India has experienced unprecedented growth in the past one or two decades. However, “New India”, liberalized, globalized and “shining”, has yet to define its model and the values it embodies. Becoming a megapower, home to some of the wealthiest individuals and companies in the world, cannot be an end in itself. If the “new” in “New India” is to mean anything then we have to make the effort to imagine what it could be. As of now the “new” seems to merely be about copying and supersizing the same old economic wisdoms that have produced unsustainable, polarized and crisis prone regimes in the West.

The age structure of India, where nearly 50% of the population is under 24 years old makes it clear that the aspirations and decisions of the youth will shape the country’s future in dramatic ways. In these times of transition when India is redefining itself, and asserting its newfound position in the world, we must look at ourselves anew, drawing as much from our roots as our collective imagination.

Youth are leaving villages and moving to the city –sometimes coming back with new means and ambitions; in the city the same youth gets absorbed as workforce in the booming private sector, where they seek to climb the economic and social ladder. Youth wants it all, here and now, fast and furious. They want what they perceive as Western standards for themselves. They are aware of their country’s problems, and either feel contempt and a need to run away. Or they want to make a change for themselves from within the system.

What they often forget in the process is the tremendous potential that lies deep in the civilization they are part of. Indigenous systems in homegrown villages and neighbourhoods for instance, which have survived multiple layers of colonization, modernization and globalization, could be a source of inspiration for new development principles altogether.

The development we are thinking of is based on small, thoughtful, sustainable solutions, rather than huge, “time changing”, “mega” stream of thinking; on individuals and communities, rather than corporations, departments and agencies. It is the kind of development that could ensure a bountiful of resources for generations to come. It is the kind of development that takes as its measure individual happiness rather than the GDP of the country.

Because we seem to have left them behind as we rushed for the gold, it has becomes necessary to expose these persistent and widespread (yet undermined and threatened) systems all over again. This is why we are committed to a long enduring search for the buried organizational structures that still follow common-sensesical economy principles, and which are connected human needs and mother earth’s means. We do this by documenting the lifestyle and architecture of existing indigenous villages. We propose to go back to the village and explore its intense and simple livelihood principles. Based on our observation, we brainstorm on the best way to take some of these principles to scale in their own small ways.

The research program called “The Umbilical Connection” is a first step in this direction. For a month we will research and document the village of Murbad near Dahanu (a few hours from Mumbai), and speculate on the future the village and on the relationship between the village and urbanization. This program is intended as a discovery more than as a teaching experience. The conductors of the workshop (Design Jatra) are themselves not equipped with full knowledge of the village’s systems. We commit ourselves to this research along with the participants and villagers. We therefore do not have a preset agenda and objective. We hope to engage with the village, and hope to become ourselves actors in its development.

The workshop starts with a detailed documentation of sustainable local practices, which enrich the life of the village. The second step is a documentation of two structures in the village, which are built according to different construction principles. The third step is to use the knowledge gathered in the first and the second steps to co-produce with the villagers a twenty-year vision for the village. The fourth and the final step is set our vision in motion. It can be anything from a landscape element, to an architectural intervention, to planting a tree, or organizing a small exhibition.

The workshop is open to anyone who wishes to commit to the journey we expect to begin. This means developing a deep relationship with the village of Murbad, and thus it will enable the participant to become a part of the village now and in the future.

The workshop is be held from 1st of May to 5th of June. It is a come in and out workshop which means that participants can join the workshop at whichever stage they want. However, we would really prefer that participants join with the journey for as long as possible and as far as possible.

For more information about the workshop, contact Shardul Patil via this page.

Shardul Patil is a student at Academy of Architecture in Mumbai and a member of URBZ. Pratik Dhanmer, a practicing architect and fellow member of URBZ is a co-organizer of the workshop and co-author of this post.

View of Paspoli village from the Renaissance Hotel in Powai.

Take a slice of Mumbai city, thin or thick, narrow or broad, and you will find a bit of everything – tightly juxtaposed and cosily nestled.

A high-tech office space next to a dense exotic bazaar, with people sharing services and personnel are not trapped in contrasting typologies but cross-wired intricately into each other.

Imagining different worlds co-existing with cold indifference is a tempting interpretation to make about Mumbai – until you start paying attention to the way in which people traverse firewalls all the time. 

At first glance, the view from a permanently fastened glass window of a five-star hotel, in a recently developed northern part of the city, has potential to create a lot of medieval drama.

