Speaking about the challenging task, firefighter Priyadarshini B emphasised that while the field has always been male-dominated, the training provided to them was on equal grounds.
Bengaluru :
With International Women’s Day around the corner, Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) – operator of Kempegowda International Airport – marked the occasion by celebrating its women firefighters. On Tuesday, the 14-member women firefighting team who underwent certified training at the Airports Authority of India Fire Service Training in Kolkata, demonstrated their learnings and emergency response skills in a mock fire drill held in the premises of the airport. The 14 women, who are a larger part of the Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting (ARFF) unit, were recruited from across Karnataka, showcased their strength and resilience while performing their duties while operating the Austrian-made Rosenbauer Panther 6×6, a rescue vehicle exclusively designed for airport emergency operations.
Speaking about the challenging task, firefighter Priyadarshini B emphasised that while the field has always been male-dominated, the training provided to them was on equal grounds. “Everyone says women are not the right fit for this job but we took it as a challenge and aimed to achieve success instead. My family was convinced that it is a field role, which is quite unique and motivated me to achieve my goal. While the first month of our training was hectic, gradually the team pushed themselves, including helping each other in their highs and lows,” said Priyadarshini, adding that going forward she would like to see more women joining the field of firefighting.
Another firefighter Lakshmi P V emphasised that the four-month training in Kolkata was followed by a two-month training in Bengaluru and additional on-the-job training which she claims as rigorous but fruitful. She added, “We are proud to be the first batch of all-women firefighter group in Asia and we have been entrusted with saving lives during emergencies. It’s a known fact that the fire department, including civil and aviation, was male-dominated but that has now changed with the training on equal grounds. This maintains the gender neutrality in the field.”
While BIAL works towards increasing the ratio of women in the organisation, which currently stands at 15 per cent, Thomas Hoff Anderson, Chief Operating Officer, BIAL, said they have set an example by creating a path for women to break into what has been a male-dominated bastion. “Training and practising is a part of everyday life for a firefighter especially at an airport and we do various drills to be prepared for emergencies. What we have seen from the women’s team ascertains that there is nothing a male can do that a female cannot do, that is an important statement.”
Rosenbauer Panther 6×6
120 KMPHTop Speed
12,500 Litres Water Tank 9000 LMP
Pump Output 1,500 Litres
Foam
Tank 70 metres Throw
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bengaluru / by Express News Service / March 04th, 2020
Students of Kendriya Vidyalaya in Chikkodi in Belagavi district have won an award instituted by the Union government for their electronics project.
Students Shreeraksha, Md. Owais and Lakshmi have designed a home security system, home appliance control and mobile phone detector project. They demonstrated this working model at the District Institute of Education and Training and won the Inspire-MANAK Award that carries a prize of ₹ 10,000.
Kendriya Vidyalaya principal Sudhir Sharma has congratulated the work experience teacher Ravi Singh who worked with the students in the project.
Kendriya Vidyalaya Chikkodi students have won the first, second and third places at the district level in India’s online science competition, Vidyarthi Vigyan Manthan.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Karnataka / by Special Correspondent / Belagavi – February 28th, 2020
An unchanging edifice of Mangaluru’s tiffin scene, Indra Bhavan continues to keep the classic food culture alive with its delights
It’s 9 in the morning and a steady stream of people walks into Indra Bhavan in Balmatta. Seeing owner Prakash Udupa speaking to me, 61-year-old Godrick Lobo, who has been eating almost every day at the hotel since he was 15, rushes in to volunteer information. “I have my breakfast here. When I went to Dubai with my wife to be with our son, I missed the food every single day,” he laughs, holding a parcel of the hotel’s famous uppittu-avalakki (a combo of semolina upma and spiced beaten rice).
Lobo is among the many patrons the eatery has been welcoming since the late Attur Raghurama Udupa took over the three-year-old restaurant from Babu Shetty in 1952. Seventy-two-year-old orthopaedist PS Kambli, says that barring the time he left for England, he has been a regular here. “I first visited the joint when I was not even 10; my father brought me from Perinje village near Moodbidri. I’m a huge fan of the masala dosa, rava dosa, coffee and ambode (dal vada) sambar,” says Dr Kambli. He’s such a fan that food from the hotel even reached his hospital bed when he took ill recently.
