? Mhm. So, master plan got drawn for 1,000 acres and you know, we mapped the ponds and we mapped the way water ran and as you can see despite the density, the pond is retained and the way that that channel of water or the movement of water to river is sort of maintained. But the rest of it we knew was going to get built over a period of time. And then slowly we started working. Now, this is a middle-income city, right? So, in the context of Bombay when we started this flats here were sold at I think 25 lakhs or 30 lakhs, which is nothing by Bombay standards, right? Right. Right. Absolutely. Right. They would Anybody could Mhm. And yet we said at that price, we have to be able to really look at the idea of dignity quite seriously. We sort of did all the studies for vegetation, hydrology, soil cover, did any any number of studies of mobility, of how internal bus routes will work, how cycling tracks So, I mean, a lot of that happened. We started making models because these were going to be tall buildings or tall apartments with courtyards in it and light would not fall. So, how does one look at the idea of light in those courtyards and how you know, things like that. We started drawing roads and road junctions and said, “What is a good road? How does how what what makes a good road?” And so on so forth. And then slowly all that started getting implemented. So, today that city begins to look like this. So, you begin to see very well-formed roads, very well-formed pavements, you know, street side experience, good tree planting in the middle. You start seeing street furniture. Mhm. Uh with bus stands, with signages, with places to sit along the shops at the entrance, the way the street junctions are done. Now, anybody who’s traveled anywhere in the world knows that this is what the world does. Mhm. This is our rocket science. Right. Right? But yet in India, we can’t do it. I mean, we just don’t have this quality of roads. So, we said, “Why is it that we don’t have this quality of roads?” So, then we started looking and, you know, so when you when you make a road, you have curbs or curbing system along the roads, right? Mhm. Now, if you actually go to look at the number of curbing systems that you need to make a road, there are about 12 different kinds of curbs. So, there’s a straight curb, there’s something that’s called a Doppler curb that drops down when pedestrian crossing happens. a curved curb that happens when the road is turning. There’s a drive over curb that you have to do when you have to get for fiber. I mean, there are different kinds of curb. India wasn’t making them. Mhm. We just didn’t have anybody manufacturing them. So, luckily for us, there’s somebody that we’ve been working for many years who makes these products. And we got him to say, “You know, why don’t you invest in it?” And so, he bought the mold and he started making it. So, the first time in the country, you know, you had all the kit of parts Mhm. that made a road. So, these roads started expressing themselves. We started looking at the courtyards between the housing, and this you have to realize is middle income housing. Mhm. And within the middle income housing, got beautiful courtyards with nice children’s play space, simple stuff, right? There’s nothing rocket science about it. Where the temple started happening or wherever these institutions started happening, you started creating temple squares. We started creating public parks. On the right, there’s a public park. You know, which started happening. And this has been growing, right? So, now about 1,000 acres is finished. We’ve got public parks. We’ve got this quality of roads. We’ve got pavements. We’ve got good lighting systems, good planting. All the infrastructure laid on the pavement. No infrastructure that runs on the road. We’ve got MLCPs, so multi-level car parkings that are filled with solar on top. That have got all the machinery for sewage pumps at the bottom. So, the solar runs all the sewage pumps. We’ve got sewage treatment plants, clean water. We increase the membrane by one more level. We’ll get drinking water or potable water from all this. And, you know, parks have happened, schools have happened, clubs have happened. The riverfront is happening right now. And So, is it one of those esoteric abstract design projects? No, it’s not, right? It’s a bread and butter project. It’s a bread and butter project. It’s a project where you say, “Do things right. Engineering Engineer them correctly.” But, do it in a manner in which a dignity is felt. And the underlying word here is dignity. Don’t do crazy fountains and big gateways. Keep it down. Keep it low. Keep it simple. Focus on the idea of dignity. Every In everything that you do. And that’s what this project is. And it’s just a lesson. So, you know, I mean, I love telling some people that when you look at these roads, and you know, just to tell you the madness of it. You know, right now the light is a little strong. But, when you look at the manholes on the pavement For 900 acres, the location of every manhole has been drawn. Right? So, it’s coordinated precisely to the paving of of the pavement. So, you bring precision Mhm. in in design thinking. You bring precision in drawing. You don’t say, “Because it is so big, You know, you compromise on the details. Why should you be worried beyond a certain point? He said, “No, no, you draw it the way you will draw small project. You’ll draw every centimeter of that project in the studio. You’ll fight to make sure that that centimeter gets executed on the land. Why precision matters for this scale? Because you know, at the end of the day, that’s how attention That’s how you show care, no? You walk on a road and you see a curb that is badly laid. What do you think? What do you feel? You feel somebody doesn’t care for me here. The city doesn’t care for me anymore. But you see something done well. Right? I mean, feels good, no? It feels that the people care. Some This is, you know, this people here, they care about us. And that’s what it all about is about. I mean, we are a society where our governments or the way that our cities are laid out clearly seem to be saying, “We don’t care about you.” We just don’t care. Look at our traffic outside. Look at our roads outside. Look at Look at our pavements outside. We don’t care about you. But why? Why is human dignity not the first level to start a conversation with? That’s all you have to do, and it’s not complicated. It’s It’s laborious, but it’s not complicated. And you can’t get away by saying, “Oh, it’s a big project, so you know, how can we do No, of course you can. You If you think of that big project as many small projects, you can. It’s not like you’re executing 900 acres in one day. I mean, every year you’re only executing 20, 30 acres, no? So, think of it as 100 small projects. And do them all right. What is the problem? Uh Palava tends to be that and it’s a continuing story. It clearly is a project that’s going to go on much after I’m gone. Wow. I see the similarity to the uh Timber project where there was uh life was propagating. Here the human civilization is Absolutely. I mean, this is good. Absolutely. So, I I have often said, you know, you look at India today. All our homes, all our offices are fine. I mean, we are happy with our homes. When we go to workplaces, we’re reasonably happy with our workplaces also. Where is it that we feel let down? We feel let down between our home and the office. We feel let down the moment we step out of your house on the road. And it’s chaotic. It’s chaos. Drainage is not done correctly. Manholes are not laid correctly. Traffic lights don’t work. Pedestrian crossings are not well designed. No, I’m saying if you want people to feel a sense of ownership in the country, fix your public realm. Just fix it. And India will feel different. Just imagine all our cities with roads like this. Right. It’s not impossible. Mhm. It’s not impossible. Just imagine it, right? Right. So, how you design a public land is how you design a society. How true is this? Absolutely. How you How the respect that you pay to a public realm. Anything in the public. So, you know, there are architects and clients sometimes walk up to me and say, “Oh, it’s a public project. So, we don’t want to spend money.” Right? And my argument is because it’s a public project, you should spend more. Because it’s a public project. If it’s a private project, it’s your own project, you should you should be willing to live with a little less. Mhm. But why should the public live with little less? Why should you not do that with the greatest of love and passion, the greatest of sense of attention, and we can see it, no? If you remember even in in the Indian context, there was a time when our airports were something else, and now you look at our airports, right? Just the very fact that our airports, that some of them at least, a lot of them now, are done with whatever. I mean, forget the design aesthetic, but they’re done right. You enter correctly, the lines are done correctly, the toilets are clean, the cafes, you know, it feels good, no? Suddenly, we will look at our cities differently. Suddenly, we will be different people. It’s very important how you design the public realm. That’s absolutely the most ignored part in India, sadly. You know, it’s also like this. Let me explain this. So, when we got independence in 1947, um we were a poorish country. We were trying to rebuild the country. And I think the earlier emphasis for many years was literally, you know, Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan. So, you know, build your army, take care of the farmers. And I think the first 10, 12 years went into that cry. The subsequent years really went into the idea of saying, let’s build our institutions. So, you know, whether it was infrastructure or institution, the Bhakra Nangal Dam, the educational institution, the country’s focus was we need scientific institutions, PRL, you know, ISRO, Bhakra Nangal Dam, this, nuclear reactor, nuclear reactor, Bhabha Atomic Power, all that the country happened. Then, of course, the country started saying that, you know, we should talk about housing, so public housing happened. The attention to cities as is a recent phenomenon. Right. For the first from 1947 till at least at least I would say 1985 or 1990, till let us say when the winds the economic liberalization happened in India, the attention was not on cities. Mhm. Cities were ignored. It is a villages where are because 70% of India lived in villages. So, this is where the attention is. So, first of all, the attention on the cities is is a recent phenomenon in India. It is about a 30-40 year phenomenon. In the bargain, of course, you know, cities have grown badly and so on and so forth. Different governments have tried to do what they have tried to do. And every government does something good. Get done does something bad. I am seeing that in the recent past, governments our present government included, but are now turning around and say, “Look, guys, it’s time we did it right the first time. And it’s time we did it to last. Enough of this story of do it in a hurry Mhm. and then keep repairing it every year. Right? I also see it as a natural progression of how cities evolve. If you look at London at the times of the cholera, it was one of the most crowded cities in the world, right? And yet, they cleaned themselves up. Right. Before Baron Haussmann, Paris was infested. And then Baron Haussmann did what he did. He plowed the avenues and Paris started getting cleaned up and started getting air and ventilation and better architecture. Cities are experiments in constant [snorts] motion. Wow. So, you can never be disappointed in a city. You you know that cities will be redone and recreated all the time. I am hopeful that we are reaching that turn now. We are reaching a point where we are saying, “Look guys, everything else we seem to be doing all right. I mean, our businesses are doing fine, our IT industries are doing fine, and whatever else is doing the stock market is doing fine, and whatever else is doing fine, our defense is doing fine. Time we start treating our cities well. Mhm. We’ll get it wrong. We’ll build flyovers that we don’t need. We’ll build metros that we don’t need. But, we will slowly also head in the right direction. That’s the hope. Yeah. So, what’s the right direction for the city? A resilient city, a city that uh does things with the view of a distant future. Mhm. Right now, the problem is that we do things with the view of an immediate future, and by the time we’ve done it, that future is already the past. But, a city that says, “I want to think truly about the next 40 years, or 30 years, or 50 years, or 100 years, and I will go through the pain of doing things now so that for the next 100 years that pain will be reduced.” Mhm. Right? Any city that starts thinking like that is already set in the right direction. What is a good example for that? In the world or In India? Yeah, in India and and in the world. in the world. Ahmedabad was not a bad example. I mean, you know, um you Ahmedabad was a pleasant enough city, but it was sprawling, and it was getting disorganized. Uh with the work of some people in town, we managed to get the town planning scheme implemented. Now, this is not common in India. All cities have a town planning scheme. Almost no city can get it implemented. What does it mean? It means that I’ve got large pieces of land or parcels of land and I draw something up and then I have to get it realized on ground well before the city reaches there. Now, that means that to do that I have to rationalize all the plots in a manner in which I get proper shaped plots, I get good roads. And to do that, I have to get land from people. Because you know, how am I going to get it? That means that everybody has to be willing to give up the land to make a city. In Gujarat, 40% of the land is given to make the city. And 40% of the land is given with a smile. There is nobody who argues. There’s no money transaction. So, that’s a good thing. That’s a powerful tool that’s fallen into place. You look at, you know, most of the roads in this part of the city, they’re pretty better organized than a lot of places in the country. So, is it a great example? No, I wouldn’t say it’s a great example. I think there are examples like this all over the country in a bits and pieces. Just needs to get more consolidated. Traffic is going to remain a problem till public transport really kicks in. Even after public transport kicks in, the Indians are still we are an aspiring nation. So, even if we don’t need a car, we will buy a