The view looks down landscaped gardens, bounded by compound walls. Just beyond the boundary, clutching a small hill, the average client of the hotel, sees a typical homegrown neighbourhood, which she has been conditioned to believe is a slum. The slum of global urbania – cesspools of crime and dirt and all that is gone wrong with cities today.

The proximity and contrast is disconcerting.

It is easy for her imagination to edit real and cinematic memory and visualize hordes of angry dwellers from the slums jumping across the water pipes and compound walls to dive straight into her room. She is suddenly relieved about the permanently shut window and well-guarded gates surrounding the hotel.

The client is here on a conference, which the hotel specializes in. Her accompanying colleague stays in a room with a more expensive view. It overlooks a lake surrounded by a skyline that seems to be a live projection of Hong Kong or Singapore. In reality it is made up of expensive real estate projects built on land reserved for low-income housing.

View of Powai Lake from the Renaissance Hotel.

When the two hotel residents take a break from the conference to buy gifts, they go there. They can be forgiven for believing that they have indeed traversed into a low-income housing complex, notwithstanding the Manhattan high prices of the neighbourhood. 

The same cross wiring of services and personnel, along with shabby maintenance, produce that effect. This expensive piece of real estate now has the same glorious messiness and general shabbiness that the city as a whole seems to revel in.

Hiranandani towers: Up-market residences built on land originally reserved for low income housing.

They realize that the neighbourhood on the other side of the lake is meant to be visually consumed, from a distance, through the coffee shop of their hotel, rather than at close-quarters. When they ride up an escalator, they glimpse similar homegrown neighbourhoods all over the hillsides immediately behind the bizarre Greco-roman facades of the expensive buildings.  Once again the proximity and contrast is disconcerting. It feels like living in one city but seeing another urban landscape everywhere around.

Back in the safe confines of the hotel, the two ruminate on their conference – on sustainable urbanism. The irony-rich complexities of this city, the rich hotel and the theme of the conference are not lost on them. 

Like many of the other participants, the two feel the need to speak about the world outside the hotel.  Urban poverty and slums become one of the main themes of the discussions happening on the margins of the conference, sometimes late into the night.

One evening they decide to continue their conversations over cigarettes while exploring the gardens and the grounds. Within minutes security guards zoom down and insist they go back to their rooms or to the walled-in 24 hour coffee shop, since all outdoor areas have to be shut at night for security reasons. 

This bit of information increases her anxiety – security from what? However, thanks to the few drinks, they decide to walk around the hotel and soon find themselves by the back gate of the buildings, from where all the daily hospitality necessities, including drinking water, are delivered. 

Over the gate they see the same neighbourhood she had seen from the window.

Map showing Paspoli village at the centre, tucked in between walled compounds. Click to enlarge.

Upon request, a polite guard opens the gate and lets them out. They find a little stairway that leads to a small footbridge that climbs over four huge water pipes leading them to the other side. 

Her first feelings are one of trepidation. But her instincts and the encouraging words of her friend, who has visited the city many time before, egg her on. Sure enough, she realises her fears are totally unwarranted.

They are welcomed by light, sound, music and people. The neighbourhood doesn’t seem to be asleep yet although it is well past midnight. They move closer to a blue structure with a wheel exactly like the one on the Indian flag. People are busy decorating the structure in and out. Kids, speaking in impeccable English, approach them asking where they come from.

Their smiles become wider when they realise the two gate-crashers are guests from the hotel. 

They point out people from the crowd who work there. Apparently about a third of the working adult population, are employed by that establishment as well as other hotels in the vicinity. She recognizes a waiter that served them breakfast in the morning and they exchange smiles.

When asked what are the festivities about, the kids inform her that it is in preparation for Dr. Ambedkars birthday and they are all going to go on a march as part of the celebrations. 

Suddenly the world seems different. She knows who Dr. Ambedkar is. The draughtsman of the Indian constitution and beloved leader of the Dalit communities of India, historically referred to, with prejudice, as untouchables, and now a vibrant, upwardly mobile part of Indian society, a society that may or may not have got over its hang ups about caste.

Her friend points out that he and Dr. Ambedkar went to the same universities abroad, London school of Economics and Columbia University. 

That night, from the vantage point of the settlement, the whole neighbourhood looks different. Her hotel looms on the horizon, a gigantic structure, looking like a castle atop a hill. She laughs on realizing that the strict but abstract security measures could not have been targeted at this settlement for sure. Since the two are clearly enmeshed with people coming in and out constantly.

