Here was a wonderful man who would come each year and talk to the participants of the Punjab Summer Studies Program. Prakash would lecture on his life in Chandigarh, how he had worked with Le Corbusier in the design of the city, and his active life in architecture, theatre, and art.
I first met him in 2004. After he talked, Prakash gifted many members of the group with two of his books, complete with his drawings. I present these artistic renditions here.
Hearing him speak again this summer, I was taken aback, as if for the first time, about his candor and admiration for the architecture of Chandigarh. I have always been troubled seeing Chandigarh as the City Beautiful. It is a city on a grid, of unfinished facades, a metropolis of socio-economic disparities. This is a consumer city, a little slice of the West on a plate of daal (lentil dish) and roti (unleavened bread).
As Prakash spoke of the city, of its successes and general problems, I began to see the dream La Corbusier had intended and I ceased to see Chandigarh as a city but rather as a number of communities existing and interacting on a social grid. The City Beautiful was intended to be India’s first modern city. Its sectors were designed to function as self-contained units. Each sector, with some exceptions, includes its own shopping and residential zones, health care and education facilities, and roads designed for specific types of vehicles. Other sectors were devoted entirely to higher education or to functioning as the city’s center – Sector-17. Although intended to be a pedestrian’s paradise, this dream has been lost to increasing traffic. Indeed, like all modern cities, Chandigarh is faced with problems but it continues to function as intended.
I may never see Chandigarh the way its architects imagined, but I must thank Aditya Prakash for opening my eyes and showing me another way to see the City Beautiful.
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