car. We haven’t reached the point of saying don’t need a car. It’s our first sign of aspiration. You earn a little bit of money, the first thing you do is well, buy a car. And then with the next thing you do is try and get an apartment. It’s it’s still an aspirational object. Until that is happening, every time somebody becomes an aspirationally reached human being, the cars are going to hit the roads. We don’t That’s going to take time. So, it’s going to take time. It’s going to take time before it settles. So, the smart city program, so what mistakes do you see cities making in the smart city mission how to better utilize the funds or Do you have any opinions? You know that Yeah, I mean I do because I’ve been part of some of it, but I think the problem with smart city is that they essentially that smartness was about getting cities to be technologically clued in, right? I mean Um and that really meant that the money should be spent for better traffic lighting systems or money should be spent for smart toilets or money should be spent uh for public transport in some cases, money should be spent to digitize all your land records and make it easy for, you know, land record transactions to be registered. What happens I think in India is that we have the money to do things, we don’t have the money to take care of things. And that’s been a problem with India for a long time, right? Uh I don’t think India lacks money to make. India doesn’t have the mind to maintain. And then you can create all the systems, but then if you there’s nobody to take care of the systems and if you’ve not laid the process to take care of those systems, those systems are going to be soon collapse. collapse. So, you can have a great sewage STP plant in the city. And you can decide that the STP water now is going to be pumped along the roads of the city so that it’ll irrigate the roads of the city. Great idea. So, you you’ve done the expense on this STP plant. You’ve done the expense on laying the pipes and now you don’t have the right staff there. Mhm. You don’t have the right skilled people there. So, they don’t care. And within 6 months, untreated sewage is being delivered to your roads. Right? Then you will turn on so, “Oh, that’s what’s happened. Shouldn’t happen.” Then you will find that the membranes weren’t changed or something wasn’t done or some maintenance wasn’t happen. Now, I find this painfully annoying. Everybody knows what the problem is. It is not rocket science. Right. You buy a car, you send it to service. You know that. You have an air conditioner in your house, somebody comes to service it. You know that. Why do you think that’s not required for everything else that you do? Why do you think it’s something that you can just casually toss off and say, “Oh, we got people to do it.” You don’t. You need a separate set of minds to take care of the things that you make. Slowly it’s beginning to happen. I’m not saying it I’m At least I a good insight. Yeah, at least I think that the penny has dropped. Right. Right? The penny has dropped. Mhm. Now, when I walk up to a bureaucrat and very senior bureaucrats, very senior ministers, and I tell him, “Sorry, I don’t want to do it.” They why don’t you want to do it? I said, “Because you won’t maintain it.” Mhm. You know, I’ll work hard. 3 years I’ll put up my life. I’ll do something. For the first 6 months it will be fine. And 1 year later it will be gone. I don’t want to do it. He said, “Yeah, yeah, what you’re saying is true. So, then what should we do?” Now, the conversation has changed. Wow. As against what you’re saying, we can take care of things, the conversation is we know we can’t take care of things. We are trying to figure it out. Right now, we need help from the private players or the private industry or whoever it is that is interested to hold our hands to figure out better ways of doing things. That conversation without doubt has changed. Sometimes it will lead to good things, sometimes it won’t lead to good things, right? This is like since you had to reimagine the whole new city from scratch, I’m sure you had a quite lot of discoveries on Indian cities. What are the very surprising discoveries? Do I think that this is an excellent example of how cities should be built? The answer is no. Mhm. Not at all. Do I think that there are many things that we’ve gotten right here? The answer is yes. Do I think that this is the future of Indian cities? I hope not. I really hope not, right? I hope the Indian cities are not like this. Uh do I think that this has answered to a certain extent the problem of housing with dignity? The answer is yes. Mhm. It’s a real estate project at some level. It’s not a city building project in the real sense, right? But if there was a city building project, let’s say like Corbusier got called to build Chandigarh. Or Amaravati and it’s a Amaravati is a mess and it’s been a big mess for the longest time. But Corbusier and the one city that got realized, Gandhinagar got realized, Chandigarh got realized. But both of them of course are administrative capitals and that was the impetus for these cities. I think what we forget have equally not been able to do here is that we’ve not been able to build the institutional spine of these places. And it’s kind of reflective about the way our cities have also become. Mhm. Right? And what does that mean? That means that if my kid wants to grow up, is growing up and wants to go to a library, there should be a library nearby for the kid to go. If you want to go to a quality park, there should be nearby in my neighborhood. If if a good playground, it should be in my neighborhood. Things like that, right? Is Is Are there Is there a museum like a city museum? Are there several city museums? Of course, we should have city museum that the kid can go and spend hours looking at things. Is there a place for theater? That Is there some performances that happen on a regular basis which are not high-priced events and you know, which is simple performances? Are there community spaces? We don’t have that. We used to have that, but we don’t have that in the way that our cities are being built today. And we have underserved and undersold that idea. We have started treating that idea as infrastructure. Area doesn’t have an auditorium or doesn’t have culture, build an auditorium. Building auditorium is not building culture. Culture is something else that you have to work with till it demands an auditorium. The audit The building of an auditorium is the end of the journey and the beginning of the journey for the idea of a certain culture. So, if there’s a theat- If there’s a certain part in anywhere where there’s an active theater group and that community has been actively doing theater for 20 years, then sure, now is the time to really walk up to them and say, “Look, now what What will make this better?” And the chances are they’re not going to say I want a 700-seat auditorium. The chances are they’re going to say I want a place for practicing, a place for small performances. A That’s what I want. Something like I think that we supplant infrastructure without really understanding the cultural needs for it. And that cohesion is something that cities are suffering because of. So, well, at least to me that is something that this place also misses. Mhm. It takes time to evolve, to find what it needs. It takes time, but you know, like Singapore, you know, so we had people from Singapore to help us working on the master plan. Mhm. And they kept on saying, you know, when you’re doing the master plan, every now and then mark a certain place as white space and leave it. Mhm. So, what is it? He said, “No, just leave it.” Just mark a certain space every now and then a certain interval and just leave it. I said, “Why?” He said, “Because cities will make demands of you that you cannot predict. Wow. Yeah. And someday you will find the need for it. And when you find the need for it, you won’t have the land for it.” Wow. That is a must. Right? And that was so sensible. That was so sensible, right? We think when we make the cities that we have the predictive ability of knowing exactly what a city is going to require Mhm. when we do a master plan. How can you know what the city is going to require when you yourself don’t know what you’re going to require in the next 2 months? Yeah. What is the space left for chance? So, there is a way of doing planning which is deterministic and this is deterministic. And there’s a way of doing planning which is called incrementalist. You know, Lucien Kroll proposed this theory of incrementalism. Where you keep doing a little bit. I mean, you have a loose plan. You don’t have a hard plan. You keep doing a little bit and you keep observing and you keep learning and then you do a little bit more and a little more. So, at least you’re react- it’s a reactive way of building things. Right. Right. We are not a reactive way of doing things. We are a retrospective, deterministic way of doing. We We determine things, then we realize they go wrong. Then we retrospectively try to correct them. Mhm. I think that is the problem. So, in this project, what what do you felt now in retrospect, things could have been better if you get a chance if you are building a next city that you would implement it there? For sure, I would think that, you know, here was a here was at least the chance Mhm. to look at the standard apartment archetype. I mean, you know, yes, I understand that there’s an FSI and yes, I understand I mean, I understand all that. But is it possible to think of the apartment building as a social tissue? Right? So, there is an architect in Chennai called Pramod Balakrishnan, who is a friend. And you have you know, you have to see his work. I mean, he builds apartments, too. But when he builds apartments, he actually thinks of them as social tissues where neighbors will start getting to know each other. The way that he designs the ways to exit those places will mean that people will cross each other all the time. The way that, you know, and things little things that make a community. Mhm. Right? Here was a chance to at least try some of it out. But I don’t think, you know, too much has been tried out. Mhm. Here was a chance to say, “Okay, fine, even if it’s a, you know, apartment building, can it be a climate-responsive apartment building?” But it’s not. I mean, because you’re hammering apartments of one kind, so whether it’s north or south or west or east, doesn’t matter. So, it’s not climate-responsive. Then you can talk about everything else, but it’s not climate-responsive fundamentally, right? So, I think in that idea of housing and communities, there’s a lot more work that could have happened. Perhaps at the end, one would have found out that it’s not economical to do it, and hence let’s go back to doing this, but at least one could have tested it, right? But I think from day one, there was this whole idea, “Oh, it’s going to be done.” Right? I mean, it’s Bombay, it can’t be done. Which I thought was a little silly. The other of course is that I thought that here was a chance to talk talk about public art in a very significant way. I mean, you know, you are controlling the city. So, if you create a public art program where you are beginning to look at public art and participation from people maybe there was a story that was going to be interesting. So, I tried it, didn’t work too much. Here was a possibility of saying, “Let’s not make the grand civic gestures, but let’s make the small civic gestures. Let’s do a neighborhood library. Let’s do a little neighborhood space for women to get together and start a little industry. Let’s do these little things, no, that makes space human.” Didn’t work? No, no, I don’t I don’t think that you know, these things are these things are never done with one mind, right? I mean, there are 100 minds that form this. And some voices are get heard, sometimes some don’t get heard, sometimes somebody sets some priority. Finally, you know, it’s not this is not the kind of project where you say, “I’m saying it, so do it.” It’s not possible. There is no cities are built by consensus, so you win some, you lose some. I mean, what questions you ask when you even build a city is important on how it would turn up as a city. Yes. Most important questions you guys asked yourself before you guys even sketched a single line. Because of the nature of this and because it was a real estate sort of thing which was an adventure of sorts. And who knew whether it was going to succeed, right? I mean, it could have failed. First you did realize that you needed a flexible structure. You needed something that that modular and it was not hardly defined to the contours of the land. That depending on how the land kept changing with land keeps changing. You think you’ve got this land and then tomorrow you realize that you don’t have that land. And the day after some land comes which you never thought you were going to have. And so that you need that flexibility of being able to sort of stretch in and you know, that armature of and yet you need to hold the armature of what makes the city solid, right? So I think that we were very clear that you know, let’s have this strong armature which is the central armature of the central boulevard with pavements and gardens and parks and then everything else can, you know, keep changing. I think to that extent this has worked and it’s worked very well. We said that you know, we must be able to do a city whereby the open space ratios are dramatically better than Bombay or India. This has open space ratios which are equivalent now to world standards. So 8 10 square meters to a person. So that much we certainly managed. We were also very keen and clear that resilience and maintainability is something that we better build in smart because that’s one thing that India suffers in. Right. So how do you build details? How do you deal with materiality? How do you do design that doesn’t become a maintenance burden or impossibility or requires frequent maintenance. In that sense I think we’ve done brilliantly. done brilliantly. The all the roads that we’ve laid over 12 years have not been dug even once. Right? So a lot of the engineering I think that we got that right. The street side experience of just walking saying that you know, about walking distances to bus stands or walkability as a as a idea is something that we’ve gotten right. And you know, we were very clear that despite the fact that it was going to be at least from a landscape perspective. We said, you know, we’re going to do landscapes of scale, but we don’t want to dumb them down. We still want to do