Flickr Video
Dr. Ambedkar’s birthday celebration at Paspoli.

They respond to the invitation of a resident and come back the next day to the same place. After participating in the Ambedkar Birth anniversary march for sometime, they return to the neighbourhood to clearly see its physical and historical identity as a village that existed decades before the grand institutions surrounding it were even conceived. As if to make the point, some cattle wander around, herded by a young boy, coming from the lake nearby. The village is historically connected to a vast natural habitat, which has slowly been closed off to the public, though locals still find their way through.

Inside Paspoli village.

Farmhouse at the top of the village (Click to enlarge and see more photos).

An engineering college occupies another huge chunk of land at the back of the village. Its compounds are heavily gated and porous at the same time. They meet a man just outside the college wall in his small farmhouse. The house, complete with a cowshed on one side and a well on the other, is strikingly reminiscent of similar farms you see in villages of Uttar Pradesh. He points to a back door that leads into the engineering campus informing them that employees living in the village regularly use it. They enter the campus through this small side gate and are absorbed in another world altogether.

Lush greenery and monumental structures populated by self-important engineers and official looking academics with ballpoint pens tucked away in their shirt pockets. Before they can fully process what’s happening, security guards demand their identification and insist they must register at the main entrance. 

Feeling unwelcome they leave the campus and walk back to the hotel through the village.

Back onto the footbridge, that connects the village to the hotel, the two have the strange feeling of having walked through a secret passageway, of having broken through a firewall. One that exists between worlds that shares more than their inhabitants care to acknowledge. 

One wonders if that small bridge could not be turned into a honourable link between two quintessentially Mumbai urban forms: the globalized high-rise and the homegrown neighbourhood. Perhaps recognizing this co-dependency is also an important path to sustainable urbanism.

Bridge from Renaissance Hotel to Paspoli village.

Click here to see photo album of Paspoli village

Click here to see photo album of Dr. Ambedkar’s birthday celebration in Paspoli.

Laura Alonso, Bharat Gangurde, Shyam Kanle, Bo Tang, Geeta Mehta, Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava have contributed to this post.

Quite a few architects and urban designers have cracked their heads on the urban phenomenon that Mumbai represents. What kind of logic keeps this big, bad city running despite all odds? How exactly does its urban fabric reflect the extreme disparities that have become inexorably attached to the city’s image? What does the mutation of colonial Bombay into global Mumbai mean for architectural forms and public life?

Rahul Mehrotra’s static vs. kinetic city story is one of the most compelling attempts at providing a general understanding of the dynamics and tensions at work in the making and perpetuating of Mumbai’s urbanism. According to him, the static is the official city of built forms, framed by monumental structures, birthed and nourished by broadly premodernist and modernist impulses. Sharing space, often unacknowledged and even unseen, but nevertheless very much present and active is the kinetic city, energized by the impulse of everyday human presence and activity, spilling over streets and public spaces, composed of transactions and the bazaar ethos, especially by resource and capital deprived inhabitants.

He accurately points out that Mumbai’s history and future are unimaginable without the dense trading culture and human interactions that spill in and out of its bustling streets and worn out habitats. Likewise, his critique of rigid notions of architectural heritage and urban futures that defend built space over lived space, is spot on. Anybody who comes to Mumbai and connects with its incredible street life, wrapped around and between its mongrelized Gothic colonial or post-colonial structures can immediately connect to the ideal types of the static and the kinetic city.

Mehrotra goes on to elaborate why Mumbai is essentially a kinetic city which cannot be tamed or reigned in by the static city. He does not fully buy into the standard dichotomization of the city into formal and informal sectors, which can mistakenly be overlapped onto his static-kinetic concepts. Instead, his perspective transforms public architecture into a sophisticated set of practices that involve a layered understanding of architectural heritage. He attributes a more creative role to intangible moments of public life like festivals and street economies. The transformation of the Kala Ghoda art district in Mumbai is a successful tribute to his framework.  It is to his credit as an architect that he uses imagination and a sense of history to co-produce a public project of this nature without investing in another expensive monument to celebrate existing ones.

Sadly, the concept of the kinetic city is threatened by the malaise of over-interpretation. Sometimes instigated by Mehrotra’s own hurried words. For example, it is easy to misread his observations that all structures of the kinetic city are made of temporary and recycled materials or that their limited but productive lifespan is connected to makeshift building techniques. This encourages a tendency to misunderstand some neighbourhoods in Mumbai as being disposable because of a surface reading of their dynamics. They seem to resemble the structures that Mehrotra is describing. We think that it would probably be wise not to let Mehrotra’s slippery concept slide over the blurry boundaries of South Mumbai, to become a guiding principle to understand habitats such as Mumbai’s so-called slums.