Raghurama’s son Prakash, an engineer, has been managing the eatery since 1996, and his son Vishnu Prasad helps him now. The senior Udupa opened the eatery after working as a server at Dasaprakash in Madras, and as manager in Vishwa Bhavana, Mangalore. Ironically, soon after Indra Bhavan, he took over the running of Vishwa Bhavana too, following a request from its owners. The 1,200 sq ft restaurant that can seat 50 has vintage written all over it. The hotel shifted to its present location in May 2016, and Prakash added a tiled roof, and the furniture — marble-topped tables and the cashier’s wooden-and-brass desk polished with age — was carried forward.
Timeless tastes
The menu has seen little variation over time. The stars are Mangaluru buns, made using maida and Mysore banana, vada, masala dosa, moode (idli batter steamed in a cup made of oli leaves), and the savoury of the day. On a Tuesday, cook Seetharam makes batches of crisp sev. On Friday and Saturday, it’s time for salted raw banana chips and thukkadi, a diamond-shaped savoury made of maida.
Every morning, by 4.30, the team running the kitchen is in work mode. Dal is boiled, coconuts scraped, vegetables cleaned and spice powders ground to feed the 700-odd people who will drop in — ingredients have been sourced from the same suppliers since 1952. By 6.30, when the doors open, the display shelf is heavy with platter after platter of idlis, avalakki, buns, sheera and vada, and containers below hold the uppittu, chutney and sambar. The dosa counter opens at 7 and shavige and moode from 8.30 am.
In the kitchen below, accessed through a steep ladder, Seetharam lords over a vat of sizzling oil, ready to fry puris and sev. To his left are aluminium containers with mustard, cumin and chillies. And, to his right is a batch of idli, fresh off the steamer.
A consistent platter
Back in the hotel, place an order, and friendly Ramachandra Rao walks up with a list of what’s on offer. The 54-year-old has been working here since 1987. Another veteran in the ranks is the quiet, effective supplier Srinivasa Rao. PG Balakrishnan, 72, who is the cashier, has been working with the hotel since he was 16. After six months of supplying food, he was asked to handle the till. He’s been counting cash since the time a vadai cost 25 paise. While the brass coin containers in the till have been mostly replaced with steel ones, one thing that has not changed is the passion that he brings to work every morning. In the evenings, Prakash often sees doctors, a regular clientèle, rush in by 6.30, before the platters go dry.
The hotel serves only tiffin (6.30 am to 1 pm, 3.15 pm to 7.15 pm) and prices start at ₹11 for uppittu and go up to ₹32 for masala dosa. Over the years, while Prakash has contemplated expanding, he has stuck to what his father started. Someday in the future, he imagines a fine dining eatery to showcase the inherent beauty of Shivalli Brahmin cuisine, where jaggery is a must, but so are uppu, huli and kaara (salt, sour and spice). “Familiarity is our biggest strength. I know all the staff, they know all the customers… it’s a small world of its own.”
You’d tend to agree. In the nearly 90 minutes there, at least 30 people walk up to say hello, people who ate here as children, and who bring back consecutive generations to introduce them to a way of life that has managed to survive even as the world around hurtled towards the future.
It is this desire to hold on to nostalgia that brings back former Mangaluru residents too.
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Special dishes
Masala Dosa
Uppittu-Avalakki
Mangaluru Buns
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Anant Agarwal, CEO of online learning destination edX and Padma Shri awardee, still makes it a point to undertake “a pilgrimage to Indra Bhavan” on his annual trip home. Because, while he might have travelled the globe, “the goli bajjes here are the best in the world!”
This weekly column takes a peek at the histories of some of the most iconic restaurants
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Life & Style> Food – Iconic Food / by Subha J Rao / February 22nd, 2018
Entrepreneur Bela Patel speaks to CE about the art of making chandeliers and her crystal clear love for it.
Bengaluru :
Entrepreneur Bela Patel, who has been handling her mother’s business of making chandeliers since 1995, tells us that the family got into this business quite by chance. Her father Jagadish Patel had come down from London to Hyderabad to get into grape cultivation. However, when the business didn’t take off as planned, he decided on helping his wife, Kundan Patel, with her venture, The Crystal Town.
