Agra : Evolution of the City

"Agra: Past and Present" is a presentation made  by Rohan Patankar, Varun Bajaj and Virkein Dhar of B.Arch IIIrd year, Section A, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi.

Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BxvEmaAOdTfqMWYxODBjYjAtMTk4MC00MmRkLWJhMmYtZjQyODlmZWMzNGFm&hl=en

Bibliography:

1. Thesis in Architectural Conservation by Bhatnagar, SPA, 1993
2. Thesis in Urban Design by Shaheena Khan, 2005
3. City Development Plan, Agra, August 2006
4. Photographs: Sourced from the Authors 

Book Review : Invisible Cities

Book : Invisible Cities
Author : Italo Calvino
First Published in 1972
Translated from the Italian by William Weaver


A strange, fantastic book, Invisible Cities describes dialogues between Marco Polo, the traveler, and Kublai Khan, the emperor. It has no plot as such -- no beginning, no development of characters , no characters, for that matter, except for the two mentioned above) -- but it does have a sad, bittersweet ending.
Polo describes each city by focusing on some dominant characteristic of its geographical situation, its building arrangements, its social practices, or much more subtle matters, occasionally explicitly indicating the major consequence of that dominant trait.


One clue to what Calvino wants to tell us about cities lies in the subdivisions of the book. The
fifty-five descriptions consist of eleven sets of five cities each, under a variety of headings: Cities and memory, Cities and desire, Cities and signs, Thin cities, Trading cities, Cities and eyes, Cities and names, Cities and the dead, Cities and the sky, Continuous cities, Hidden cities. These are interleaved in a complicated numerical order whose meaning is not apparent.
Under each heading, things can be said about cities and surprising features called to our attention. Some features are mundane physical facts, some point to aspects of how people respond to cities, some are fanciful "what ifs" which challenge our belief in some ordinarily unquestioned feature of what we believe as normal life.


For the most part, at least until toward the end of the book, he describes not real cities, in many cases not cities which could exist at all, not if we take the descriptions literally, though perhaps if they are seen as metaphors. But even so some descriptions do seem to talk about recognizable cities. Esmeralda made up of both streets and canals, is easily taken as a semi-realistic version of Venice, though the observations he makes about it are perhaps not what we would expect. As you read along these short descriptions, real cities of the past and present seem to appear in the conversations of the two men, and even imaginary cities of literature and myth.


Calvino means us to think that these cities transcend time. This idea appears explicitly from time to time in the conversations of Khan and Polo. For all the specific detail of Polo's descriptions, they do not exemplify to a specific historical period or real place but rather describe features of urban life and organization that, though they take different forms in different places, are nevertheless universal.
The short descriptions of cities contain ideas Calvino means us to apply beyond the particular imaginary city Polo is talking about. We learn, for instance, that Eutropia (a "trading city") is made up of many cities, all but one of them empty, and that its inhabitants periodically tire of their lives, their spouses, their work, and then move en masse to the next city, where they will have new mates, new houses, new jobs, new views from their windows, new friends, pastimes, and subjects of gossip. We learn further that, in spite of all this moving, nothing changes. Since, although different people are doing them, the same jobs are being done and, though new people are talking, the same things are being gossiped about. This suggests a sociological generalization: in every city there is a body of social practices--forms of marriage, or work, or habitation-- which don't change much, even though the people who perform them are continually replaced through the ordinary demographic processes of birth, death, immigration, and emigration.


The ultimate city in the book, Berenice expands more explicitly upon the interplay of the just and unjust. Berenice, like an onion, contains layers within layers of alternating micro-cities, oscillating between the just and unjust. Calvino’s message is optimistic here: even in a world of evil there is the origin of a better society that can be nurtured and grown from within.
While the entire book, up until the final pages avoids preachy judgments and instead only hints slyly at the positive and negative aspects of our cities, the final snippet of dialogue between Polo and Khan is more direct.
After contemplating the Great Khan’s atlas that includes every imaginary city of fiction , Polo pessimistically states that we are already living in an unjust world, an “inferno.” Polo suggests two methods for escaping the inferno: “The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

Failure...!!?? Loss...!!?? Hmmm....

“Strive to be not just good but great, that way nobody can point a finger at you. Stand out in the crowd.” This is what my dad taught me since the time I developed the innate ability to comprehend my ideas and thoughts. I believe I have tried to adhere to this through a range of my capabilities in the past years.