crafted, beautiful landscapes. And we said we will not dumb down our landscapes by saying, “Oh, it’s difficult to maintain, so use lesser species, do less complicated planting plans, do less complicated details.” It’ll be done How long did it take to even like uh take it all in and then analyze, synthesize, draw in 2010, ‘11, and the first bit of construction started in 2015, ‘16, and the first appearances of what we had done started in ‘17, ‘18. So, 8 years later was the first signs of Wow. prove that this is going to happen. Fine. Yeah, it’s been a long journey, and it’s been a patient journey because I mean, these are complete like you’re saying because, you know, as you as as they get formed, as apartments come up, societies get formed, as societies get formed, you hand over those societies to members, then members start maintaining those societies, then they decide something is worth maintaining, something is not worth maintaining, then you have to go and talk to them and convince them that, you know, you should maintain this, the gardens are worth maintaining, this is worth maintaining. And then, you know, they will say, “Why should we pay for this?” And so, you have to negotiate that um, you know, on a regular basis. Uh it’s complicated to run cities, and with more and new voices keep getting added all the time. New societies get formed, leaderships change at the client’s end, different people become heads of, you know, this development. Everybody comes with a different agendas. So, suddenly someday will come and say, “Let’s make a Roman gate and let’s make a Greek gate.” When you’re designing 1,000 people you have never met, how do you know what they would need? I don’t. First of all, you cannot know. Because first of all, you don’t even know who’s buying it, right? And you’re you’re designing it even before you know who’s buying it. Uh what you can do is that you can use case studies, which is what we did. So, we went and did a lot of case studies of saying, you know, similar developments in Bombay of this housing cluster, for example. What is it that they have? And what is used more? What is used less? And slowly now, after the first 7-8 years, we have a fairly good data set of estimating, for example. So, now we can estimate saying that if you’re going to be 500 apartments, then the chances are kids of this age to this age will be so much. Kids of this age to this age will be so much. Kids People beyond 16 and 65 years will be so much. So, first of all, we we are getting our predictions on people mix fairly well. We’ve gone over and over again and looked at some of the earlier courtyards that we’ve done and understood what works and what doesn’t work. So, every time, you know, you sort of improve it and improve it and improve it. We found what people value, what they don’t value. And so, you keep making those changes. So, I think it’s a learning process and you get better at it each day. But, you can never predict. Since this is a real estate thing, there’s always the conflict between real estate and ecology. So, how was that relationship or tension was like in this project? First of all, I don’t think that, you know, the projects as dense as this should talk about ecology Right. You know, you can It’s a lip service. When you’re laying so much concrete and so much roads and creating housing of this you can keep talking about ecology but in a very different urban ecology. You can’t talk about ecology in the conventional sense. Right. What does urban ecology mean? Urban ecology means have I dealt with the flow of water correctly? Mhm. Have I made sure that the water that falls on my land as much as is possible is conserved and trapped? Have I made sure that the water that is generated out of my project is treated and reused? Have I made sure that my power and energy consumption is optimized? Have I made sure that when I’m laying my gardens is there plant diversity? Am I focusing on biodiversity so that there’s enough to attract birds? I mean that’s the kind of ecology that you could talk about. You could talk about urban ecology. Right. And at that level I think this is done brilliantly. Brilliantly. Wow. In California Mhm. there is something called the Rocky Mountain Institute which is considered one of the premier institutes in the world to evaluate, assess, and give credits for these sort of city sustainability infrastructures. And so of course we were doing it in the goodness of our heart and at some point of time somebody decided that you know maybe we should get in some experts. Mhm. And so we got them in and they did a very detailed study of everything that we’ve done and frankly had nothing to suggest. Nothing new to suggest, right? In that sense I think we’ve done the conscientious thing on this project. If you are asking me if there’s any guilt at all, none at all. Have we been absolutely conscientious about everything that we’ve done? 100%. Wow. Could we have done better? Mhm. Of course we could have done. There is always room for better. Of course we could have done. So do you think the future of India would be built like this as a private cities? Do you think there is a need for it or is it a wrong approach or what what’s your opinion bro? This is what makes ghettos. Mhm. At the end of the day some are good ghettos and some are bad ghettos, but this is a ghetto. Mhm. And any city that creates ghettos is not the city that is worth its salt. So, you do this because public housing public urban infrastructure doesn’t measure up to the aspirations of the common man. The common man says, “I want to live in a nice place. I want to step down. I want a nice park. I want good roads.” That’s what the common man is saying. Now, he’s not getting it in the city. Because he’s not getting it in the city, that’s why something like this is coming up. But imagine if all the roads in the city were like this and the parks were like this, why would anybody ever need to do these sort of projects? Mhm. Then you’d build apartments like this and you’d step out of the apartment and road outside you would be wonderful with lovely pavements, lovely lighting, nice seat benches, a light little park attached to it. This is what you would live, no? Right. But it’s because our cities still fail us. Mhm. Until they fail us, this will happen. Was that done to for how people should live or how people actually live? So, people have taken to this place in ways that are heartwarming. Mhm. Uh people are extremely happy here. They complain, but they’re actually extremely happy. The huge communities that have gotten formed here at different levels. The sports infrastructure for example that has been created here has produced champions in India. Oh. Yeah, yeah. Nice. Some swimming champions, tennis champions have come from here. There are communities of older people that have formed their own cycling groups and trekking groups. So, first I think because there is the safe space to step out of your cubbyhole apartment. And because there are many places where you can meet people and interact people, just simple good quality public spaces or roads has led to a social interaction that otherwise does not happen. And it’s a very powerful tool. Very powerful. Uh so, in that sense, I think this has worked. And whatever questions I asked stretched on, I feel still feel I stretched it less, but I would have to move on. Yeah. So, the next one is fun. Mhm. So, there is a very, very famous artist uh in Baroda. Mhm. Her name is Rekha Rodwittiya. And if you Google her up, she will come up as one of India’s best artists of the generation after Gulam Sheikh. Her partner is Surendran, who’s also one of India’s best-known artists. And uh Ankush, who’s part of their atelier, is a fast-rising, brilliant abstract artist. And they were building this studio outside the city. And because they were building a studio outside the city and they bought a little bit of money, they’d bought a plot next to the studio as a rainy day thing, you know, one day maybe we’ll need the money kind of thing, you know, safety insurance. We’ve gotten to know Rekha fairly recently. She’s not like an old friend. I mean, she’s not like somebody I’ve known for 20 years. Mhm. They’re probably somebody I’ve known for about 5-6 years now. But, you know, we hit it off. Well, she’s a very tough person. She’s perfect. I mean, there’s everything about her is perfect. The way she dresses, the way she conducts herself, the way she speaks, the way she thinks. There’s a high order of precision. And she paints like that. But, anyway, so, you know, we got friendly and so on and so forth. And one day, so, she would come to our place for dinner, we would go to our place for dinner, so on and so forth. One day, she said, “You know, Aniket, we have this piece of land here, and will you do a garden?” I didn’t know her that well. But, she said, “Will you do a garden?” I said, “Okay.” So, the first thing I did for her was to do the sketch. I said, “Let me because I really don’t know what you wanted.” She didn’t say anything. She’s a great respecter of creative independent. That’s a good thing. Well, she’s an artist, and she has this creative independence herself. And so, then she says that, “You know, there was the only brief.” No, she said, “Do me a garden.” [clears throat] I didn’t know what she wanted. I said, “What kind of what Whatever whatever.” Whatever sweet you whatever you want. So, I did this drawing, and then I wrote that poetry. So, I wrote this poetry about a garden then for people, for birds, for those that burrow and sprint about, or for nobody, for nothing, just so that it can be. Maybe there’s a maybe at the end of it in the rain. A garden then to place to sit, to meet friends, to dine. A garden then formal laid out in geometry, or just to be mad, whimsical, mysterious, mischievous, or just to see water muddy and clear, bare ground. A garden then to hug back memories of childhood, or just a strange new place, a new friend, a new place, a new future. A garden then to feel the winter sun, or a place to see the moon as it ebbs and grows and search the galaxy and pray for a shooting star, a garden then. And I sent this to her not knowing at all what her reaction was going to be. She was like excited. She was excited. She said, “Aniket, I I love this.” Whatever whatever. Let’s do it. Do it. Please do it. I said, “Okay.” So, then we started working on it. That was the kind of drawing we made. No. What is interesting in this drawing and the photograph subsequently will explain it. Is on the right-hand side is the studio. The big glass window of the studio. Rekha herself comes from Persian descent. She’s a Parsi. And she likes this sense of You know, you meet her, she’s very formal. You can feel the way she carries herself. But you know her a little bit better and you know that she’s a mischievous person, but not when you if you don’t know her. And so, the garden works with this whole idea that there’s an axis that gets created. And the center of the axis is a very formal axis. She was fascinated with with the Moorish fountains because it connected back to her Persian roots. So, the idea was to do a little Moorish water body for her. And lay out a sense of formality because that’s how people see her. There was this axis of a fountain, formal quadrant leading to a pavilion, leading to a seat. But then, hidden from there are the six little trails on the side. Right? And each one is one of a whispering fountain. One is a power of gathering. One is the garden of tranquility. One is the garden of solitude. One is the garden of the mysterious meander. One is the garden of the serenity dining. One is the rose garden and things like that. So, the whole idea was that, you know, you present yourself as this very Mhm. proper person. But the moment you understand this person, you realize, “Oh my god, this person is fun. He’s quirky. He’s mad. He’s crazy.” And and then, you know, and the way that it gets and It’s small garden. And the way it gets designed is that when you walk inside these courts, the rest of the world disappears. Everything grows tall. And if when you’re in the court, you’re just in the court. Once you’re in the court, you’re in that space. You have to step out of the court back through the little lane in the central court, you know, back in the public realm. So, these are little escape little stories, right? That you start hiding. She one day told me that, you know, Aniket, my mother and I like the plumeria. I like the champa tree very much. And so, there was this whole thing of what her mother or she liked. So, on one side we planted the champa trees and on the other side we planted a plant plant that’s called calophyllum inophyllum, which my father liked. So, I said, you know, while we are talking, maybe our ancestors should also talk to each other. So, on one side my father has the calophyllum. On the other side, she’s got her plumerias. There are She said, you know, my mother used to like roses. So, somewhere there’s a little hidden rose garden. Somewhere there’s a little maze. And so, this is a very very small garden and it implodes with this madness and this seriousness. And it uses a crazy mix of plant material. A crazy mix and to precision. Because she’s precise. So, the way the planting also had to happen was like you’re etching it on a canvas. Woah. Like precision canvas. then we started doing the planting for it. And as you can see in that little garden are close to over 100 and so this is just lower story plants. Mhm. So these are plants here, but then there are the upper story plants. So between the lower story plants and the upper story plants there’s about 120 varieties. Wow. In one small garden. Wow. Right? And you look at the way they are drawn. Wow. So each plant is drawn, its grouping is drawn, its diameters are drawn. Madness. Right? And on on the right hand side. So that became the garden. And this plan then turned itself into a space, sorry, that is like this. Wow. And these photographs are taken about 5-6 months after the garden was done. So now it’s even bigger. grown a lot more. And you know, it’s this almost like a painting, right? Right. It’s almost like etched. It’s got painting cuz the central axiality, it’s got a sense of formalization, it’s got these two ficus trees almost like cypress trees that hold a Persian court. It’s got a fountain, it’s got this axis, it’s got that trellis, it’s got a bench in the end. And then there are these little things that you disappear into. See we tend to see this Alhambra fountain, this very formal frame that seems like that’s the axis. But all these guys on the right and left Mhm. just are vanishing. And