It has been about two weeks since the last time I wrote. Hectic with work…
Field Trip to Palampur: A painful 3 hour drive in challenging terrain to visit hidden villages among lush green rice plantations. We are detectives of old houses. Having set ourselves the mission of finding buildings that survived the 1905 earthquake, we will be enquiring about the oldest house in every village. Somewhat comical, considering that the local people had no idea who on earth would be interested in seeing crumbling mud houses that no one cares about anymore. Finally, thanks to the suggestion of our old architect friend, Didi, we ended up in the village of Dattal and met Charanjit Singh. An ex-army officer/teacher, he was extremely welcoming and helpful. Fluent in English, intelligent and genuine, he made all the hardships of the field work far more satisfying. We started off the visit with some Masala Tea (a nice mix of local tea, homemade milk, many spices and so much sugar) and mangoes. Then we went to the 150 year old mud house that Charanjit’s family owned and it turned out to be a memorable experience. Beautiful spaces with thick walls and soft light, hints of vernacular culture scattered around, dusty images of Shiva, Krishna and all the other Hindu gods and stubborn mud walls, bamboo beams and slate roofing that all mysteriously withstand the test of time. In local terms, in was a “kucha” house, meaning unbaked. Made out of natural materials and local labor and having survived countless environmental strains, it is the true depiction of sustainable dwelling at small scale. Also very intimate with its L-shaped layout, a courtyard with rice crushers and village kids running around, it was certainly a unique site. The visit continued with a meandering walk through a jungle-dense bamboo and other-less-exciting-trees forest and ended up in the house of a 102 year old lady. Unusually fit, she greeted us at the door and sat down with us for a good 40 minutes, talking about her days grazing cattles around the jungle, storms that hit the region, laziness of women in contemporary times, her nursing days, and more. She also lost four of her brothers in the 1905 Kangra earthquake, and was a baby in womb when the whole thing happened. When we asked her whether she is afraid of earthquakes, she merely mocked us. Ok then.
Continuing our site visit, Charanjit invited us back to his cement “pukka” (baked) house and offered us some spectacular lunch. When we asked him why the family moved from the old mud house, his initial reaction was quite interesting: “When you get some money, you want to make something physical, build something. So we did.” He considers the concrete house more reputable by the neighbors and a good sign of status (And status does matter tremendously in Indian society). Also, he mentioned that for the mud house, one has to maintain it regularly by applying cow dung on the walls – a rather unpleasant thought for the foreigner, perfectly natural yet also tiresome for the local. As we continued our lunch, he admitted that he loved growing up in the mud house though: “It is just too hot or too cold in the new concrete buildings – we never had this problem back then.” As we wrapped up the visit, we tried to emphasize how valuable this old mud house was and reminded him that everything was devastated in 1905 earthquake, and those that withstood, withstood because they were well-designed. We also dropped the names of the Delhi NGO and UNESCO, hoping that it would help to re-appreciate their hidden gem: tradition.
I am struggling with the concept of novelty after all the visits to historic structures. A few years ago, I started off thinking about architecture from the “fountainhead” perspective, where innovation comes from ground zero. The idea of shaping space purely using imaginative powers sounded quite captivating and pulled me into this discipline in the first place. I also thought how boring it would be to design in historic styles or do renovation work – it just did not feel very creative. But, gradually, I am realizing that innovation cannot happen if one were to discount the precedences. We are surrounded by man-made spaces on a day-to-day basis, and even the basics of geometry have subtle implications on our perception. Trying to do bold ‘contemporary design’ moves without understanding their implications is simply an amateur mindset. Architecture is becoming fashionable with Gehry landmarks and soaring glass skyscrapers, but it is a serious thing – a badly designed building touches to the life of many people, as well as the environment and the economy – for at least a few decades. This is all common sense, but now I get it a little bit better.
And there is so much to learn from history. Traditional architecture is precise and deliberate; it is well crafted in its form, refined in its function. It deals with the site, air and water so much better – because it had time to evolve and fit. Built environment is subject to natural evolution as much as natural environment, and adaptation of buildings to different social and environmental conditions is critical. Wrapping up this digression, I realized that to be a good architect, one needs evolution not revolution.
Our second site visit in the field trip was another mud house in Ashapuri Devi village. Getting there was one of the most intimidating journeys I have been through. A road under construction, as wide as a petite car, steep ridges with loose soil, massive rocks with dripping water and no sign of civilization other than a few goats and cows herded by little kids. Finally, we got to Ashapuri, famous with its Hindu temple with views in four directions at 1300 meters. The temple was interesting, yet our minds were in old mud houses (we devoted this last week to this typology), and after a few dead-end conversations, we finally found the oldest house in the village – this one was even inhabited by a nice Indian family, Sri Mast Ram. So we met them, sat around awkwardly for a while and then surveyed the house. Again, it had a very cozy and warm ambience – I would not have thought that even the softness of the floor makes a difference in the way one perceives the space. We also played around with the little kids after a while – but they’d rather just roll around the house and the courtyard. It was amazing to see that the girls, at most 15-16, were already married, and how the whole domestic culture was quite similar to Turkey’s countryside. It is still a bit ironic that I have seen more of India’s in-the-middle-of-nowhere than Turkey – and definitely have to compensate for it.