The company that lights up homes with their designer chandeliers has a wide range of clientele, including the Rashrapati Bhavan, Bangalore Club, Windsor Manor, The Crystal room In Taj Mahal Palace and Hotel Oberoi in Mumbai. And very recently, they were handed charge of restoration at the Laxmi Vilas Palace in Vadodara.
Walking through the workshop in the backyard of her British-styled bungalow in Richmond Town, you come across unfinished work, each of which has a story of its own. The most fascinating story, however, is the conviction and struggles she faced when she decided to bring Crystal Town to Bengaluru in 1995. “I used to handle the Bengaluru business and got into it to help my mother. It was difficult for me to handle both home and the business, so one of my friends, Sneha Naidu, helped me in starting the business here in the city. In 1994, she suggested we organise a small exhibition at Safina Plaza,” says Patel.
That was the turning point in Patel’s life. With the exhibition hitting the sensibilities of Bengalureans, she was able to set up shop here. Her first big project was with The Bangalore Club, after which she was approached by ITC Windsor. For the last three years, she and her team have been re-doing the chandeliers, which they had originally made with glass in 1982 during the hotel’s inauguration, with new Swarovski spectra crystals. A small chandelier of around 2 -2.5 feet high start from `20,000
The initial challenge for Patel when she took over from her mother was to live up to her legacy. “When I started off, I used to take advice from my husband or anybody I trusted, especially when it came to the centre piece of the chandelier. Because that is the one would take the weight of the whole chandelier,” says Patel, adding that many dealers who worked with her mother often supplied her with defective parts initially.
Patel has a rather unconventional method of estimating the size of a chandelier. She does not look for blueprints of the building; rather she does a rough sketch of the chandelier on the floor of the building to conceive the design concept. “It’s easier to keep a track that way,” says Patel, who had seen her mother doing the same.
As time has passed, taste also has, but the 60-year-old entrepreneur says it has not dampened her business, since they keep track of the changing needs of the market.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bengaluru / by Monika Monalisa / Express News Service / December 14th, 2019
Two vials showing stem cell modified Retinal Pigment Epithelium cells (which appear brown/black). The quantity of each vial is enough for five patients. PIC Courtesy: Dr Jogin Desai
A city-based medical science startup is gearing up to halt the progress of degenerative eye disease in Indians after trials in blind rats showed the creatures regaining their sight in a few months.
Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is a form of blindness that affects a segment of the adult population after they reach the age of 50. It accounts for 8.7% of all blindness worldwide. Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), meanwhile, is a rare genetic disorder, which affects one child in 4,000.
Dr Jogin Desai
There is no known cure for the diseases. However, Dr Jogin Desai, whose startup, Eyestem, which has been under incubation by the government’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-Camp) for the past three years, believes its work can halt the progression of the diseases by using genetically modified stem cells to restore the pigment epithelium in the cornea.
The pigment epithelium, which is only 1.5 mm thick, performs critical functions that support photoreceptor health and integrity. It was likened to the ‘foundation’ of a building. The therapy will also seek to restore the photoreceptor cells in the retina, which were likened to ‘buildings’. Phase 1 human clinical trials are set to start in 12 to 15 months.
Existing research postulates that using biodegradable ‘scaffolding’ upon which modified cells are stacked can help rebuild the pigment epithelium. However, Dr Desai said that current work delivering modified Eycyte-RPE (or Retinal Pigment Epithelium) cells, which are suspended in the liquid, is even more effective.
“We have found that cells delivered in this way automatically seek out their ‘body niche’ and assimilate into the system,” he said, adding that trials in blind lab rats had showed the animals regaining their vision over a two-month period.
‘Most discoveries fail’
Desai, however, cautioned that no amount of promise can legitimise an idea if its time has not yet come. “In fact, just one of 1,600 scientific discoveries made in research labs makes it into a fully fledged development where it can impact people’s lives,” he explained.
Most scientific discoveries are weeded out in exacting, three-phased clinical trials, based on the criteria of safety, scalability and effectiveness.
source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> City> Life in Bengaluru / by Akhil Kadidal / DHNS, Bengaluru / December 09th, 2019
The idea came to fruition when Dr Omkar interacted with farmers and was told about the difficulty in identifying crop disease.
