Excerpts from an Ongoing Dialogue
A Conversation between Dr. Balkrishna v. Doshi and Bijoy Jain
(with the participation of Rajeev Kathpalia and Durganand Balsavar)
[Download the full interview in PDF]
Community Building
B.V. Doshi: Why is it that we always talk of heritage when we look at India? We refer to old buildings, havelis1 and other things, but they are already far behind, isolated. Who created this heritage that seems to have come from an outer planet? Do we really have anything to do with that building? Are we connected to it today? This is a major question that is bothering me.
When I think about the old city of Ahmedabad, Delhi, Pune or any other place, and life back then, I imagine there was somebody, Vastu Shastri,2 and maybe rituals, traditions. I picture everybody wearing similar clothes, talking dialect, eating food and communicating. They were all connected to that place. It had something to do with the sanctity of beliefs. They may have believed in Vastu Shastri, who would come and say, “This is the way it has to be”. Perhaps it had something to do with the production technique or the kind of lifestyle that they had, but everything was integrated, and therefore the cities retained that quality. Psychologically we are very proud of our culture, but which culture? The 600-year old one? The 400-year old one?
B. Jain: What I also think is that our idea of craft has become trivialized, because again, with this connection to history and form, our image still focuses on the history of form as opposed to what craft actually is, or the understanding of what craft is.
Sangath, Ahmedabad, India. Summer, 2011
MAHABHARATA. M.F. Husain, 1990
I recently returned from Japan and had the good fortune of being able to document some of these master carpenters who are ninety plus, still working, and I shared that experience with my carpenters. The amazing part is that Japanese master carpenters physically draw, abstractly, the entire building on these pieces of wood and then the wood is cut. Different joints are made but they are not assembled until they are physically on the site. They know exactly how the entire building is going to come together. They have the perception to understand the complexity. They make drawings like plans, sections and elevations, and they are all connected to each other. What I have seen is that we actually have the ability to do all the things that they can do, but today what we do not have is the discipline, the cleanliness, this idea of rigour, of knowing the meaning of what we are doing. The amazing part is that we actually have thousands of artisans of that quality. The ability to make those things still exists, but what is needed is to instill this idea of connection to what is being made, and why it is being made. This is where the disconnection has taken place. I see that they have it in them. This idea we have of history and culture has resulted in a schism in contemporary life.
When the stonemasons are laying the stone, I say, “Your grandfather would not lay the stone like that”, and he will quickly take away the stones. I come back five days later, and he has done exactly what his grandfather would have done, but somehow that connection… I have to keep narrating this connection to history, to their grandfather and his great-grandfather. What would he have thought? How would he have made the joint? How would he have laid the stone? The moment you start talking about that, they somehow feel an empathy with the family that they come from, but I see it broken from time to time. One has to keep narrating this story. I think that the potential is there. I am optimistic in this difficult time, but it needs a crucible to hold at least some of the parts so we can then reconstruct them. If all the parts disappeared, we would have to start from a completely new place.