Wow. And the planting is precise. I mean every plant is etched to precision in in this garden. So it’s it’s just a stunningly beautiful small garden. Wow, precision at that scale. Oh my god. You must know the exact number of each plant. Of course, of course, of course, of course, of course. Of course. That is madness in landscape. Would you say this is a madness in landscape? Complete madness. Nobody would Nobody Nobody would should do it. Nobody will do it. Nobody must do it. This is madness. This you can only do when you know that the owner is an equally mad person. Wow. Because she will get it. She will get it, right? And because she gets it, she takes care of this garden. You can go anytime now. It only gets better and better and better. Because she understands the precision of “Why did you plant this shrub in this manner? That will grow red and next to it is white. And the texture of this is different from this.” I mean, I get it. I love it. I’ll take care of it. That’s how this garden is. So, as long as it is taken care, that madness is worth it. Yes, absolutely. The day for this garden, the day you stop taking care of it, God knows what’s going to happen. [laughter] This is tight madness. This is like this insane person who’s in control. She’s So, that’s about her, right? And she She likes to be the kind of person in control, and yet she’s mad. So, she’s This is controlled insanity about the way that she’s creative. And this is a tribute to that spirit. Amazing. This is You have set a standard in precision, in care, and expression. Yeah, it’s It’s stunning. It’s It’s It’s stunning, and I’ve just put a very few bunch of I’ve not put too many photographs here, but you know, you can see those photographs separately. But, yeah. And just, you know, I mean, to see and and just to see a drawing like this. I mean, you look at a drawing like this and you look at this, right? Yeah, I mean, the scale of uh this thing from aerial to micro, the precision, and from the human scale of things, and I mean, this is And it’s a very, very small garden. It’s not a big garden. Right. So, the point, you know, so, the reason I I mean, I like it for other reasons, also. But, the reason I actually like it is that you know, very often people tell me, “Uh, sir, you know, don’t have a large project.” Mhm. You know, sir, “If you have a large project, we can do something nice.” Mhm. So, I ask them, I said, “Do you know what is the size of the land of the Alhambra?” You know how many acres it is? Not not too much. You don’t need size to do something profound. You don’t need size to do something that is beautiful. Mhm. You just need the mind for it. So, you know, you have a small piece of land, but you can do you can create a world in this place. You can create a way of thinking in your backyard. Scale is not the relevant thing for the profundity of your explorations. What it is just your conviction and your madness that you can keep digging the soil and unearthing new things and doing new things Just that belief. Just that belief. That scale is not a determinant. I can do You can give me a handkerchief and I can get mad on it. And you can give me a tablecloth and I’ll get mad on it. And you can give me something larger and I’ll get mad on it. It doesn’t matter. Just doesn’t matter. It’s the intensity that you bring to that little thing. Wow. Yeah. So, this is This is the most intense thing I’ve ever seen in all the Oh my god. [laughter] The scale I mean that’s the proof scale doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. There there’s so much madness here. I mean you have just told me so little No, but in the sense that, you know, it’s So, these are, you know, frankly at the end of the day, these are gardens experience rather than Mhm. talked about. I mean you you know the Because, you know, there there are things that Well, the act of walking in this is what is more important. I mean you can you can say only so much. Right. Right. And after that words start, you know, destroying it. But um yeah, but uh So, you can feel intensity every inch where you are. [laughter] No, no, absolutely. You should go there. Mhm. Next time you go to go What are you going to do this? You can do this. You can really do this. I mean like you know, like that the one on the top right has now grown so tall and you know, actually when you look at it in plan, it’s not a very big space, right? Right. Right. But you look at that walkway and that walkway makes you go all around and take a U-turn and then come back in. You’re actually coming to a space that is next to the point where you entered. It increases the surface area of experience. Yes, and as a result by the time it’s meditative. By the time you reach the center you think you’ve done a long walk. You’ve actually done like, you know, a space that is from here to there. Right. Right. So, that works pretty well. That That both those work well. The rose garden works fine. Tell me about each extinction and what is the characteristic first one is a is a walk off solid walkway. I mean it allows you to sort of walk like this and find your place in the center. The second one is a is a place where we’ve planted this It’s a rare tree. It’s not something that’s commonly experienced and that’s a calophyllum tree. The one that my father’s tree, right? The third one is where we actually have fish and a lotus pond. So, you have a little aquatic garden and suddenly an aquatic corner that begins to happen in that one. On this side here is a place that is almost heart-shaped and it it’s got roses that are planted into it. The one in front of the calophyllum is something where you have the the plumerias which her mother used to like. And the last one is a like a little hidden cord that we thought one day somebody can put a dining table and sit there. The pavilion or the trellis is almost skeletal. I mean, I don’t have a great picture for it here, but it’s almost skeletal. I mean but it’s just thin skeletons and that. So, it’s almost like etching space against the background. It’s not really a shelter, but it’s a notion of a shelter and it’s more like a doorway to sort of see that bench in the end. So, it’s done it’s quite a beautiful little detail about the way that that is done. It’s like a mirage. It’s almost like a mirage. It’s Yeah, it’s almost like a silhouette in the sky. The fountain is of course a take from Alhambra. So, what do you do for these ideas? Like where did they come from? Write poetry. Well, as you as you saw in this case. What are those symbol of those tree near the fountain? I mean, the shrubs growing up or shooting up? actually we wanted cypress. Like you know, Persian garden. But of course it doesn’t grow in our context. So, we got a ficus that looks formal. And if you if you’ve seen Pasargadae and if you’ve seen these Persian gardens, you have these tall cypress trees and between that an avenue gets formed. So, it was for her creating this historical memory of these sort of gardens where an axis goes through a skeletal a little with a place of rest at the end. So is she too rooted in the Persian culture? I mean she won’t She jokes about it. She says, “You know, I’m a Parsi.” I mean she’s not, but she likes to say it. No. And also I’m curious on did you play with the contrast of one plant making contrast with another plant? The combination of this contrast. How do you think blending the plant What is blending design? Blending design is laying out a massive dining table Mhm. with 100 people sitting on a dining table. And you have to make sure that the guy in front can speak to the guy on the other side. And the guy here can speak to the guy on the right. And the guy here can speak to the guy on the right. And nobody fights. Mhm. And you have to do that with 100 people. That’s what blending design is. You have to understand everybody’s character, everybody’s nature, everybody’s demand for water. Some will want more water. Some will want less water. Everybody’s demand for light. Some will want more light. Some will want less light. Wow. Uh you have to understand the texture of the color of the leaf. Some are light green. Some are dark green. Some are rough leaves. Some are fine leaves. You have to look at the flower size. You will look at the flowering season. You have to understand which will flower when. Who will stand up in summer? Who will stand up in winter? Blending design is all that. I think how does it play out in your mind like when you think of those two plants and in the whole schema I mean whole plan of things do you also think of those plants in aerially as well as laterally as well as going through experience? How does it play out in your mind? On this table Mhm. are five children Mhm. who are continuously drawing planting plants. A planting plan like this Mhm. takes us as an office close to about two and a half months to do. So it is a slow process. Mhm. You start with first doing sketches and in that sketch you say okay fine, let’s decide morphology and height. What do you want tall, what do you want short? So first you figure that out. Then you say let’s decide sightlines. If I’m standing here, how do I want my sightline to go? So then you start defining that, right? Once you’ve got that structure of space, what should enclose, what should lead, what should allow visual porosity, what should allow direct vision. Once you’ve understood all that, then the next step is let’s talk about the family of plants that we want to use. Mhm. Do we want to use a mix of soft gentle people or do you want to use a mix of unruly people or do you want a mix of boisterous people or calm people or do we want all of them and do we want them to converse in different parts? Then we make lists. So if you have to do a planting plan for about 100 species, then you’ll make a list of let’s say 200 species. Then you’ll say it. Then you’ll say I don’t want to invite him to this dinner. Let us put him out. These people are nice. Then you finally decide your guests. Mhm. So okay, fine. These people are going to come into this place. Then having come into place, you first decide who are the anchor people. Mhm. The people who will keep the conversation going. So you find a place for the anchor people first and make sure that they’re equally distributed. Then you find the subsidiary places. Then you draw it, then you draw it again, then you draw it again. Then one day you’re happy. You’re saying okay, fine. Wow. Yeah. So it all starts with the what experience you want to create then you reverse engineer the plants space. It’s not about filling up space. It’s all about intention of the experience you want. Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s a spatial tool. Mhm. This is so sophisticated the Wow. I’m sure she lets you know every month how she feels in the garden. Photographs [laughter] come every week. Wow, okay. What the garden? Mhm. One part of the garden or the other part of the garden. No changes happen. Mhm. However minor. Unless long discussions happen. So she respects that space. Um yeah, I mean she’s she’s happy, I’m happy, we all happy, so Nice. It’s a happy place to be in, happy place to go. I would take this opportunity to make this conversation useful for regular people who think they don’t have a space for a garden and things like that. I want to get into the fundamental not fundamental, the beauty of gardening. So, how much of this garden is for the eye and how much is it for being in it? No, I mean you can have gardens that are good for the eye, there’s nothing wrong with that. But ultimately those gardens get boring after a point of time. Uh gardens have to be places that you live in, right? And somewhere long back for Design Today or something I wrote an essay for common people. Mhm. And I said you know, you have the right to decide what kind of garden you want. If you got dogs in the house Mhm. then you want a garden for you and the dogs. If you want a garden if you want a garden that produces food, then that’s the garden that you want. If you want a garden where you want to sit and read a book, then that’s the garden that you want. First of all, you have the right to decide what garden you want. of garden you want? Wow, that’s a good question to start with. Right, and you there’s nothing like a garden, it’s your garden. And so you have to decide what I want out of it. Wow. Do I have young children that I want to go running around and plucking stuff up? Then that’s the garden you want. There’s nothing wrong. Define what garden you want, begin from there. Let the garden be an extension of yourself. If the garden is not an extension for you of yourself. Anyways, it don’t you know doesn’t make sense. Let it be a extension of personality of yourself or something about yourself. Begin from there. Do not worry about the size. It can be a backyard garden. It can be a balcony garden. It can be a little terrace garden. It can be anything. Within that you will still manage to create that little magic that will make you happy every day in the morning. Without doubt. Without doubt. There’s another garden that we’ve done for nearby. And this was a young lady whose father was my father’s friend and I also knew him very well. Uh and you know, he said she wants to she’s building a house. Will you do a garden? I said, “Yeah, sure.” So, she said, “Look on it. You know, we don’t like this manicured gardens and we like wilderness.” So, you know, garden maybe smaller than this. We planted wilderness, like a wild garden, right? And suddenly you got this sense of wilderness, you know, very small place. You got compact wilderness. You can get lost in it. Wow. Right? In a very compact space. So, first of all, it doesn’t matter. You know, you don’t need large expanses to feel wilderness. You don’t need large expanses to feel formal gardens. You don’t You don’t need expanses. You need the expansiveness of your mind, not of the land. Wow. How did you design for wilderness? It’s a completely different palette. You work with a completely different palette of plants. I mean, so you know, for each project you research or you over the years, but you research, you decide what kind of plants you want to use, you find wild native species or just indigenous wild species. Uh you also look for aesthetic manners in which that idea of wilderness Mhm. is presented to the mind. So, it may not be wild, but the way the coarseness of the leaf is or the greenness of the leaf is will evoke certain memories of the way that you will associate things in the wild, right? And you then finally make a list of those kind of plants. And then you look at dimensionality of hiding, screening, and enclosing. Right? Mhm. So, if