Read the full text on airoots/eirut

This post is the first a of series of short essays written by participants of the Homegrown Neighbourhoods Workshop, which took place in January 2013 at the Institute of Urbanology.

The ongoing Istanbul Design Biennial (October 13th 2012 – December 12th 2012) builds on two complementary ideas – Imperfection and Adhocracy.

Adhocracy, a term coined by seventies sociological futurist Alvin Toffler, critiques the idea of Bureaucracy by posing as its counter-point. It becomes  a set of processes functioning without the mediation of heavy handed rules and regulations.

Curator Joseph Grima, who invited us to be part of his Adhocracy section of the exhibition, took over this concept.

‘If design is no longer the domain of a select few creating products of consumption for “the many”, according to the top-down model of bureaucratic industrialism, what is it? This exhibition argues that rather than the closed object, the maximum expression of design today is the process—the activation of open systems, tools that shape society by enabling self-organisation, platforms of collaboration independent of the capitalist model of competition, and empowering networks of production. Design is on the move: it is migrating from the rigid domain of bureaucracy towards the rhizomatic realm of adhocracy’.

As we used this concept to reflect on our work, drawing from a range of experiences based largely in Mumbai, Adhocracy became an increasingly useful concept.

For long we have questioned the idea of using euphemisms like ‘informal’ to understand so-called ’slum’ settlements in the city. Or to refer to its economy with the same label. Over the years we realised that bureaucratic and conceptual confusion was at the heart of the matter. In fact the overwhelming overlap of processes between the apparently formal and the supposedly informal became  something difficult to ignore.

When urban planning gets taken over by bureaucratic procedures they get expressed most strongly in zonal, spatial, temporal and structural regulations. Consequently, it is easy to label anything that slips in between them as ‘informal’.

Yet, unplanned urban regimes in cities such as Mumbai, remain functional, economically productive, domesticated or industrial and contribute substantially to the city. What makes them so? What are the adhocratic processes and structures that they rely on to exist and persist?

The tool-house for us represents one such process-structure.

It is a concrete manifestation of adhocracy in the realm of urban living. It combines working and living conditions, it plays around with time and space, is domestic and work-centered and in many homegrown neighbourhoods in Mumbai, is ubiquitous.  It also emerges from a history connected to artisanship. However, as part of contemporary urban life, it takes the idea of artisanship and craftsmanship into a realm that combines new technologies and economic needs, labour and energy systems to become a firm part of the future of uses, needs and objects.

It allows us to see through the exaggerated claims of capitalism in the world of production and its relations with technology and labour. It forces us instead to look more carefully at what constitutes these processes.  If for a moment, the tool-house is idealized, just so that we can get a glimpse of its possibilities in a world run by adhocratic principles, we step into another kind of a city.

Where regulations are not imposed through a bureaucracy but emerge through practice. And a practice that somehow addresses modern values more effectively rather than merely through rhetoric.

For one part of our installation at the Istanbul Design Biennial, we asked Mumbai’s wood carvers to make tool-houses in an idealized form. The suggestions to them were on purpose vague and unclear. This was done in order to find out a moment in their discourse, which would let them reflect on and play with their skills in a freer way. Their responses were a combination of enthusiasm and irony.

‘If only tool-houses existed like this – as dignified spaces’ was their wistful, common refrain.

Everyone knew that what was being produced was a fantasy. At the same time, in their conception of the object, there were traces of both memory and contemporary perception. One carpenter wanted us to film the process of making a model of the tool-house in two hours flat. This became part of the video that accompanies the installation.

The little wooden structures made by wood-carvers framed the larger story of the 5 narratives that make up our installation. The tool house is the context in which all the different stories of artisanship unfold and acts as a common element linking people to the urban form. The first 4 protagonists include a furniture maker, shrine maker, artificial jewellery maker and leather-product maker. The many layers of meaning that involve social history, caste, spatial politics and productivity have to be read and re-read in their simple narratives that encompass the movement of goods, specialization of skills, the presence of the tool-house and so many other factors that make up their lives.