But I also have reasons to believe that the last year may have been compromised on keeping in mind the above. I am capable of finding an array of reasons for the same but those would just be mere logistical errors and excuses. There are no reasons for me to blame another because all the blame really lies within. The feeling of victimization arises superficially but is soon overcome by the realization of the mistake.

Life is never fair and to demand for the same would just be irrelevant. One needs to excel to such an extent that the concept of fair and unfair becomes inconsequential. Once you have realized the wrongs, then the loss doesn’t seem too hard on you. Even though the loss might seem to be a huge setback, especially when one has not experienced any such in the past, it all depends on what you give more importance to- the loss itself or the reasons for that loss.

The presence of sensitivity gives you the opportunity to comprehend you thoughts not just through your mind rather through the heart as well. An amalgamation of both- the heart and the head always leads to a comprehensive solution.

Faith in oneself is then revived from hibernation, and this I firmly believe would always lead to solutions that only take you forward, that give you the strength to strive for the best …always !!

A Thought . . . .

……..Prioritize…Life gives you opportunities, an umpteen number to prioritize. Decisions that need to be made based on your priorities. But then how do we decide what is more important than the other. The Big question of ‘I’ then comes banging on your door again. ‘I’ is me, myself and nobody else or ‘I’ includes the people who are a part of my life. In the same ‘I’ there are people I choose to become a part of me but others that come by default. Its not about how they became a part , rather its about what they did while being a part of my life. There comes the decision to prioritize.

Contemplation, figure out who or what comes first. Mistakes just seem to always find a way to crawl in here. You choose one over another, one seems to always lose, so you seem to always lose.
I guess the whole shenanigan, every decision that you need to take, always brings you back to the ultimate question; the circle that starts and ends at the same point, or maybe has no points at all.

Its what you believe, or what you want to believe at a certain point in time, a corner in some familiar space, a moment in movement, or the stillness at the end..

A never ending thought trickles down from your heart to reach the tips of your physical body trying to reach out into the universe , but the brain calls it back to stay, because his is what really keeps you alive.

The movement gives you direction, the direction a focus, and a grand dive into this focus moves you through time….

Theory of Settlements - Assignments

Introduction to the Assignments: 

Below is a writing assignment for the subject of Theory of Settlements as part of my Bachelor of Architecture course at the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi, India. The subject aims at analyzing and understanding the ideas and concepts through which emerged human settlements. It also looks at the evolution of these settlements into what we see of our cities today.  

The aim of the first assignment is to write a descriptive essay on a place that you may have visited in your formative years. The second looks at a place mentioned in a book of your choice which may be real or fictional. Its intended to critique a place or a series of places mentioned, as in a book review.

ASSIGNMENT 1: DESCRIPTIVE WRITING

Place visited: Dodital and Darwa Top, Himachal Pradesh

Going up to the mountains always rejuvenates me both physically and emotionally. The journey, on most occasions proves to be more intriguing than the destination itself. That is when I find the time and the patience to think and put those brain cells into good use. But today I would talk about my destination rather than the journey undertaken.

Every place brings with itself a unique charm and attraction, even though two may seem the same superficially. The hills transmit feelings of an untouched, almost pure environment that surrounds you with a gleaming aura which encapsulates your whole being.

One of those many such recollections, was a trek to Dodital and Darwa Top in Himachal, probably about 6 years back. The extensively long trek with a 10kg backpack on my tiny shoulders, the everlasting tiredness, scooped with those never ending paths covered with slippery dry pine leaves, seemed a lot more fruitful, when I reached the clearing that led me to the Dodital. A magnificent lake, covering almost the whole base of the valley that surrounded it. Standing tall, were the mountains around the lake which seemed to protect it from the external.

A small village comprising of maybe, 50 houses surrounded this serene lake. A small channel of water created by the villagers for their use, cut across the path that was to take me to the lake. I could have easily jumped across this small channel of flowing water to get to the other side, but a small wooden bridge further aside caught my eye. At that moment it felt unjust not to take this bridge across the channel. I think it was the need to keep the serenity of the place intact and my innate need to not disturb the usual course of the path I was obliged to take.