I have to create a garden that’s in like a space that’s from here to there, Okay. I can actually create three different experiences and you will not know. Wow. Right? Because actually I need 2 and 1/2, 3 ft, 4 ft to be able to screen one portion from the other portion. Right? What I planned in the center and what I planned on this side and what I planned in the center and what I planned on that side can be different. If you’re sitting here, you will not know that there’s something on that side till you take a turn and you go there. Mhm. And then you will have forgotten this. And then you take a turn again and go there and you will have forgotten that. Wow. Practical wisdom that every apartment dweller wants. How do you design a small space so it doesn’t feel small? First of all, I think the moment you create layers in a small space, the small space expands, right? Space is small when you can see the definition of that space. When you can see the end of that space. If I’m on a 10 by 10 foot balcony, if you can see every corner of that 10 ft by 10 ft, then I know it’s 10 ft by 10 ft. But if I can’t see the corners of my balcony, then I don’t know that it’s 10 ft by 10 ft. So, you create the illusion of space by hiding the edge, by hiding the corners. And then you put layers in front of it in a manner in which you think that that distant view that you are seeing may actually be continuing a lot more, but you don’t know. And your mind starts playing those tricks. Mhm. That’s how you start expanding space by by hiding the definition of space. What is the difference between a garden that is maintained and one that is loved? Maintenance is obligation, love is relationship. Maintenance is not obligation. Come on. Maintenance is not Maintenance is one form of love. I mean, so let’s not let’s not make that mistake, right? Uh any living thing requires care. Now, depending on the kind of living thing, it requires different kind of care. That’s all. Some care might seem too much and some care that might not seem too much, but that’s a relative conversation. Somebody who loves gardens like this and likes to go pottering around and tending them and snipping them every day, for them it is yogic. For them, in fact, it is a way of healing their mind or freeing their mind. And they don’t see it as too much work. So, first of all, I think the definition of what is too much or too little rests between the ears. It’s your mind that decides it. Uh there is no garden in the world that does not require tending. Mhm. And that’s why we do gardens, so that we can tend to them. Otherwise, why do them? Otherwise, you can take plastic flowers and spike them in the ground. They’re living beings. Because when you tend to them, you understand them. Then you find the joy of a new garden, the joy of a flower one day when it wasn’t there yesterday. And then you get worried when a leaf gets a little burnt. And you start caring. That’s why you tend. Gardeners are people who tend their gardens are actually the happiest people in the world. They’ve got something now every day in the morning to do. They’ve got They’ve got a world to tend, a world to take care of. Most happiest hobby in the world. Absolutely. Why is it that, you know, when people retire and you say, “What are you going to do?” You say, “I’m going to tend to my garden.” Why Why Why do you Why do they say that? Why do you find so many people who find that looking at little things in the garden, taking a walk in the garden, observing it, why does it give them so much joy? You tell me any other thing that gives you I mean, tell me something else that gives you joy, right? Music, yes. Listening to music, yes. But listening to music is very different from singing your own tunes, right? Or playing your own instrument. Why does playing your own instrument give you greater joy than listening to somebody? Because you’re doing it with your hand and your mind and you know, all of it and your body is engaged with it. And it’s engaged with some rather pretty things. So, at what point does a garden stop being designed and start becoming itself? So, the day you finish planting the garden is when it actually starts. That’s the birth of a garden. Many people think that’s a finished up project. So, professionals make the mistake of thinking that the day I finish the planting on the project, my job is over. They don’t seem to understand that that’s the day that their real job begins. Whether it’s a professional, whether it’s a house owner, you brought a baby into the world. You birthed a child. Now, you need to take care of that child, right? Birthing a child is yes important. Conceiving it even more. But once the child is born, nurturing the child is even a bigger responsibility. So, is a garden never be truly finished? A garden is never finished. There’s nothing like a finished garden. Even if all the plants die and four are living, those four are still the garden. Do you have a garden? Yes, I do. What does a good garden do to your daily life? Oh, we love it. I mean, it’s you know, we live in a very small real estate bungalow that my father bought 25-30 years back. We had the option of moving out, getting new land, building our own home. We could have done that. And Shruti and I sort of said, “Look, here is where we built our memories and we built our life. You know, we are happy. I mean, it seems adequate for us. We are very happy. The problems of the house in the way that it leaks and the floors have collapsed and electricals don’t work. So, we moved out for a year. And we’ve just moved back. We moved back over 2 months back. And we fixed exactly the same house. We made no changes in the house. And we replanted the garden because, you know, in the process of construction, a lot of it got And of course, you know, trees have grown and there’s a lot of shade. And so, we have this wonderful little garden of wild grasses and aquatic plants and ferns and all sorts of little flowers. And it’s it’s like a whole small garden. It’s barely I would think that the size of the garden is about 1,000 sq ft. 1,500 sq ft. It’s very small. But a mock with wild little children running around. And Shruti and I love watching it from different we love sitting in the garden every in the morning or in the evenings. We love looking at the garden from various parts of the house. And we are both like you know two worried parents and she will go and sort of say Aniket you know that plant leaf is slightly curling and then I’ll go and check it. And it’s fun. I mean you know just sort of this is wonderful space that you know we are engaged with. We are not gardening it. It’s not like we are working with our hands. We could but it’s not like we are doing that. Uh but it’s it’s extremely satisfying. Extremely satisfying. What is the simplest way to make a garden feel special? Not expensive but thoughtful. I think the the idea of it being special Mhm. really comes by the way that you want to do that space and connect it with maybe your childhood or maybe somebody or a place that you I mean if you start using that space as a bridge between your mind and something else. Mhm. And whatever that something else is. It could be a place I’ve been to. It could be a place I grew up as a child. It could be my ancestral home and in that ancestral home I had a courtyard like that. The moment you start using it as a bridge between you and a world that makes you happy. It’ll become special. Mhm. And that bridge can be anything. It could be anything. Public park. Right. [clears throat] So this as a little background is something that started about 8 years or 9 years back. Mhm. And 9 years back I was having dinner with the owner of this company. Um and in the middle of the night uh late in the evening, the conversation got into ideas of patronage. And we started saying, you know, what is patronage and so on and so forth. And I said, “Look, there are two kinds of patronage. There’s something that I call a self-sustaining patronage, and there’s real patronage.” So, he said, “What do you mean by that?” So, I said, “Well, when you build a hospital or when you build a school, it’s sustainable patronage. It means that you put in the money, but the asset still belongs to you. You know, it’s your land, it’s your property. Uh and if you want, depending on the fees you charge or whatever that you charge, it’s possible to recover the money that you spent. Nothing wrong with it. Society needs sustainable patronage. But good societies are not built only on sustainable patronage. Good societies are built on real patronage. Real patronage is where you give. And after giving, you have no control on the asset. You have no way of knowing 6 years down the line whether what you’ve given even exists. But you give because you have faith. So, he absorbed that. He’s a great man. He’s a wonderful person. He absorbed that, and next day in the morning, he said, “So, give me examples of what do you mean by real patronage?” So, I gave him five examples. Now, out of them, two of them, one was to set up a city art cultural initiative. And the position that I had is that what happens in every city at the end of the day is that art and culture are finally controlled by a few houses or people. It’s not egalitarian. Not everybody can’t be an artist. Everybody wants to be an artist, but can’t be an artist. And the whole business of art and culture has to be such that everybody should feel like they can participate. And I said the other is that because I’m a landscape architect, of course, one should plan to public parks. Out of the five, he sent me a message saying you do these two. Mhm. So, I said, “What does that mean, do these two?” I mean, what does it really mean? He said, “You do them.” I said, “Meaning?” He said, “You have some ideas, no? So, do.” I said, “Don’t you want to talk about how I will do it, or budgets?” So, he said, “No.” I said, “No, no, no. This is, you know.” Mhm. So, I went went and met him. I said, “Please explain.” He said, “No. Whatever you think, you do.” I said, “Should you Should we set some conversations about how much I can spend?” He said, “No.” I said, you know, jokingly, I said, “You know, I’m a good landscape architect. I want to do 100 parks.” Mhm. He said, “You You do them.” Wow. I said, “Are you serious?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “Why?” I said, “Aniket, I know you. I mean, I’ve worked with him for many Mhm. He said, “Aniket, I know you. You will do things so carefully, and you’ll do them so well, that every year even if you can do two parks, or three parks, we’ll be lucky. And if you reach 100, that’s fine.” That’s how it started, 8 years back. Okay. I said that, sir, you know, landscapes and in public parks, something to design it, but then, you know, this is municipal asset. If you give it back to the municipality, 6 months, you won’t have a public park left. You said, “Yeah, I understand that.” So, we will maintain it. So, the last 8 years, we finished 21 or 22 public parks. Wow. Where this person’s foundation, which is called the U.N. Mehta Foundation, spends the capex on developing the park. And after the park is over, maintains it for life. Which means that the gardeners are paid by him. The supervisory staff is paid by him. The electricity bills are paid by him. The security systems are paid by him. Toilet cleaners are paid by him. Everything is paid. Mhm. And they personally oversee them. Our office helps. And as a result, it has now become a very serious public park movement. That, of course, the country is looking at, but the world is looking at because here is for the first time a private partnership with the government that has led to the renewal of good 18-20 public parks in the city, and four more are being executed as we speak. Two more are in the I mean, it’s it’s an ongoing story. Mhm. So, in the next 2-3 years, you know, we’ll have 30, so on and so forth. So, it’s a it’s a fantastic initiative, and it spread irrespective of scale. So, there are very small parks. It could be 500-600 square yards to bigger ones which are 10 acres, 11 acres. There are parks in Ahmedabad. There are parks in Surat. Now, we’re beginning to look at parks in Bombay. And it’s Wow. It’s a great journey. It’s a very good I draw a parallel of post-independence. There was patronage for modern buildings in India to see how our city is to be constructed. Now, the patronage is on. But this patronage is where you have no control, no? Because I mean, tomorrow the municipal authorities will turn around and say we are canceling the MOU. That’s all somebody has to say. Somebody is sitting in a place of power uh because the MOU has to be renewed every 5 years. You sign an MOU for 5 years, you develop the park, you take care. End of 5 years, you go and say, “Now, sir, renew it for more 5 more years.” Somebody can turn around and say, “We don’t want to renew it.” What will you do? So, there is a risk of something that you spent hundreds of crores, suddenly one day somebody saying, “No, no, let’s give it to somebody else. Let somebody else take care of it.” The asset doesn’t belong to you. Municipal land, public land. Private money going into public land. It’s not happened. a first-time phenomenon, is it? It’s not happened. It’s not happened globally. Wow. I mean, you’ll get people who claim one park and two parks or one this thing or one that thing. But for somebody to continuously be engaged Right. for 10 years and just systematically keep taking, keep taking, keep taking parks and just rehaling the entire park system of the city. Who is this person? Torrent, the Torrent Group. Okay. There’s a Torrent Pharmaceutical and Torrent Power. And they have outreach foundation. It’s called the UN Mehta Foundation. They do a lot of work. I mean, the parks is only one part of what they do. Uh they have this cultural festival that we set up that now is very big in the city. Then they of course do health care. I mean, it’s a rare [snorts] corporate that truly wants to do things for the cities or people. That Parimal Park is the result of this Parimal is one of the many many parks. I happened to visit two days ago and I would say it was a very successful park, not just in terms of the scale size, the design of it, feel of it, it’s absolutely great ecology I observed. Um birds, animals, but in terms of how diverse it was, like from singles to couples to elderly who was barely walking, families playing around, youths coming and playing, um couples having intimate conversation, very hideout from the public. People were minding their own business, no judgments, and everybody in their own zone. And the city landscape of tall buildings