On one hand we are increasingly becoming shrill about ours being an ancient culture, on the other hand infrastructure for culture is crumbling all over the country, and new investments in revamping museums and auditoria are by far too few.
So it was more than a sense of a joy rush I felt when I read about the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) decision to crush a part of its estate to construct a state-of-the-art cultural facility. And about time. I had just performed there in April and my first-hand experience of the pathetic physical conditions of its theatre and green rooms led me to applaud the decision to raze and rebuild. The stage where I performed had two pillars in the middle, radically interfering with the audience’s view of the artist and equally obstructing the artists’ view of the audience. No rasa-utpatti could ever be possible there.
But I felt trepidation too. After all, over the past 70 years, we have not heaped ourselves with glory in constructing any spectacular architecture. Except the path-breaking Bahai Lotus Temple, public architecture in India has been rather timid and boring.
While even smaller nations
with far less resources have invested in reinventing architecture and have hired the best international artists, India has been uniformly hesitant in taking major architectural risks.
It was in the mid-80s that the IGNCA launched a global architectural contest to seek a unique building plan for its premises. American architect Ralph Lerner, long-time faculty member and former dean of Princeton’s School of Architecture, won the commission, but soon his vision was contested by the cultural powers, and what came up on the Central Vista at Janpath was a poorly executed and badly mauled compromise.
For a culture that has—in both its ancient and medieval oeuvres—such spectacular architectural heritage symbols, it is ironic that we have not dared to dream different and build anything of global significance despite having the latest technology and building tools.
Perhaps this is an opportunity to do it right. Get the best architects to come up with an awe-inspiring cultural centre that can make our performing arts justly proud. Not just a series of mundane performance spaces, but spaces where the human spirit can soar and celebrate.
Of course it is a risk. A few kilometres from the IGNCA, the National Buildings Construction Corporation Limited (India), a Navratna CPSE, is busy constructing a re-imagined smart city in East Kidwai Nagar. Having to pass by it frequently, I can only say that for a complex coming up in 2017, it is an architectural pygmy. What is emerging from behind the blue metal visual barricades seems like a series of high-rise lego boxes without any single architectural gesture to redeem it. A pure architectural opportunity lost. But let’s at least ensure that the IGNCA redux does not go the East Kidwai Nagar way.
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