A farmer works in his sugarcane field (File | Reuters)
Bengaluru :
With just a click, sugarcane growers will be able to identify as many as five diseases in their crop using the app ‘Safal Fasal’.
The app is being developed by Dr SN Omkar, chief research scientist, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, who has finished programming the algorithm that identifies diseases. A database of remedial measures is also being put in place, in case a disease is detected.
The idea came to fruition when Dr Omkar interacted with farmers and was told about the difficulty in identifying crop disease.
While many farmers would be adept at assessing the health of their crops, newcomers in the sector would benefit the most from this app.
“There are young agriculturalists, who may not be acquainted with crops and diseases. This will help them immensely. Also, since a few farmers whose crops have been affected by diseases, could visually inspect their crops because of experience, there are many farmers who would benefit immensely by the democratisation of this information. This can even prevent the large scale loss of crops due to disease,” Omkar told The New Indian Express.
Experts, including those from the biotechnology sector, have helped pick five popular diseases prevalent in the region and ways to identify them with certain characteristics. This has helped in programming the apps’ algorithm that analyses pictures through image processing in the cloud. With just five pictures of the yield, one can know the state of the sugarcane. The app will provide health reports as well.
At present, the team is working on increasing the precision of identifying diseases through pictures. “We are trying to get a larger database of pictures of more healthy and unhealthy crops. Currently, the precision of the app is at 86%,” said Dr Omkar.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Good News / by Pearl Maria D’Souza / Express News Service / December 10th, 2019
Building can be erected using light steel and assembled on-site
The buildings, assembled with light steel, can withstand the vagaries of weather and natural disasters | Express
Bengaluru :
Imagine having your house constructed in just three days! Too cool to be true? Well, the National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO) has launched a new housing technology wherein a building can be erected using light steel and assembled on-site and readied within 72 hours flat.
The building can withstand vagaries of weather as well as natural disasters, besides the shrunk time to build it ground up.
The recent floods which affected North Karnataka have left several stranded. In such circumstances, finding an alternative home can be a tedious affair both mentally and physically. Keeping that in mind, NAREDCO decided to bring a quick and qualitative approach to the rehabilitation of victims.“Right now, people are being placed in nearby schools which are the most accessible, but how long can they stay there?” says M Sathish Kumar, president of NAREDCO (Karnataka chapter).
“Here, the material used is light steel, drywalls and only 20 per cent of cement as compared to conventional homes. The material is readily available and the shape and size can be altered using advanced light steel technology.”NAREDCO is now looking at looping various government departments for mass housing in different parts of the state. “We have just launched it and are yet to take orders. But we had a similar project of 70 hospitals in 60 days in North Karnataka in 2017-18.
The life expectancy of these homes is expected to go up to 100 years as opposed to 50 years for conventional homes,” Kumar explained during a demo conducted at the Society for Development of Composites Technology Park, Kengeri.“The builders for conventional homes also struggle with resources and their alternatives due to National Green Tribunal (NGT) bans. It is difficult to get resources during a natural calamity and hence our building standards are pressured. We need to think out of the box,” said Dr Sujit Kumar, Secretary, NAREDCO.
Interestingly, the cost is the same as conventional homes, but it is to be eco-friendly with no burnt bricks, M-sand or river sand. However, thermocol and plywood are used as a replacement.The Council also claims that the technology can build 20,500 sqft houses within a week’s time during emergency situations. The weight of this type of house is also 1/10th the conventional houses.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Good News / by Preeja Prasad / Express News Service / November 30th, 2019
Rajendran aka A Raja of Chamundeswari Watch Works | Photo Credit: K Murali Kumar
In an age where replacing is considered more convenient than repairing, mechanics of timepieces are slowly becoming irrelevant
It is tempting to say that Kamaraj Road is untouched by time. For you find here: little stores with hand-painted signboards, over half-a-century-old houses with wooden doors opening out to the streets, stray cattle and street dogs lazily perambulating in its narrow arterial lanes, petty shops selling obscure sweetmeats in plastic and glass jars among other things. But these are mere remnants of the past. Like a fading, half-torn poster of Kamal Haasan from the 1980s on a concrete wall on the road, these too shall, one day, cease to exist.