Multiply these a hundred thousand times and you see Mumbai in a more accurate way. What struck us was that the process of designing itself was adhocratic – emerging through conversations, references, oral exchanges and gestures. This was a frequent observation we made when dealing with our fifth artisan in the installation – the ‘Contractor’ or the maker of tool-houses.

The contractor shapes neighbourhoods brick by brick quite literally. Each peculiar desire of a client gets a concrete form. The leather using artisan may want a slightly different kind of a workshop over his residence compared to a furniture maker.  The adhocratic processes that make up clusters of tool-houses in a Mumbai neighbourhood run on their own rules and regulations. Their design emerges in a similar way. A hurried sketch, an activation of common memory through a gesture and a word are some components of unmediated design.

When we find ourselves mediating between professional architects and contractors – during the course of our work in Mumbai, it is often about figuring out ways of incorporating such ‘unmediation’. We have to blend into a process where designs get projected into each others, where they are transformed with words and gestures, and are constantly improvised through the making of objects. The user, the client, the maker and the seller become part of a shared creative world that deals constantly with the materiality of the objects produced.

The installation on display involves a graphic representation of a tool-house cluster, focusing on the Waghmare family’s leather product making and living in unit. That spawns out into the stories of the  artisans and the objects they produce. Each object is part of a world wide web of operations through exchange of components and goods, which are mapped out. At the epicentre of each web is the artisans tool-house. Their idealized versions are displayed and a short six minute video explores the unmediated theme through conversations. Unmediated design became a spontaneous expression of adhocracy, the tool-house became the symbol of it and the stories of the artisans fleshed it out.

(This blog entry includes the graphics, designs and images made by Giacomo Ardesio and are  displayed in the ongoing exhibition. The text was written by him along with Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava who conceived the installation. Rahul and Matias will be attending the Biennial on Nov. 22nd to 25th).

Nestled on the hillocks in the eastern suburbs of Mumbai, Amrutnagar, Ghatkopar paints a figurative picture of the city; where affordable housing is scarce but people have tweaked the system and the land to achieve the best possible results in the given circumstances. The airborne traveler gasps at the sight welcoming the landing craft. The favelas of Rio come to mind, associated as they are with images of poverty and violence. They seem to say “welcome to Slumbai!”

The view from the plane doesn’t do justice to the pertinent housing typology devised by the locals. The housing in this hilly terrain embraces the topology. The rocks dug from the hill are used to build the foundation of the houses and the retaining wall that prevents landslides. The natural slope helps with drainage. Porches acting as public corridors are reminiscent of the quintessentially Bombay “chawl” typology. All houses are oriented in the east-west direction for maximum light and wind. Most of them are only ground floor structure, which allows everyone to enjoy one of the best views of the city. From the hilltop one can see planes landing into Mumbai airport. Catherine Boo may have reported what she saw “behind the beautiful forevers”. This is above.

The homes on the hill are said to be illegally constructed, yet occupancy rights in the city are often more a political question than a legal one. The area we visited was a relatively small 13.5 acres hill called Ramnagar, part of the larger settlement Amrutnagar. With a population of 12,000 locals, this Marathi speaking population is the vote bank of the rapidly rising political party ‘Maharastra Navnirman Sena’ (MNS) which promises to be the guardian angel of the Marathi Manoos. It was previously dominated by the Shiv Sena, the original sentinels of the Maharashtrian community. However, there are a good number of people from other communities as well and the residents are quick to point out that people of all denominations and ethnicity reside here. The locals who have no expectation from the governing bodies try their level best to be in the good books of the local political party workers, as they fear demolition on a daily basis. The cost of constructing a house is very high, due to the hilly terrain and residents usually spend their annual income on a basic house with four walls and a roof.

An estimated 4000 houses are built on and around this hillock and almost all of them are ‘pukka’ houses. 2000 are above the drainage line and the remaining 2000 below. Since the settlement emerged before 1995, it is liable for the SRA scheme and several redevelopment projects are an ongoing feature in the area. One graphical representation of the mandatory 269 sq feet redeveloped flat by the local builder shows a flat screen TV, contemporary furniture and modern art on the walls depicting a certain conception of what urban life should be about. The politician-builder nexus is well known. A SRA scheme can be force d upon anyone and residents are aware that the only way for them to get a legitimate house in the near future is their own hard work and destiny.