Over the weekend, we spent a lot of time documenting our findings from the site visits. Beyond the old mud houses, we had Didi’s newly built, yet truly “novel” mud house on our table – and it was a lot of work. In any case, we managed to wrap up most of the documentation, and decided to have a day off on Monday. So, we woke up at 7am, hiked up ~5km uphill and had a yoga class for two hours. This was followed by a wonderful Tibetan breakfast with fresh bread and ginger tea (we are in India, but this is also the most Tibetan refugee town - and Tibetans eat healthy, Indians don’t.). The ‘vacation’ day continued with a two hour drive to Tatwani hot springs. We read about it in the tourist guide, yet no one including our usually omniscient driver “Happy” did not know it. So we got to the little town and asked about the springs. Someone pointed out to the river and told us to cross it, we went, but did not find any sane way of crossing this stream: it was flowing out of control because it is the monsoon season. We also deemed it too brown and dirty looking to swim in. Disillusioned, we took the car and started driving back, but after a few minutes, the tire popped. It was humid and hot in the valley, we were exhausted from early wake-up, hike, yoga and the unsuccessful river crossing – and our lovely driver had a spare tire worse than the one that popped. After some deep desperate silence, we pulled ourselves together, walked a few kilometers and got back to the riverside next to a stone mine. Intimidated by local boys swimming in the river at first, the heat, dehydration and despair led us to a weird state of carelessness and we jumped into the chilly river waters. And we did swim around with local motorcycle boys and miners. It turned out to be unusually fun, too. Lesson: don’t complain. Then the car got fixed and we went to dinner in a Tibetan vegetarian restaurant and wrapped the day with a beautiful Sitar concert in flickering candlelight and monsoon in the background. Then we slept for 12 hours straight.
My birthday was this Thursday. I had a spark of birthday fun early on Wednesday night with a pineapple cake that oddly looked like a wedding cake, but then Abhishek pulled an Abhishek and smeared half of the cake on my face – of course with good intentions (but then again, he also left a permanent mark on my finger with his ‘magic’ trick with the matches – well..). The daytime was another at-home documentation day, hence not too exciting, nevertheless capped by a night outing in Mcleod Ganj and eating-drinking festivities in a Tibetan restaurant with beer and cheap whiskey. Also very nice gifts from Jackie and Veronica – a book on Tibetan suffering and a meditation bowl. In dinner, we were also accompanied by our new friend, Andrea: an American girl originally from Uruguay, living in a typical suburban town in Florida and visiting India for one more time to see her Indian soon-to-be fiancée. Very nice and mellow person, as many others in this region. We also met some cool Portuguese guys during dinner, realizing that Portuguese sounds like an odd mix of Russian and Spanish. These guys were planning to go to Annapurna, Nepal for an intense hiking trip and I was jealous and thought how great it would be to do it with my close friends – now scattered around the world. In any case, we capped the dinner with no casualties other than the whole group being tipsy, but then also were approached by a shady Tibetan druggie and saved ourselves from a street assault at the last second. Good day…
The following Friday, we again spent most of our time drawing and writing about mud houses – the whole thing takes a very long time, but it’s also because the whole team is sadly perfectionist. We just took too much on our shoulders for the time we have, and now are struggling to wrap everything up in a coherent way.
Yesterday, Saturday, was another good day, though. Started off with yoga, followed by breakfast and some shopping, it culminated in an evening Celebration Party with ‘Babaji,’ a Hindu guru that I have mentioned before: quite a memorable experience of purely Indian celebration in a small Hindu temple up the hill from our house, amazing local food served on banana leafs, smoking, chanting of songs in Urdu and Sanskrit, and the oddest crowd interactions with taxi drivers, construction workers, farmers and “enlightened” wanna-be philosophers. Overall very memorable.
Then Sunday came – and we decided to work hard today. It almost felt like Monday. Still, as electricity and water decided to not visit our house for the morning, we had to relocate and work in a café in Mcleod. It’s amazing how such basics can affect the group productivity. We wrapped up the day with some homemade food by the old lady that lives across the street from us: We met her a few weeks ago, and she kindly cooks for us whenever we ask – for an absurd amount of compensation. A full dinner with soup, rice, dal, curd and rotis cost me one dollar tonight. It’s good, because with her, I can save quite a bit for the last short bit of the India trip – the actual vacation. I am hesitating whether to see a desert in Rajastan, a rainforest in Kerala, old forts and temples in Jaipur, Tibetan camps in Leh or hippie beaches in Goa. India is just overwhelming.
More things:
- Playing soccer with Indians against the Tibetan youth team, surrounded by mountains on four sides.
- Happy’s father asking for a Turkish bride and calling me “Stone” because I was tired and gave no feedback to most of the happenings; apparently, I am bad at pretending to keep up a conversation in Hindi, too.
- How sore one can get from yoga. And how I am so not flexible. And the fact that I don’t get the whole meditation part.
- Either water or electricity. It’s has been only a few times that I’ve seen them both together.
It is getting late, and tomorrow is another long documentation day, so that’s it for now…