If you wander through the road, you will find some places housing fascinating objects of history hidden in plain sight — it is necessary to do this by foot as it is near-impossible in this congested, one-way to stop your vehicle and search for these spots. A wooden reclining chair outside Sakthi Antique Clocks & Furniture catches the eye. The shop’s cramped interior has four chairs, a table and about 30 wooden timepieces, predominantly pendulum and cuckoo clocks, occupying the walls. The proprietor, Mahesh and the repairer, Ilyaz Ahmed, occupy two of the four chairs. Like a scientist probing a specimen through his microscope, Ilyaz, at his table, inspects a wristwatch with his loupe. This is his third year at Sakthi and his fifth workplace in 55 years as a timepiece technician.
“This is all I know,” says Ilyaz. At 13, he joined Aero Watch Company in 1964. He was not a watch-repairing prodigy. “In my next job at Everjoy, there was this man called Sampangi, whom I consider my teacher. He would rap my knuckles with forceps if I made a mistake.” Those raps, he says, made him responsible. “I was not educated. So, if not for him, I would have been a rogue.”
Aero Watch Company, Everjoy and Sampangi do not exist today. Analogue clocks are not any more a necessity. It is an age where replacing is considered more convenient than repairing.
When asked if he likes his job, Ilyaz responds, “Yes, there is 100% satisfaction.”
Pieces of novelty
Akshay Pillai, 38, has a fascination for old things. Paintings, cricket memorabilia, fashion designs, typewriters… He collects them all and considers them a novelty because they would be unfamiliar to an observer belonging to this generation.
Akshay’s most cherished collection are the clocks. When he was 19, he had stepped into Chamundeswari Watch Works, a repair-cum-sales shop in Sivan Chetty Garden Street, on Kamaraj Road. Intrigued by its display of clocks — in various sizes and shapes — it was his gateway into the world of antiques. Its owner A Rajendran, known as Raja, showed the curious teenager one clock after another, some of them dating back to the 18th Century. He told him collecting antique clocks is not just for millionaires; he could, too, if he wished. So, Akshay studied antique clocks, catalogued them for auction houses, and, eventually, started collecting them.
Made in France in 1920, the skeleton clock has its workings laid bare | Photo Credit: K Murali Kumar
“Before industrialisation, there were only handmade clocks. A clockmaker took care of the mechanism. Then, it would go to the casemaker. If you wanted some metal engravings, it went to a blacksmith. So, it involved at least a couple of people’s work to produce a clock.”
Clocks were rare. Sometimes restricted to royalty. “In India, it was a status symbol. The maharajas of Jodhpur had them.” If you owned them towards the end of the 18th Century in Great Britain, you had to pay taxes.
Clocks were mass-produced following industrialisation. The invention of the battery-powered, auto-oscillating quartz clocks in the 1920s spawned millions of them after a few decades. Until then, clocks needed to be wound, adjusted during warm and cold weather and serviced occasionally. They needed a repairer.
Still winding
Chamundeswari Watch Works (CWW), consisting of centuries-old clocks, appears unassuming from the outside. Its flex name banner has a typo. Chamudeshwari, it reads. An eatery next to it, Sri Krishna Fast Food, sells veg fried rice for ₹40. Despite the bustle outside, Raja, CWW’s proprietor and repairer, works on a watch, listening to ‘Naanamo’ from Aayirathil Oruvan, a 1960s MGR film.
Like many residents of Kamaraj Road, Raja is of Tamil descent. Before the road was renamed in the 1970s to commemorate K Kamaraj, the former Tamil Nadu chief minister, it was known as Cavalry Road. British soldiers from the Cavalry regiment stayed there. Later it became a hub of moneylenders and traders from Tamil Nadu. Raja’s father Anandan worked for the Indian Telephone Industries while moonlighting as a wrist watch repairer. When Anandan started a shop in 1967, Raja would watch his father with fascination as he opened the case of a watch and worked on its tiny spiky wheels and springs.
Raja took over from his father and expanded CWW from a modest wrist watch repair centre to a reasonably big shop that sold and repaired antique timepieces. It has clocks of many sizes and types, spanning centuries, from different parts of the world. The fine creations of pre-industrial clock-makers from all over Europe continue to tick in a narrow lane in Bengaluru.