On the other side stood an exquisitely painted Hindu Temple at one end of the lake. The stillness of the lake added to the charm of this small temple that stood to prove its space in time. On speaking to some of the villagers and the priest of the temple, I was introduced to the lake as their God, their source of power and glory and the recipient of all their offerings. We are all aware of the state of the River Ganga in Haridwar which is the recipient of numerous offerings every day, but I was amazed at the purity of the water in the lake, which is in fact potable in view of the villagers. The presence of human interjections did not seem a burden, instead became an integrated part of the calm environment around. I cannot be definite about the kind of temple owing to my partial recollections, but I do recall the intricate detailing in the painted stories and scriptures presenting its past glory, on the façade of the temple that really intrigued me then.

Across the lake I saw the remainder of my journey to reach my second destination, a steep rocky climb up to Darwa Top. A walk around the lake, took me to the starting point of my climb up. The whole climb was probably around a km long, but the steepness made it seem so much longer. Every pit stop enroute the climb got me to sit and just stare down at the lake one last time before it disappeared from my line of sight. With the images of Dodital still wandering in my head, the yearning to know what lay ahead starts to peek in. Glimpses of snow capped mountains started to emerge in front of my eyes through the dense clouds that seemed to engulf me. The trek reached its climax to reach 11,000feet at Darwa top. With the blue sky peeking through white fluffy  clouds, and the white snow that bordered all that you could see, I truly felt on top of the world !! 

ASSIGNMENT 2: BOOK REVIEW

Book Name: Siddhartha

Author: Hermann Hesse

Translated from the German by Hilda Rosner

Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha tells the story of a young Brahman who explores the deepest meanings of life and the self. Siddhartha's quest for knowledge passes through several phases. During the first phase, he seeks wisdom in various religious philosophies such as Hinduism, asceticism, and Buddhism. He eventually abandons these paths, however, when he realizes that they all disrupt the unity of life by denying the physical body. After coming to this realization, Siddhartha pursues a life of physical pleasures and worldly success. He becomes a great lover and a successful businessman, but he eventually abandons these pleasures after they prove to be too superficial to satisfy his deeper spiritual side. In the third phase of his quest, he tries to reconcile the spiritual and physical sides of himself by becoming a simple ferryman. While performing his daily task of ferrying people across the river, he listens closely to the natural beauty of the river, and the river gradually teaches him how to recognize the essential unity of all life.

Through Siddhartha’s personal search for enlightenment, the river remains a common binding factor to all phases of his life. His life as an ascetic leads him to the river, where he and his childhood friend Govinda go their separate paths to attain enlightenment. The beginning of his second phase of life with all worldly pleasures begins from across the river and eventually ends at the same. It is in the river that Siddhartha once tried to jump into, to fulfill his childish wish of finding peace by way of destroying his own body. But, even then it was the river that spoke to him, and awakened him of his disillusionment. The river side is not just a place mentioned in the book but is the basis of Siddhartha’s understanding of the unity of life.

“His sleep was deep and dreamless; he had not slept like that’s for a long time…He heard the soft rippling of the water….He looked up and was surprised to see the trees and sky above him….he felt a desire to remain there for a long time. The past now seemed to him to be covered by a veil, extremely remote, very unimportant….but that he had come to himself by a river, under a coconut tree with the holy word Om on his lips.

….I will remain by this river, thought Siddhartha. It is the same river which I crossed on my way to the town. A friendly ferryman took me across. I will go to him. My path once led from his hut to a new life which is now old and dead. May my present path, my new life, start from there.”

On awakening from his deep sleep, it was under the coconut tree at the banks of the river, where he reunited with his old friend, Govinda and the ferryman Vasudeva. Many years before when Siddhartha was still a Samana (ascetic) Vasudeva had taken him across the river without payment and also offered him a night’s sleep in his hut near the river. It was now at the beginning of a new phase in his life, he reverts back to the ways of Vasudeva and decides to remain by this river, listen to it, and learn from it.

Because whoever understood this river and its secrets, would understand much more, many secrets, all secrets....

To Begin..........

Hey ..

I'm not the kind to sit in front of my laptop and stare at a stagnant facebook screen and wait for a notification to pop up in front of me for my daily dose of activity, 

everything I write generally stays in a notebook in some random drawer in my room ...but I guess this would be a start to share my thoughts and ideas with more people around me.

Though the purpose of creating this blog is academic, I hope to increase the scope of my writing to a more varied spectrum of interests and ideas. 

So.. I hope to see you around.

With luv, luck and laughter...