from the park and really felt like, “Oh, this isn’t in the middle of a city.” And also socializing the elderly, I mean, socializing for elderly is which is very important, like There is loneliness in There is, I don’t know whether you know about this park, Parimal Garden, Victoria Garden, Sardar Bagh. These gardens take close to about 7,000 people per day. Wow. That really means 50, 60,000 people a week. What an impact. Right? I mean, the number of people that go to And you know, we recently commissioned the U.N. Mehta Foundation commissioned an impact assessment. They got an independent agency to really evaluate every parameter. From, you know, mental health to happiness to safety to security to biodiversity, whatever. Quite quite heartwarming about this way that it is Like let’s explore how you design for such a wider So we know the location of course and as you you’ve been there Mhm. Uh this is right in the middle of and in busy part of the city. You know it’s important to say that the foundations of Ahmedabad at some level have been built by this earlier idea that we were talking about patronage. Mhm. Uh there have been people in the city and they’re not always mill owners or textile owners. They have you know trade you organizations. Vendor suppliers. There was a sense that if you did slightly well in the city Mhm. it was your job to do something for the city. And there is that sense that has pervaded in this town for the longest time. And that’s why we have institutions like the NID or the IIM or CEPT and so on and so forth. And this park was not any different. I mean this was where the mayor of the city you know which one Lalbhai had traveled around the world and seen you know good parks and decided that you know a good park should happen in the city. This land was identified. Paritrikamlal was another trader was brought in to fund it. And that’s how this park happened right in in the beginning. Now the history of the park is you know there was a piece of land low lying people say that it had a lot of mango trees. Uh it because it was low lying there was a sort of depression where water would collect and that was natural. And in the early 2000s it finally became a park. This was the plan that Kamal Bhai had done and you are going to speak to him. So he was one of the in 1998 uh Kamal Bhai refurbished the park in a rather beautiful manner. And as in the film I will talk about it, but you know It was important because here was an important architect that had been brought up to refurbish the park and had done a great job of re-hauling stuff and built several things. But of course, you know, when we found it it was fairly in a bad shape. It was fairly decadent. I mean, because it you know, processes of maintenance hadn’t been established well. Nobody had understood how to lay those processes of maintaining. So we looked at it and we decided to sort of redraw it and reimagine it. And so as in all cases, any number of drawings started happening, but we were very clear that there were things in the park that had become almost the identity of the park and that we were not going to change. And we were going to work around things. But we said okay, you know, one of the things that we really want to do is to really try and find a way of planting more trees to create more exactly the kind of things you talked about. Create a range of spaces from large spaces to smaller spaces to deeply intimate spaces. Create movement lines in a manner in which the sense of the park felt bigger than what it was. Create a great diversity of plant material and hence invite a great diversity of birds there to come and apply. To really think about the different age groups that you exactly mentioned. Our older people, the lovers, and so on and so forth. And how will you begin to do it? And then of course the process of design went on. Then this happened during the COVID and we started working in detail drawings and figuring out how how water would move. And you know, that drawing begins to show you how all the levels are figured out and how water would flow onto the site and where it would get recharged and so on and so forth. And so any number of studies and then like in all cases extremely intense sort of planting designs began to happen for each part of the park. And you know very very detailed planting plan that we finally led to a structure of the park that looks a bit like that. So finally what happened was that you know a park that looked like this which you’ve been to now looks like this. And that transformed completely. So there’s a little film and should I play it or yeah okay fine. 1950s A lot of vibrant local life A journey into the past city The capital of the world of golf Yes. The biggest city And deeply wanted to do something to bring back That team A lot of people used to come here I’m involved in the accomplishment But This man is a Wonderful visionary And a lot of it I think most of the time that Oh, I don’t know. Why do people support bullying like that? So, there was what’s the genius that [music] we did. That was our reminder of how about the national hero. And also it’s next time. It was a beautiful artwork that I don’t know. Okay. Okay. If you have children of all ages Oh, yeah. You know. Oh. I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. So, it’s something to smile at. I don’t I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. And I think what you mean was to respect the skeleton of I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t I don’t I think this experiment very good. [music] Wow. And so a couple of things in the film, right? I mean one uh it was very clear that we respected what had been done there. And the idea was to slip in the new uh so that you didn’t notice it. So there are users of this park who have been using it for 20, 30 years. And they haven’t felt displaced. Mhm. And that was very important, right? I mean when you refurbish a park or when you do something new, then somebody who’s been using it for 20, 30 years is huh, it’s nice, but it doesn’t feel like, you know, our park anymore. And it was very important that that didn’t happen. That you know, somebody who’s been using this park for the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, grown up using this park should feel, oh it’s the same park. Some things are better, but it’s the same park, right? It was very important to slip in everything without anybody noticing it. And you know, so we are very conscious of it. We are very, very conscious. We said we need to make this a new park, Mhm. but it should feel like it’s just the old park that is wearing some new clothes. There was centrality of the design process. That was a very, very important aspect of it. We could have ripped it all apart. We could have said we are so smart, we’re going to make a new garden. Yeah. So it’s been what? This park has now been open for six years, seven years. And you went there. Yeah. And you you it is well as clean as well maintained as what you’re seeing now. And so, what the office does continues to do is that it regularly we visit this park every couple of months. Mhm. Uh we make rounds and make drawings like this. Uh so, these are really maintenance drawings. So, when we go and then say this species is not doing well or Oh. this is trampled on or this can be replaced or this has got a little fungal attack or whatever. So, every couple of months we go uh Wow. the parks, not just this park, all 20 parks. Great data on All parks we go. So, this is our way of giving back to the city because I mean, all this work that we do at at looking at the park is not what we are contracted to do. This is not part of our contract. On our regular fees we charge 25% of our regular fees for all this. It is extremely rewarding and you know, so there’s this and I can move on to the next one if you if you want or we can talk about this at length. Public park, yeah. Public park is a Is public park ever truly democratic? Like who decides what behavior is acceptable in a public park? I think I think to be within the limits of what social decency is, these parks are truly democratic. Mhm. Uh we worked So, I mean, I remember when we first used to go there I mean, of course, the security people were, you know, our security people. So, when they would find a lover hiding in a bush, they would go and sort of rattle that lover. And then you have to tell them that, you know, these are the spaces that our city provides, so you will not disturb them. And then they would say, “But you don’t know, you know.” I said, “Look, let them be. Just let them be. Mhm. So long as they are not creating a nuisance for anybody else, just let them be.” So, we I mean, we’ve also worked with people there, talked to them. I think this park, so the municipal authorities, for example, was hell-bent on us charging a fee. Mhm. Uh or torrent charging a fee saying, you know, you’ve done such a great park, and there’s so many people using it, and because so many people using it, maintenance is difficult. So, if you can limit the number of people coming in, it’ll be easier to maintain it, and the way to limit it is, of course, to charge an entrance fee. Mhm. [clears throat] We refused. We said that, you know, public parks have to be open Mhm. to everybody and anybody. Anytime of the day and night. So, these public parks are as close to being open, as close to being fair, as close to being egalitarian as is humanly possible Mhm. in our context. You know, 7 years, one case of vandalism Mhm. in this park. Wow. 7 years, one case of robbing taps in another park. That’s it. Nothing. Nothing. Everybody would say, you know, you when you look at these parks, and you look at the planting in the park, right? Mhm. And again, you start seeing, oh my god, so many different species intricately planted. In a public park, nobody will take this position. They will say, oh, difficult to maintain plants, so work with five or six species Mhm. so that they’re easy to maintain, right? And then barricade everything so that people don’t I said, you know, people will grow to love it. There will be a little bit of problem. There will be a little bit of vandalism, but not so much that uh Mhm. you should flip to the other side. Mhm. Mhm. But I overheard from other architects where they uh display their disappointment towards charging of fee, I mean, charging a fee to public to access a park. So, is that not a good practice, right? Like you just allow the elite just to enter it’s wrong. Mhm. You pay taxes. Everybody pays taxes. A public park has to be free. What I mean, I don’t understand this. I mean, in the sense that at some time there was so much pressure from the municipal corporation saying, “No, you must charge a fee. You must charge a fee.” I said, “Look, the day you start charging the fee is the day I stop working on this. There’s not It’s just not right. You cannot and Torrent, of course, equally does not believe in it. So, you know, in here we built a a gymnasium. I don’t know whether you noticed it, but in the corner there’s a two-storied gymnasium, very very good quality. Mhm. And U N. Mehta Torrent was happy to make that service available free. And then the corporation came and said, “But you know, we have other gymnasiums where we charge a fee.” Mhm. And suddenly one gymnasium is free, then it’s very difficult for us. So, U N. Mehta said, “Well, in any case, we can’t take the money.” Mhm. Because you’re a we’re a charitable foundation, we will not take the money. So, finally they had to sign an MOU with a gym manager to take care of the gym and that person charges whatever is the municipal fee. U N. Mehta comes from the position saying that we will not charge money. There’s a growing trend in charging people on public parks. It’s wrong. a wrong practice. It’s wrong. Yes, perfect. It’s wrong. People should fight it. Mhm. People should neighborhood should get together and fight it. They should boycott those parks. Mhm. They should not go to those parks. Or they should fight and go to their local councilor and pick up a fight. It’s nonsense. How can you charge people to walk in your city? That’s what you’re doing, you know? Tomorrow you’ll say this road is very important. So, if you’re going to loiter around this road, then you know you have to pay us a tax. Who decides? In Ahmedabad, there’s a bridge, a pedestrian bridge. They charge money to go on the pedestrian bridge. And that’s not I mean it’s just not right. I mean, it’s this ridiculous conversation of how do you make things sustainable? So, I’ve had these conversations with commissioners and so on and so forth. They said, “No, no, we charge a fee so that it’s sustainable.” I said, “What do you mean sustainable?” I said, “The very fact that people use it, it’s sustainable. You’re not meant to make a profit out of all this. And there are taxes to make take care of this. That’s why you pay taxes, no? That’s why you collect municipal taxes. What do you collect them for? That’s why you collect them. So, what do you mean sustainable? You’re not meant to make a profit out of a park. But, it’s a notion that seems to be right now popular in the country. That you make a public asset, you charge a fee. I think it’s completely wrong. Yes, that’s a good stand. So, what’s the most unexpected behavior you have seen people using in this park? The most unexpected behavior Oh, the most joyful It could be delight or frustration. the most happiest behavior is there’s two photographers. And they are there 24/7. They have made it their office. Right? So, in the morning at 6:00 they are there until 10:00 in the night they are there. Suddenly, one day I was going and I saw a pre-wedding shoot happening. I said, “Wow, people are using this park for pre-wedding shoots?” So, then the park supervisor said, “No, no, sir, this has become standard now.” I said, “What do you mean standard? Like how does they come with the photo He said, “No, no, photographers are always here. They run their shop from here. So, you can land up with this park, find the photographer, and say “I want a pre-birthday shoot. I want a pre-wedding shoot. I want this shoot.” The guys are always around. And I think it’s so fascinating that suddenly, you know, people have started using this, and I find that very, very happy. So, that’s one thing that has always been fun. And the other is that I find this park suddenly becoming a place for all these, you know, painting workshops and drama and theater workshops, which one only thinks Right. should happen or hopes should happen. Mhm. But when you actually see that happening, you’re saying, “Oh my god, this is so wonderful that suddenly, you