The shop’s history is rich. But Raja isn’t. His father left him a house and a shop. With these, has managed to make ends meet. But clock repairing is not a lucrative occupation. His wife says he hardly gets customers. “Today we had no one… but he continues to do it because he likes it,” she smiles.
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As a collector, it is scary to see these repairers fading away
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Quartz has simplified and depreciated timepieces. “In Quartz watches, you just need to replace the machinery or the battery. It is a five-minute job,” Raja says. This work fetches him ₹50 to ₹100. Whereas, he would earn about ₹500, servicing a mechanical watch. “Mechanical watches are complex. They have an elaborate machinery and need to be serviced regularly. But they stay for a long time.”
“The reason why clocks from the UK and other places abroad come to Raja is because it is very expensive to repair them in the UK,” says Akshay. According to recruiter.com, a watch repairer in the United States usually gets an average wage of between $24000 (about 17 lakh) and $36000 (about 25 lakh). That is perhaps more than Raja’s lifetime earnings from repairing clocks.
“There are only a handful of repairers of antique clocks left in Bengaluru,” says Akshay. Raj Kumar Chandrashekar Chettiar, 58, a fourth generation clock repairer from Hubli and Mohan Kumar, who runs Praveen Watch Company, are other names that Mahesh of Sakthi Antique Clocks & Furniture mentions. “As a collector, it is scary to see these repairers fading away.” Ilyaz, however, is optimistic. “There was Dilip Kumar in the beginning. Then came Amitabh Bachchan and now Shah Rukh… God will send someone.”
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> MetroPlus> Society / by Praveen Sudevan / October 28th, 2019
While she’s often asked about work-life balance, the mother of two – who relocated to Bengaluru after spending 18 years in Germany – feels that it is “so last century.
Sindhu Gangadharan
Bengaluru :
When Sindhu Gangadharan walks into a meeting room, she is used to the audience anticipating the entry of a man. “There’s initial apprehension conveyed through their body language, but they soon realise she knows what she’s saying,” says Gangadharan, managing director of SAP Labs India, the first woman at the top of the German tech giant, leading an 8,000-plus team.
Despite that distinction, Gangadharan, who took charge in September, feels it’s what you bring to the table, articulating what you know, and bringing your best self to work that takes you to the top, gender not being a consideration. While there have been times she has been overlooked, she chooses to move on without dwelling upon it. “People in Germany used to ask if it was any different for me, growing up in India, and I always said it wasn’t. Growing up in Bengaluru, my mother had the same expectations from me that she had of my two brothers. Women are evolving away from compartmentalisation. Our focus is on achieving a flow between all aspects of our lives,” says Gangadharan, who studied in Bangalore University and started her career with SAP Labs India in 1999 when it was located in ITPL.
While she’s often asked about work-life balance, the mother of two – who relocated to Bengaluru after spending 18 years in Germany – feels that it is “so last century.” For her, it’s about enjoying every part of the journey and learning from it. “These were often discussions on this in Germany, and I always felt there’s nothing like work-life balance. Work is also a significant part of one’s life,” says Gangadharan, adding that as a young girl on the debating team in school, she learned skills that she uses every day in her current product management role, making innovations easily understandable for people.
A lesson she learnt early on in her career is something she holds close. In 2001, when she moved to Germany, she would always enter discussions with a clear idea that everyone would speak English. “When I was on my maternity break, I came across many who would make an effort to speak in English. At that point I realised that when others were making an effort to make me feel comfortable, I should also be doing the same.
When I made that mental switch, it was like embracing the culture,” she says. She soon realised how it could break barriers and create a sense of inclusion. “It’s about overcoming inhibitions within yourself,” says Gangadharan, whose focus is on collaboration with a customer-centric approach, thought leadership and building a culture of inclusion.
Gangadharan is often spotted with a diary in hand, capturing her thoughts. With work keeping her busy, she admits that she doesn’t get as much time as she would like to for writing, which she eventually hopes to pursue soon.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Good News / by Vidya Iyengar / Express News Service / October 31st, 2019
Balkrishna Doshi speaks exclusively to Metrolife about why great Indian architecture hasn’t percolated down to our dwellings, and how technology is robbing us of our intuition.