An interesting feature of this settlement is its road hierarchy. With no vehicles able to go up the steps of the hill, the only mode of transport is human and animal. The hilltop crest has several donkeys grazing, ready for whatever work may come up. Every house has a patio facing the city which acts as internal street whereas the steps winding down the hill act as the main road. Constructing a house uphill demands huge labour charges. A minimum 60 bags of cement, 30 bags of sand and 5000 bricks needs to be carried on foot. The labourer charges Rs 100-150 per bag as transport fee which doubles the cost, and a basic house costs around Rs 1.5 lacs. The cost of construction is higher because of use of relatively expensive materials and one extra floor as loft. The loft is usually rented to outsiders for Rs 2000/- a month. The cost of buying a 10 x15 sq ft house is around Rs 15-20 lacs. The local labourers called mistris who are experienced artisans in this field and usually inhabitants of the neighbourhood, are directly hired on daily wage basis for construction which usually last 15-20 days. The houses downhill are higher, have a larger footprint and are more ornate.

The settlement has several temples, public squares and courts, social mandals and groups on its way up and a bustling commercial street at the foothill. Commercial enterprises thrive mostly downhill, as goods transport is tedious and expensive uphill. However economic activities take place in homes as well. The dominant community which has largely migrated from the Malvan regions around Goa, work outside in the city. Most men do office jobs like data entry, peon, clerk or work in private security agencies. Women are mostly housewives and some of them work as part time maids in the neighbourhood buildings. They mostly wash utensils in various houses. A few homes do economic work like assembling parts for some manufacturing activity or the other or simply providing service at the village level. The average male income is Rs 7000-10000 whereas women earn Rs 2000 per month as maids. The area doesn’t function as intensively as the tool house clusters of some other settlements in Mumbai. They pay a monthly rental of Rs 170-220/- to an NGO for 25 minutes of daily water supply, spend around Rs 200/month on mobile phones, Rs 350/month on cable TV connection and some even spend Rs 200 on monthly internet services.

An interesting learning from Amrutnagar is the way people have organized themselves, developed construction technology and housing typologies without help from outside and how they go out on their own and innovate systems to make their life easier. There is a real sense of vernacular urbanism here. Construction techniques in Amrutnagar are unlike any parts of the city that we have visited. They are suited to meet local needs and means. Even without security of tenure and with very limited servicing by civic authorities, citizens have managed to look after themselves and their sheltering needs fairly well.

Sketches by Shardul Patil @urbz

As we climbed to the summit of the hillock, beyond the settlement, we found the landscape and atmosphere becoming gradually more relaxing. People sitting outside their homes, enjoying the view and the breeze, firmly committed to the quality of life they were living. They claimed there were no mosquitoes, since water slides away leaving no stagnant pools around. They would not want to go anywhere else.

A temple built in 1957 dedicated to Khandoba looms over the hill. The sleepy priest-guru-founder lounges around a charpai. He used to be a mechanical superintendent at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, turned to spirituality at a young age and built the temple with his hands. A labyrinthine structure with a maze leading to smaller shrines, leads you to the other end of the complex and into a landscape that is anachronistic to everything else we had seen. Lush green grass, pigs and donkeys loitering around. A pathway that seemed to lead to dense foliage, with the promise of a forest adventure.

We land up at the other end, past a hidden cricket field known only to the local kids, the view of a shooting range and a stone quarry, walk through the foliage politely turning away from stray people going to the open-air toilet (no smell – thanks to the pigs) and come to a tarred road and a helipad! Beyond the trees lies a gate and behind that the ‘illegal’ neighbourhood of Hirandanai Gardens can be seen. A city built on subsidized land meant for the poor, with no threat of any demolishing of any kind facing its destiny.

From the point of view of Dinesh, the boy taking a stroll with us, the view from the hill helps him gain perspective on life. Somehow the view, the peace, the trees remind him that a city can potentially provide you with all kinds of habitats. He knows it is a luxury to be able to walk up to a place like this. Right now it instigates him to return to his native village in Benares, so reminiscent is it of a memory he has from there. In minutes though, as he trundles down, he is absorbed into the bustle of the neighbourhood. He points to his father’s tailoring shop and the direction of his college. Back in another world. He is living in a transit camp now. An SRA tower is coming up to relocate his family. Will he stay on? Will he go back? As long as choices remain, all possibilities exist. Somehow one gets the feeling, as the neighbourhood transforms into tall vertical buildings, that the choices which enrich his simple life are diminishing, and diminishing too fast.

Dinesh

More photos and sketches here.

This article was written by Megha Gupta with contributions by Shardul Patil, Rahul Srivastava and Matias Echanove