A walk by a 53-year-old woman, which started from Kolkata on February 13 and aimed to raise awareness on the role good design can play in changing lives, culminated in Delhi on Sunday.
The 70-day journey, spanning 1,700km and half a dozen states, saw Gita Balakrishnan, an architect, tread swathes of mainland India in searing summer heat. She reached Delhi via West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Her journey ended with a walk from Rajghat to Red Fort in Delhi.
Called Walk for Arcause, the journey was also aimed at raising funds to help construction workers and award scholarships to students of architecture and design. During the initial phase, Balakrishnan used to hit the road by 5.30am and wound up by noon.
But from the second week of March, she started her daily walk at 4am. “Walking became difficult from 8am. It became virtually impossible in the afternoon. The overhead sun was too hot to handle,” she said.
In the evening, she met people at their homes. She went to schools to interact with children and stopped by at dhabas and tea stalls on the way. Through small meetings with residents and travellers, she showcased a visual collage of projects that define the social responsibility of an architect.
Balakrishnan survived by drinking “plenty of fluids”. Over the phone from Delhi, Balakrishnan, who lives in Alipore, looked back at the journey.
Why design?
At a village near Ranchi, Balakrishnan spent some time with children of brick kiln workers. Their parents spend six to eight months outside home for work. The children are taken care of by an NGO.
A tribal girl, Sumari (tweaked from her original name, Somvari, since she was born on a Monday), left a lasting impression on Balakrishnan.
She had asked Sumari, just under 18 years, about her favourite subject. Sumari said she loved geography.
“When I asked why, she beautifully articulated the reason, relating her love to the soil, trees, the climate, the sun, the stars and so on. I have had this conversation with many architects and people who formulate education policy. If people who chose architecture took up the subject with such a clear understanding of why they would like to study design, I think we would have much better architects,” said Balakrishnan, who has completed practical training at the Centre for Building Performance and Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, US.
Disconnect
At Dankuni in Hooghly, Balakrishnan saw a construction worker carrying a load of soil to a site. She asked him what was being built. The worker said he had no clue.
“This is a theme that has been there pretty much throughout. People who actually work on these sites, especially smaller ones, often do not know what is being built. It is extremely important to bridge that gap between the hands that build and the hands that design. Multiple things would happen because of that. When the difference is gone, the construction worker becomes an ambassador for the architect,” she said.
Labour of love
In a village called Bharra, in Madhya Pradesh, Balakrishnan met two brothers. She spent a whole hour with them as they “proudly” showed their home to her. It was a completely handcrafted home, built in 1972 by their father.
“What was beautiful about their home was that these guys were able to tell me exactly why and how each part of the house was built. What material was used. It was largely mud. Some local concoction at the base of the foundation worked as an anti-termite treatment,” she said.
“They used human anatomy to explain proportions. I asked them how much of a mud wall do you build in a day. They said that one arm’s length was all you needed to build in a day because above that, it might fall off,” she said.
“...That was something extremely important for me to document. We are losing this traditional wisdom,” she said.