know, a group of people and they’re learning how to do watercoloring, yeah, watercoloring or dancing or So, when I said in that film that, you know, this really is a microcosm of mankind, this is. Yeah. And when I said in the end that how many places do we really know where the theater of mankind can be enacted? Very few. And parks are those places in our cities. I mean, you know, they’re not malls. Mhm. They’re not pavements. So, what makes a public park feel safe without feeling surveilled? We don’t have any surveillance, as you have noticed. There has been some conversation of trying to put up security cameras. We have all fought I’ve said no. Mhm. You and Mehta have agreed. Uh and I said you will not put cameras. You have no business to put cameras. So, there’s no surveillance in our public parks. Why did you stand up to that? How can you surveil somebody in a public space? On what basis can you do it? I mean, do are you expecting some sort of theft or vandalism? Or what do you really expect? I mean, this is that space that people want to be be themselves. They want to sleep. They want to hug a lover. They want to do whatever. Why would somebody intrude upon that space? What is that sense of security that Like what are you scared of? You have to survey something if it’s a bank. You’re scared of something, right? What are you scared of here? What can you be scared of? Is somebody going to incite a riot in your park? Are they going to rob plants? What are they going to do that is going to be so awful? There’s nothing. It’s a public park. So first of all, you have no right to do it. So as a result, none of our parks have got cameras, none of them. We have a security people. And over the years now, the security people have learned to be very gentle. They’re like they’re custodian more than anything else. So if they see somebody, a kid, running behind the ball behind that ball goes into a strawberry and the kid is trampling over the strawberry, chances are they’ll sort of say, “Don’t do it.” and you know, “Take it out carefully.” That’s about it all. I mean, that’s the extent of the so-called surveillance. Recently, you know, we’ve just signed on to do Ahmedabad’s one of Ahmedabad’s oldest and biggest parks. So Ahmedabad typically has got the Victoria Garden, the Sardar Bagh, the Parimal Garden, the Law Garden. These are like the four anchor gardens of Ahmedabad. We’ve done three already. And we’ve just signed on now to start the fourth, which is 11-acre garden. And the users of that garden have written a letter to the commissioner, which I saw already yesterday, saying that we are very heartened to know that the U.N. Mehta Foundation Pratiti Initiative is going to take over this park. And we commend their ethical practices. And we would be very excited to participate in the making of the park. Now, communities don’t say that unless you’ve demonstrated that over the parks that you’ve done before. And I have believed that when you do public work any public work if that public work has not happened that public work is has happened without consultation with the local public, then it’s not public. Mhm. Then it’s private will being enforced upon public land. Right. Right? Public work demands whether somebody wants it or doesn’t want it a genuine level of participation with the community and the ability to go and stand up there when the community is angry. Mhm. Right? So when there are there have been times in the making of the park that the community has been angry for some reason. They’ve misinterpreted design. Or or you know, they want more benches for example. And they will get up on arms and then I’ll be told you know, they’re just acting difficult. I said, I’ll come and talk to them. I’ll come and talk to them. And then I’ll sit down and say, why do you want I mean there are so many benches. These benches are not being used. These benches are not being used. These are not being used. No, no, but earlier the benches used to be here. Mhm. I said, yeah, earlier the benches were here, but now they’re there. So when why can’t you just walk through those benches and why do you want to clutter the park with benches? Now you can turn around and say we don’t have to do it. But I think every conversation requires participation. In this garden once we had this problem of vandalism. And everybody said, oh, we should tell the police. I said, yeah, you should tell the police. Then what will you do? I said, every time something happens, you are going to go and tell the police? Mhm. It won’t work, no? Right. So I said, then what is to be done? I said, let’s go and talk to that community. Let’s explain it to them and slowly it will peter off. So I think that helps to continuously be willing Mhm. to step out of your skin and say it’s a difficult conversation. You know, we finished Sardar Bagh the other day and one part of Sardar Bagh uh is this busti and the kids play cricket there and they solely play in the park which we stopped because you know the park happened. And we’ve created a space for them but they used to play in the park. So suddenly now you are not allowed to play cricket in the park. So they are obviously very angry. So they went and ripped apart the metal letters of the park and broke something. They stole. So they said, “Oh, too much nuisance, too much this, too much that.” I said, “Then what do you want to do?” So he said, “No, no, we are going to sell.” I said, “No.” So he called up. I knew the local there’s a furniture shop who runs and he’s sort of a local man there. I called him up. I said, “Sabir bhai, you know.” He said, “I’m busy.” He said, “No, no, you come.” So I came. He called somebody else. They understood the problem. Then they said, “Now let’s go to the company.” So we spent half a day in the community going house to house. I said, “Why are you doing it?” And they would say, “Yeah, you know, our children are like that only. They are such useless children. We tell them not to do it. Now we want.” And it stopped. It stopped and it also built a certain rapport with people. And I think public space has to be done like that. It can’t be saying, “Oh, I’m sitting in the office and I’m making design and somebody is going to Right. What do you think of the term oxygen parks which I keep hearing these days has become like a some sort of a jargon or marketing brand term which I perceive it as. So I mean, I’m I don’t like oxygen parks. I don’t like Miyawaki. I don’t like both. Mhm. Um The notion of the oxygen parks is that you plant a whole bunch of trees in any which way and then at least that land has got trees. Now if you are saying that’s the best we can do, then well, that’s the best we can do. I don’t support the idea, but they are very popular. And it’s essentially the government or somebody taking a piece of land and just filling it up Mhm. plants without thinking too much. And of course, over a period of time the plants grow, they look green. Mhm. And because they’re plants, they generate oxygen. But it doesn’t make sense to me. Yeah. I mean, they say Amazon generates so much oxygen, but the same amount [clears throat] of oxygen is used to decompose their leaves and you know, rationally doesn’t make sense as well. no. I mean, even this park generates oxygen, no? But you know, it’s also a park. I mean, why can’t I say it’s it’s a park? Right. So, I think that’s a bit of a problem. So, I’m not very happy with this oxygen parks and Miyawakis and When do you personally call a park a success? Like, is it to do with the usage, ecology, or longevity, or emotional connection, etc., etc., or can a park look beautiful and still fail? I mean, in the Indian context, we are so starved for public spaces. So, I’ve said often that you know, if you take a traffic island in the middle of the road and plant something in it, people will go and sit in the traffic island. Mhm. Because first of all, we are starved. So, just because you’ve done a place, if your success is going to be determined by the fact that people use it, that’s a very poor metric. In India, we just don’t have spaces. Mhm. So, it doesn’t matter what is the quality of spaces, people will use it. So, you have to use different metrics to decide whether your park is successful or not. One of the metrics that you can use is how long will people spend in the park. Mhm. What is it that they do in the park? What kind of spaces do they enjoy in the park? And I think you have to observe that because these are very non-tangible things. They are not a measurable metrics, right? I mean, the survey, of course, was done and the survey was benchmarked against municipal parks and of course it it it read well. But I think the very fact that different kinds of people will come regularly and spend huge amounts of time in this park in these parks. And it allows an entire cross-section of people to come. He’s a reasonable measure of its success. That in while doing it, they will talk about in private conversation. So, there’s a video clip floating around in town Mhm. where one somebody from my office her uncle and she just happened to be there. So, her and she didn’t even know that she’s working that you know she works here. So, her uncle had a guest from the US. And her uncle was telling this guest from the US and now that you’ve come to Ahmedabad, I will take you to Parimal Garden. And he goes on and on and says, “When you see it, you’ll forget all the parks globally.” Right? Now, when common people start talking about parks with that level of pride and a sense that it has instilled something special to us in the city. I mean, when these early parks happened, when I would go to shops and you know, people would meet me and say, “You know, you’re the person who’s done Parimal Garden. You’re the person who’s done Vikram Sarabhai.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they would buy me pastry or they would buy me cake. Now, I think you have to measure its success by the love that people bestow upon that park and then that gets transferred to you a little bit, right? Now, I’ve often asked myself, “What is the reason for the success?” And you know, the conceited part of you believes that design is important. But I think it’s a combination of two things. I think first of all, yes, design is important. And because it’s thoughtfully designed, it is dramatically a different experience than a badly laid out park. And people understand that. But I think the greater differential is the fact that they’re maintained. That they’re tended to. That, you know, U N Mehta tends to these are swept clean, plants are done well, benches are clean, toilets are clean. I think that’s a big the bigger differential. Mhm. Right? That you do a public amenity and you present it and you say I’ve done it and I’ll take care of it. You use it and I’ll take care of it. Wow. And I think that’s the bigger differential. Let’s move on to the next one. And last one. Last one. So the last one is actually a cluster. [clears throat] Um so, you know, at the bottom, what you have is the Victoria Garden. On the top, what you have is the Sardar Bagh. And the one that I’m talking about is that thin linear strip Mhm. that sits next to the river along the fort wall. Okay. Sabarmati And, you know, theoretically speaking, now this is like an interesting park circuit that you can And the Sidi Saiyyed Jali that we talked about earlier Mhm. is this place. This is the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque. So this is being executed. So theoretically speaking, a visitor can now come, see the mosque, see this garden, exit the garden, walk through the Sardar Bagh, walk down to the the Heritage Garden, walk along the Heritage Garden, go under the bridge, go up the staircase, walk through the Victoria Garden and get out. So you can pretty much design half a day in our set of walk in the garden. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You can. You can start at 7:30, 8:00 in the morning and finish at like 11:00, 12:00 and go for lunch somewhere. Oh, oh my god. So in winters it’s not theoretically possible to do a garden tour, a garden day in Ahmedabad. Not possible. Anyways. So this is the Heritage Garden. And it’s a strip that lies between two bridges, the Nehru Bridge and the Ellis Bridge. In the historical precinct of Ahmedabad where the fort of Bhadra is. Uh and of course the Ahmedabad is a city of walls. And over, you know, over the years lot of the walls have broken down and fallen and they’ve disintegrated. So now we’ve got pieces of walls. And lot of these pieces of walls also not original. They’ve been restored, they’ve been rebuilt and so on and so forth. But nonetheless, we have these pieces of walls. So this is one stretch which is a piece of the wall. Now when we found this, this is how this place looked. So you had this fort wall behind and you had debris that was piled against the wall. Now, the reason the debris was piled against the wall is that here is the wall and then you had this debris that sort of came down. So literally the wall was hanging up in the air. So why was the wall hanging up in the air? Because when the riverfront development happened, they had to change the datum level so that the cars could go under the bridge. So overall the levels came down and the wall was left hanging up. So now you really had this fort wall and debris holding it up. Oh. And that’s how, you know, we found this. And you know, it was not possible to move the debris of course. Because if we had moved it, then it would have affected the foundation. So we had to work with that debris. So we started drawing many, many, many, many variations as you can see, saying how do we start planning it, you know, from a more flowy sort of landscape on top. And this went on and then finally reached a plan which is like this. Now, I want to spend a minute explaining the plan. So you have the fort wall. Now the green that you see is the debris that has been overlaid with a certain amount of soil. Mhm. Now, the reason the debris has been sculpted in this manner is because we wanted to equal bastion formations or defense formations. So, that at the end of the day, it’s a fort wall. And you know, a fort was meant to be for defense. So, we said, “Let’s take all that debris and shape it almost like, you know, they were defense formations as you begin to see.” So, you see this jagged Right. sort of thing, right? So, it’s not a flowy sort of thing. It’s like ramparts. Then we said, “It’s the heritage garden. It’s a fort wall.” So, here’s a chance for us to tell stories. So, we’ve got what, 18, 17, and so on so forth. Those little numbers there. Each one is a history circle. And I’ll tell you