Doshi has set up a foundation to promote affordable housing in India.
The Indian Institute of Management in Bengaluru celebrated its 46th Foundation on Monday, and unveiled a plaque in honour of its architect Dr Balkrishna Doshi. The legendary Doshi has worked closely with master architects such as Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. His iconic design for the IIM-B campus is hailed across the world.
During his visit to Bengaluru, Doshi, 92, delivered a lecture titled ‘Between Encounters and Dreams’ at IIM-B.
The Padma Shri awardee and Pritzker Laureate has been instrumental in establishing the Vastu Shilpa Foundation for research in environmental design. The foundation has done pioneering work in low-cost housing and city planning. Metrolife caught up with him for a chat just before the celebrations.
Why do you think Bengaluru has not been able to retain its architectural charm?
Very simply, we are charmed by other cultures and technology and pursue personal interests. We don’t want to bother about environment or society. It is not just in Bengaluru but all over. When you use technology and tools, the personal rapport is reducing. When everybody is busy in their own world, then naturally the real world is not there. How many hours of the day we are using mobile phones and other technology… we really have no time to chat. We don’t talk casually. A few years ago, we would meet friends and talk about things we felt were important to us and then you carried the conversation home. But today, that world doesn’t exist. We have now found alternatives which may be technology and not human and that has become an essential part of our lives. The human values and concerns, ecological concerns, where are they? All the time we are busy.
What are your suggestions to make Bengaluru a better place in an architectural sense?
Why just architecturally, I think it should overall be a better place! How do we improve ourselves if we cut the trees, if we take the foliage, if we don’t go to the gardens and if we don’t have the time to reflect on our natural wealth but widen the roads and move around in cars? In fact, we have never taught people from childhood the real meaning of virtues like togetherness, or ponder over something that is nourishing. Why do people still go to temples? Because it is where they think there is some connection. Now we go to the temple, but our mind is not there. The trees are cut, roads are widened and landscapes are changed; are we gaining anything or losing?
Karnataka has a record of great architecture, right from Badami to Belur – with temples that are beautifully structured. Why didn’t this sense of architecture come down to ordinary folks? Why do you think our cities and homes are so miserably designed ?
When we look at a temple, it is the intangible, an inner calling that we look at. One tries to connect from the inside. Now there is a disconnect. Today, we have become materialistic and technologically oriented. Technology has taken over our spiritual content – the intangible one – where there was reverence, inquiry and an attitude to do things. What is our focus today, what are we searching for and what would it be that would make us the happiest? These are things we don’t want to ask now. We want to do greater and faster production but what about our villages and towns that are gradually shrinking? Ecologically, the natural resources also have depleted, where is the place to remain ourselves? We think it is progress but we are forgetting that progress is connected to something higher and not just restricted to material progress. This is a major problem in planning and architecture.
Which city do you think is architecturally the most pleasing?
Well, the cities in the south are better. Of course, Varanasi is there, but that’s also dying. I did a project there, so I visited it often. Suddenly, there is a wedding procession and the public is still; then after some time, in some other place, the procession of a dead body is making its way and people stop and give way. I have always wondered how Varanasi never had a problem. That city has an underlying meaning to it.
His design vision for IIM-B
‘One of the things that I tried to do at IIM-B was to reverse the order. The IIM campus talks about nature, leisure, casual walks and one’s relationship with nature and the cosmos all the time.’
Quick takes
On what cities are losing:
One of the essentials we had was the gift of intuition, thinking about reverence, togetherness, humility and concern for others… I don’t think they are there anymore.
On being celebrated in films like ‘Ok Kanmani’:
That was by chance (laughs). It was Mani Ratnam who did this and it had nothing to do with me. The more time passes the more reflective you become, so I wonder.
But what I try to do is to find a way to look at time as one of the major elements and energy as another. So, if I can find a way to fuse time and energy and look at production as a meaningful thing, then those projects become important. So, everywhere, I would like to save, recycle, readjust.
source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> MetroLife / by Surupasree Sarmmah / DH News Service / Bengaluru – October 29th, 2019