what that history is later, right? Go to that. Then look at those dots inside. And you can see these little circular dots almost like they’re in a grid. Or you see these rectangles almost like they’re cannon-like, right? So, the whole idea is to look at planting almost like it was defense formation. So, here’s the fort wall. Here are the bastions. And the planting is almost like in grids or in like It’s not a pretty garden anymore. It’s It’s a garden that is saying, “This is about defense. This is about, you know, protecting the city. This is about order. This is about, you know, so so planting starts becoming like that.” So, that was the general idea. Then I’ll explain to you the the circles. So, the first circle Ahmedabad is a seasonal river. Sabarmati is a seasonal. So, usually in my childhood, until the riverfront development happened, uh you would have water in that river for a month and a half and then rest of the year, 10 months, it would be a dry sandy bed. And on that dry sandy bed, people would go down to learn how to ride a scooter or they would learn how to ride a car Wow. or they would learn they would play cricket or people would grow vegetables. And for me, the biggest memory was that the circus used to come into the river bed. Wow. Okay. you would cross the bridge one day and nothing would be there and I used to study in Mirzapur, which is I had to cross the bridge too. You would cross and nothing would happen. Then suddenly one day you would see trucks in the river bed. Then the next day you went, you saw some more trucks. Then the third day you went, you saw a skeleton of something coming up. Then the fourth day you saw cloth being put onto it. And then about a week later, there were banners and lights and the town had come. And it was a show. It was a show. And for me, the river bed has been the living room of the city, right? Because this is where the city went out and did things. It was a living room of the city. And now of course the riverfront is gone and the memory of that is gone. The first circle pays a tribute to that circus. The circus uh tents. The second circle talks about the six dynasties that have ruled Ahmedabad from the Solankis uh to the British, to the Marathas, to the Muslims, to the Mughals, and free India. So what we did is we looked at research in each one of these dynasties and found either a seal or a coin or a stamp or something and created a place where the seals and logos of these dynasties would be present. That’s the second circle. Evolution of the city. Yeah. The city was ruled by many people. The third is that this is the center of the city. So, I mean, this is the old map of the city. And you’re This is Bhadra. And this is where this garden is, right? So, this the old city is the center of the city, and the city has grown in concentric rings, as we were just talking. And so, it is to say that, you know, whatever happens, this is the center of the beginning. And to mark the center, so the third circle marks the center. The fourth circle. So, this is the fort wall. And in the fort wall, there was a Jeroka. And if you do a straight line from the Jeroka, right? You go back to that earlier plan. If you do a straight line from the Jeroka, it would go straight through the Jeroka through the Bhadra fort gate, down this axis, through Teen Darwaza towards Jama Masjid. So, it was this royal axis that went through, and that bastion marked that royal axis. So, the That circle talks about the royal axis, but it also talks about how the city has changed. So, what it really does is that it takes this pixelated metal and creates doorways that are Muslim towards the fort wall, and doorways that are more modern away from the fort wall. And tells you, here is a modern city, here is the old city, and here is the axis through which, you know, the line of the royal axis went through the city. So, it marks that point. Wow. And the last circle is, as we were talking earlier, to these painters of the Mata ni Pachedi. And these painters used to live just in the vicinity, above. Riverfront. Uh on the just above them. And they would come down because there was gently flowing water, so their vegetable dyes to get them fixed, they had to wash them in that gently flowing water, and that’s how the paint would get fixed. And now because there’s no flowing water and they can’t use that water, that entire community has had to leave. So the last circle pays tribute to the Mata ni Pachedi, or the painters of Mata ni Pachedi. Uh then of course, detailed planting and you know, as I was beginning to see on the right hand side you can see all those circles. And if you read the names a little bit, this is not pretty planting. This is thick, fleshy, thorny, wild planting. I mean this is not about being pretty. This is about saying fort wall. There you go. Yeah, slightly. I mean plants can never be pretty yes nonetheless. And so all the planting sort of begins to happen for the project. Then there seats, those dotted lines, they’re seats and they’re seats that are done like abandoned plinths of old homes. So when you look at the seats from a distance, they look like abandoned plinths, but they’re actually seats that get built. And then of course the planting plan. So that’s how the gardens now begins to express itself along the fort wall. So you can begin to see those bastions and you come up close, they’re really etched sort of bastions, right? So there’s the fort wall, there are these bastions that are etched in angular sort of manners and done there. And it hugs the fort wall. And then there are these seats that I was talking about, which are those, which are like building plinths, but you walk into each one of them and it becomes a seat. So they’re like building plinths, almost thought of as seats. And then the planting as I was saying, this is an early photograph. Now it’s things have grown, but you can see the circles there. And so, planting is almost like in military sort of formation. Formations. This is the fourth circle that is a circus tent. Oh. Little fairy lights on top. This is the second circle which I got the signs and then Do you read Hindi? So, this circle we picked up a popular Hindi movie quote. Taqdeer So, so basically, you know, fate can change, time can change and so on and so forth. The first circle takes quotes of Mera Naam Joker. The life is a circus. The first hour is this is the second. So, the idea is to sort of pretty much titillate people into saying why is this cinema quotes coming here? Why are they here? And then begin to look at, you know, and then of course there’s enough signage but then to start looking at the way that Wow. these things happen there, right? So, then you have quotes again. Waqt hi sab kuch hai. Waqt sab banata hai aur waqt hi sab bigadta hai. Which movie is that? I have a list somewhere but you know, I can give you the list of all of them. Right? So, we’ve picked up these quotes that seemed apt for each circle, right? This is still unfinished. It’s now finished like this. So, we really have, you know, that city center. Of course, these plants are still growing. This is the notion of the river and this is the way that the city keeps growing with concentric rings and that is of course a fort, the old city which now has this plaque. And these things are growing there. Old and new. Yeah. And then this is that pixelated gates. Wow. Right? Let’s come on. And you know, and as you can see outside they’re more modern. As you can see inside or you know, and the red line sort of marks that axis. And then there’s a pixelated gates there. Each one marking what I talked and the last one is this whole tribute to Mahatma Gandhi to charity. Which gets lit up very beautifully in the night. It’s great of you to recognize that the community. And so that’s the park. And if you pass it in the night it’s very very beautifully lit. And that comes to the end of our the job. How long is the stretch? It was 600 m long. And it was started in We started working on about 2 and 1/2 3 years back. The park is ready it’s not inaugurated yet. You want to go there you can go there but we’re waiting to find somebody to inaugurate it but you know but it will be open soon. Yeah, the river front seems to be like a controversial thing right now is it? I don’t know I’m new to the city. It’s a different conversation for a different time. [laughter] I mean there there are many things about it. I mean I don’t know whether you want to do it now but it’s a long conversation. We can have a debate probably next podcast debate of pro and Yeah, it’s a long conversation. Yeah, yeah. I’ve written a long essay about it. Is it? Okay. [laughter] Um who built those walls though? Is it something that is true or something like that? I’m not sure about 1411. That’s the birthplace of the city. Wow, okay. Part of that photo wall. The founding of the city 1411. And when they made the underpass road they didn’t think of Once you decided that you wanted to run a parallel road the bridges were already there. You needed 6-7 m clearance for fire brigade access and so on and so forth. So, you had to maintain that datum level. Now, when you started maintaining that datum level, the levels of the fort wall were not So, you can see the difference in the level. First of all, to pull off a project of this magnitude right in a government situation is a miracle. Uh, have they made this part of town which otherwise was full of slums and, you know, inaccessible? The city had turned its back to the river. Have they made the city now recognize this part of the city? Yes, without any doubt. So, for that, hats off. To pull off a project of this scale, hats off. For getting this to become an important space in the city, great. But, beyond that, then the problems start. Is it ecologically right? No, it’s not. Is it innovative and creative enough? It’s not. Has it thought about community well? It has not. Why could it not have stayed as a dry river? Well, so, there are lots of things there. Yeah. Working on a heritage project builds up extra pressure to preserve the history or, you know, preserve the delicate I mean, was it difficult thing to work on? I mean, heritage projects. This is working in a heritage context, right? It’s not the same as working on a heritage building, for example. Uh, if you really had to work on a heritage building, let’s say that tomorrow somebody said, uh, you know, work on the Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi. Now, first of all, I’m not qualified, but if somebody had to, then you have no option but to be taking a very, very historically correct archaeological position of res- of restoration. In that sense, this is you’re working in the presence of heritage. You’re working in adjacent to heritage, but you’re not working on the heritage building. So, it allows you a little bit of liberty of interpreting it the way that you want it. So, if somebody said work on the wall, I’d probably be a little scared and not know what to do because you know, there I would be a little not know what to do. But here the wall is there, the wall is in the background. My job is to bring the wall back in the forefront of the city. Let the city start celebrating the wall. And then outside that to try and tell stories about why that wall is important, why the city was important. So, in that sense, no pressure. I mean, that sense joyous ride, but no pressure. But if somebody really said work on a heritage, I would feel some pressure. Yeah, that is a different Yeah. So, can a space work without meaning? Every space will have meaning. There’s nothing like not having a meaning. The question is does it have a good meaning or a bad meaning? So, I think there’s nothing like a space without meaning. The The question is does does that meaning make sense to you or not? Sometimes it can be the most facile and the most meaningless conversation and it can be chatter. And sometimes it can be an articulate conversation. The question is what kind of meaning does the space have? What pattern I saw is that you kind of not strongly, but kind of hide your design in the landscape. Not openly show it like the installations Is there a reason why you hide things in the landscape? I don’t hide them, but I don’t I don’t like to be brazen about things. I don’t like to speak too loudly in the work that we do. I don’t want I want people to discover them. Mhm. I don’t want it in your face. I want people to read different things at different times. I don’t want to do a singular narrative. When things are too brazen and too loud, then that’s the only voice that is heard. But I’m hoping that there several voices here at different times. And at different times you will hear those different voices. And so it’s a balance of voices. So what does discovery do to a person? If you have a straight road and you can see the beginning of the road and the end of the road, you already know. But when you walk in an old town and you don’t know what the next bend is going to be and the next bend is going to be and suddenly you would turn up on and find the water cistern here or an old sculpture there or a nice cobbled paving there, your mind enjoys those layers all the time. And your mind is engaged with that space all the time. Mhm. If you don’t create spaces that are gently unpeeled, then your mind will refuse to engage with them because you will have understood it in the first viewing. But if you don’t engage with it, then it doesn’t have the chance to speak to you. So I think it’s very important to allow spaces and carve them that they allow not a single discovery, multiple discoveries depending on your time and day, depending on how you enter the space, different meanings. And construct your own narrative, construct your own sentences. But you’ll only do that if you’re engaged with the space. Otherwise, you just pass through, right? Do you take inspirations from nature? I take inspiration from nature, of course. I take inspiration from music. I take inspiration from literature. I’m inspired Mhm. by or inspired, affected by people. By kindness of people, by children. I mean, I The whole world is there, no? For you to be films. Whole world is there for you to be learning from all the time, and you learn different things from different places all the time. And you finally put them in some recess of your head. Mhm. And hope that at the right time they all present themselves well. And you can do something with it. So, I’m inspired. Thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure. Not at all, my pleasure. And I hope you I still feel like I just covered 5% of No, no, no. [laughter] Thank you very much. It was fantastic. [laughter]